EA Sports NCAA Football 11 - Tennessee Player Ratings

If you're a fan of EA Sports' NCAA Football series, then this is a bit like Christmas morning:  you get to see exactly how good the presents are you'll spend the next several months playing.  The demo for the game hit 360 and PS3 servers this week, and the release date is July 13.  That's also the same day our Rocky Top Tennessee 2010 annual should hit shelves, so you'll be all set for football season in less than a month.  Check out everything about the game from EA's official site.

Tennessee was one of the best teams in the game for several years, and even as the talent began to decrease in Knoxville, the player ratings stayed high for the Vols simply because we were Tennessee.  I would argue that was even true last year, when Jonathan Crompton was rated much, much higher than he should've been, among others.

But this year, it seems the game has finally caught up to reality in some areas.  So if you're looking forward to playing with the Vols in NCAA Football 11, you'd better embrace the coal where you'd expect to find it in real life:  the untested Vol quarterbacks get no benefit of the doubt in the ratings just for wearing the orange, and Tennessee's second team features a bunch of guys in the 60s.  On the other hand, the skill position players and several key defenders are still in the high 80s.  And of course, there are a couple of complete head scratchers, where you wonder if the developers made a mistake.

Key player ratings for Tennessee after the jump...

(Note:  these rosters come from EA's TeamBuilder site, where you can create custom teams (and uniforms, as we did last year) for use right away when the game comes out.  We're given a number, class, and height/weight, so there's a little bit of guesswork on some of these.  All 120 rosters/player ratings are available through the TeamBuilder site, which requires a free registration/login with EA.)

Tennessee Player Ratings - NCAA Football 11

QB Matt Simms - 76

QB Tyler Bray - 75

QB Nick Lamaison - 72

RB Tauren Poole - 85

RB David Oku - 85

RB Toney Williams - 69

FB Kevin Cooper - 81

FB Austin Johnson - 78 (no position change)

WR Gerald Jones - 87

WR Denarius Moore - 86

WR Marsalis Teague - 78

WR Da'Rick Rogers - 79

WR Matt Meline - 76

WR Ted Meline - 75

WR Justin Hunter - 74

TE Luke Stocker - 85

TE Ben Bartholomew - 56 (ouch)

TE Mychal Rivera - 64 (...won't be running much out of the two tights, eh?)

OT Cody Pope - 80 (tackle, not guard?)

OG Jarrod Shaw - 82

C Victor Thomas - 79

OG Dallas Thomas - 84 (again possibly out of position)

OT Jer'Quari Schofield - 80

DE Chris Walker - 87

DE Gerald Williams - 84

DE Ben Martin - 81

DT Montori Hughes - 84

DT Marlon Walls - 83 (...which makes Hughes vastly underrated)

DT Rae Sykes - 79

OLB Savion Frazier - 86

OLB LaMarcus Thompson - 83

OLB Greg King - 71 (??)

MLB Nick Reveiz - 85

MLB Herman Lathers - 84

MLB Nigel Mitchell-Thornton - 77

CB Art Evans - 86

CB Anthony Anderson - 83

CB Stephaun Raines - 81

CB Eric Gordon - 70

FS Janzen Jackson - 80 (?!)

FS Prentiss Wagner - 79

SS Darren Myles - 88

K Daniel Lincoln - 88 (no Michael Palardy)

P Chad Cunningham - 90 (best player on the team)