honestly it depends on the stat group. if it's offense, use focus on. otherwise it is a total crapshoot how long development is going to take. Defense, again I lean towards focus, Fitness, all skills, you need all 3 anyways unless you really need to get a players stamina up, use all skills, Kicking and Tactical, all skills, I'm not going with the two kicker approach when it is: a. mostly irrelevant at this point and b.so easy to train both using all skills. and Tactical you again need both positioning and Vision(i would argue that footwork would belong here and not offense but as Guru gets after me for, i focus too much on "real football" )

as it stands offensive training is by far more ineffective than any other grouping so much so that if you want to see any real progress you are forced to use focus on. other wise you have a 20% chance of the skill you want developed to raise by 8% which given the average player (10 teamwork) with an average offensive coach (10 offense, yes I realize this is not the average NOW but statistically speaking it is the median value) using average training you could get 2.24-2.56 points per week resulting in a whopping 39 weeks per pop even if you hit the lotto and come out with perfect training for the player every week. That's just too risky for me.Last edited on 2008-10-09 at 16:54

I agree with you on most of these points and perhaps this discussion is better moved to it's own thread, but in any case, my sole arguement is the defensive one. While I agree that agility is underrated, it is not so underrated that I am willing to gamble on the loss of tackling for players. while tackling may be important for blocking and vice versa there is no way that you can convince me that they are equally important for both positions.

Demoting them to this second skill tier allows me to say that "focus on" for defense is a the more productive choice. given the same example of the average player with average coaching the difference between my player getting 75% every week (21-24) versus the random average of all skill training (9.3-10.6)(assuming perfect division of training among the three stats which WON'T happen) you've got more than double the training needed to raise the stat that you intend to raise. This would seem to me to slow down the overall potential of your team. It doesn't matter how fast the secondary stats raise, but the primary stats are key, in my opinion. That being said, eventually there will be a large market for the after training of big players in Tactical and Fitness, IMO. This statistical analysis may lead me to a suggestion as it currently stands that offensive players are going to develop at a 10% slower rate than defenses.

I understand the loss of training, a finite measure to be sure, but time is just as finite. You're looking at a loss of nearly half of a fixed resource(time) versus my loss of 10%(training) it's a big difference given the two choices. In certain arenas, Fitness, Tactical, and Kicking.We can safely assume that all of the stats are needed stats for most positions(with the exception of kicking of course) so the training loss becomes more apparent.

However looking at primary stats. Throwing for QB's Catching for WR's Carrying for RBs Blocking for OL Tackling for DL etc. they only have so much time to get where they are going. a stat gain in 5 weeks means that a player will go from 5 to 7 in one season with little variation in that chance. whereas using that same measure with training all skills that player has the possibility (not probable but still possible) to not gain in that stat all season long!
Take that over 10 seasons and we're looking at my player who focused hitting his potential every time by 26 if he is a 16 year old player (20 points of stat gain given average players). Most of our trainees will have higher stats that 1 when we decide to train them. so most trainees will hit their potential well before then.

Given the variable nature of all skills training you would average 1 skill gain every 10 weeks assuming perfect average is achieved in spreading out the skills. that equates to 4 pops in their primary stat every 3 seasons roughly. the same player on focus on is looking at 8 primary stat pops in that time span. That's a big gap in team differential.

I can agree with the flying blind part, we just differ tactically, In any event I hope we inspired people smarter than both of us to take a look