He may have filmed the 16 most boring minutes on YouTube, but he gave us college football fans and gamers some golden offseason fodder to argue about. Starting with the overall team ratings, Notre Dame is given a 97 overall (WOWsers!), with a 94 offense rating, 95 defense rating and 6 star prestige. I would love to say I agree with this number…but it seems high to me. For context, 97 ties ND for the 6^th highest rating behind Wisconsin, Texas, LSU, Oregon and USC who each are rated 99 overall. Tied with the Irish at 97 overall are Florida State, Georgia, Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Michigan. Other Irish opponent ratings include: Navy (77), Purdue (87), Michigan State (93), Miami (91), Stanford (93), BYU (89), Pittsburgh (85), Boston College (85) and Wake Forest (81). Considering the real life talent differential between teams like USC and LSU compared to Boston College and Wake Forest, there certainly doesn’t seem to be much ratings disparity built into this year’s version of the game.

Grantland-X is going to appreciate the Notre Dame QB rankings, which are as follows:

With Rees having far more experience under his belt than any of the other 3 scholarship QB’s, we can’t be shocked that the guys over at EA Sports took the safe route and rated him slightly higher than Hendrix and Golson. Tommy’s speed rating is surprising, as I would have expected it to be in the mid-to-low 60s. The fact that Hendrix’s strength is a 53 and break tackle is a 67 is ludicrous – each should be much higher. I would probably lower the awareness rating for both Hendrix and Rees as well. Throwing power and throwing accuracy ratings are not yet available, but based on Tommy’s inferior athletic ratings coupled with the fact his overall rating is the highest, you would expect him to show the strongest numbers in those categories. Of course, whether or not you agree with those ratings is an entirely different story.

Moving on to the running backs:

I love speedy RBs when playing this game, and the Irish backfield stable does not disappoint. For those of you that plan on playing in Dynasty Mode, the Carlisle/Atkinson combination is going to be one of the strongest in the country when you enter your 3^rd season and they are each seniors. Here’s to hoping that the on the field product turns out similarly.

And now the entire EA Sports ND roster (note: their 70 man roster is mostly made up of current players and early enrollee freshmen. For the few freshmen enrolling in the fall that appeared on the roster, I generally didn’t try to guess who the game was referring to.)

The Top 10 ND Players:

***Update: Manti Te’o is tied with Matt Barkley and Montee Ball as the highest rated player in the game. Tyler Eifert is in a tie for 4th with Marcus Lattimore. The Irish coming in with two of the top 5 players in the game? Not too shabby….

Questions/Comments:

Players ranked 11 through 30:

Questions/Comments:

Players ranked 31 through 70:

Questions/Comments:

How do you feel about the team rankings and the individual player rankings? Would you have made any significant changes if you were running the show at EA?

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