Just a few points to make, some of which have already been made before in this thread:
a) I don't have access to Potential, your Practice Plans, or Game Plans. I *can't* rate your recruit class on how it's going to look in 4 seasons. I tried for a while, assuming average potential and average player growth, based on a formula used by some extremely good coaches. All it did was overly complicate and confuse people, because I couldn't publish that part of the rankings formula.
b) Positions don't all rate equally. QB's will kill your ratings. So will K and P. I've tried a number of different ways to equalize those over the years, but none has been satisfactory. I think it actually became worse with the addition of DE/DT, ILB/OLB, and S/CB.
c) Team ratings DO value starters more than bench players. It's not just an average of all your player ratings. I'd have to go double-check to be sure, but I think starters (the top players rated at their position) get a 25% bonus added to their impact on team ratings.
d) The current formulas are based on what JConte told me directly was important to the game engine. I think it's pretty clear now, based on the things Norbert discovered as he started re-coding the engine, that many of our assumptions and things we were told were less than fully accurate. Frankly, it's amazing that the ratings perform as well as they do.
e) I'm always willing to listen to ideas on how to improve the formulas. They are, after all, just guesses to begin with.