What's a Creeper?

[Jistic]

I understand the basic theory. But could a vet give a little more insight as to what exactly a creeper is? Is it slow progression all season for several seasons? Or big jumps every year? Or something else?

Thanks.

[Eaglesfan27]

A creeper is generally a player who continually gains small amounts of current and potential rating for several years (I've had guys creep for 10 years until they eventually started declining.) If I can, I try to play Creepers, because I think they usually overplay their ratings a bit and the scouts are constantly re-evaluating them. I've also seen 1 creeper have a huge boom in his 6th year where he gained 24 points in current and future.

[Guest]

The vast majority of young players in FOF either "creep" or regress. It's specifically related to the future potential. I've seen guys "creep" as much as 31 points upward in the new game: drafted as an 18/30 player, but kept creeping upward to 61/61. I think I've said this here before, but it's *very* important to note that "creepers" are not "getting better." The 61/61 guy was ALWAYS 61 potential. It's just that the potential was masked. Creepers almost always start creeping at the very first training camp. In other words, that player who was drafted as an 18/30 showed up as around 20/38 after his first camp, and in every subsequent season until it reached 61, the scouted number for future potential kept increasing.

In the same way, guys see their future potential regress. (Some of you have no doubt noticed this with all those 15/50ish rookie free agents you fought over and spent too much money on. ;) ). And again, it's not that they're "getting worse;" it's that they never were any good, just overrated. For example, if you see a 15/50 rookie drop to 16/43 in his first training camp, odds are great that if you give him all the playing time in the world, he'll get no better than around 30/30, because his true, hidden potential never was above 30 to start with.

Finally (and SO many people fail to understand this piece), you need to understand that mentors and playing time do NOT change the hidden, true ratings. They speed up development. If a guy whose true, hidden ratings are 20/60, and you start him as a rookie and get a mentor, he might get to 60 as quickly as within a couple of years. If he plays sparingly off the bench for a couple of years, then slowly moves into full time, it might take him 5 years to reach 60.

[Jistic]

So it sounds to me that it's all tied to the unmasking of true future potential and not the progression of the current overall rating? Thanks.

I guess I have one more question. So drafted players ever start creeping AFTER their rookie season?

[Guest]

I guess I have one more question. So drafted players ever start creeping AFTER their rookie season?

Usually not much. I've got a 17-season database of my draftees that I use to track this stuff. The most change in either direction for a guy who neither gained nor lost points in their rookie training camp (sample size=13) was +4 (33/53-->57/57). If a guy neither gains nor loses in the first camp, you can be pretty confident that he is who you think he is.

That being said, four things can actually *change* the hidden, true ratings--two in each direction:

1. summer league breakout
2. random, volatility-based breakout
3. random, volatility-based bust
4. aging (happens to all players once they get past their hidden peak year)

[Cotton]

I sometimes get upward creeps from veterans I play a lot because they overacheive. It's like their ratings catch up with their performance. (Like SD said, the ratings don't match the player's TRUE value - and hidden, in game ratings - anyway.) It's what happens on the field that is the purest measure of any of that.

I have quite a few guys like that in one league. Just a few upward ticks every season, when most guys are at the stage when they'd be declining. They play well despite mediocre ratings, and sure enough, sometimes those ratings catch up with how I would actually rate them based on performance.

Just anecdotally, it seems to happen to guys that get craploads of playing time (quarterbacks, running backs usually for me), have a decent coordinator for their position, and stay healthy. The vast majority of guys creep downward once their future and current overalls are the same.