[ED: If you care not about video games. Skip this.]
Unsurprisingly, we at Red Cup Rebellion are geeks. We're sports geeks, we're writing geeks, we're computer geeks, and we're EA Sports geeks. We're not apologizing for that, because we imagine that a decent enough sized segment of our readers care about these things as well. Assuming such, here is an earlier look at the player ratings for the Ole Miss Rebels on EA Sports and a quick bit of drive-by analysis.
We're not going to look at every player at every position and point out every silly discrepancy (such as Randall Mackey's dreadlocks that the programmers of EA decided he would need) in the game, but we hope to hit enough of the high points.
- The most highly rated player on the Rebel roster is halfback Brandon Bolden, who is rated as at 91 overall. That's pretty bad for a highest overall player on a roster, but this year's team won't exactly be top heavy anyway. His best attributes are his stamina (97), awareness (93), and break tackle (91).
- The next most highly rated players are Damien Jackson (88 overall with 90 speed and 94 play recognition ability), Bobby Massie (87 overall with 92 strength), DT Shackelford (despite an ACL injury, he's still available on EA sports with an 87 overall rating) and Kentrell Lockett (86 overall).
- The fastest players on the team, each with a 95 speed rating, are Jeff Scott, Korvic Neat, and "WR #84" who is listed as a 6'2", 187lb freshman. Could that be Nickolas Brassell or Tobias Singleton?
- The Rebel defense is pretty accurate when just scratching the surface of the ratings. The defensive ends are good, but not great. The defensive tackles are young and meh. Joel Kight and DT are good linebackers, and Damien Jackson is a bright spot in the secondary. Marcus Temple and Brishen Matthews have decent ratings.
- The Rebel offense is a bit more interesting. Assuming "QB #12" is Zack Stoudt and not Nathan Stanley, there's a clear three-way race for quarterback in the vidya game. Stoudt has the top overall rating at 81, with Mackey and Brunetti having 77 overall ratings. Stoudt's arm is decent (86 throw power and 82 throw accuracy), but he barely cracks the 70's in speed and agility. Mackey has 80 speed with 75 agility, a short sell, as well as a 90 throwing power and 85 throwing accuracy rating. His glaring weakness, which I don't get, is a rating of 50 (fitty!) in awareness. Barry Brunetti is just sorta "meh" across the board, with 85 speed, 80 agility, 87 throwing power and 83 throwing accuracy.
- The offensive line is consistently decent. Sowell's 85 overall, Alex Washington is 83 overall, AJ Hawkins is 81 overall, Jared Duke is 81 overall and Massie's at 87 overall. Missing from the roster are Terrell Brown and Matt Hall.
- Melvin Harris and Ja-mes Logan headline the wideouts, with 84 and 82 overall ratings respectively.
- Bryson Rose is a fairly balanced kicker, with an 86 power and 85 accuracy rating, whereas Tyler Campbell is, well, Tyler Campbell. He can boast a 91 power rating but possesses a mere 72 in accuracy.
- Philander Moore is nowhere to be found. This breaks my heart.
Yes, despite our team sorta sucking in this game, I'm likely to still buy it. I'm a masochistic idiot like that. Any other thoughts, questions, observations, or general EA Sports talk? That's what the comments thread is for.