I'm hesitating between 2 players, I'll cut one at the end of preseason. There's only 3 points of difference between their global ratings and one has 13 years of experience, the other 4, so there shouldn't be any doubt but.. One, the older, has rather high "technical" ratings (tackling, pass rush, run defense) and low "physical" ones (speed, strength). The younger is just the contrary. Which one should be the better player : the athlete or the skilled vet? Certain games pay only lip service to individual ratings, 2 "55" players play the same, whatever their bigger red bars are. I don't know yet where this one stands on the question.

Really depends on the position - but we're not paying lip service to individual ratings here, specific ratings are used in each game engine decision and the overall score is actually whatever you want it to be (if you haven't seen yet, go to "My Team->Edit Player Weights" and you can fine tune each position's attribute scores for your own customized composite score).

In your example, you can have a great tackler but if he's not fast enough to catch the ballcarrier is that better than a fast player who can catch the ballcarrier but is less successful at making the tackle? The two players may indeed perform similarly but they would be for different reasons. Further, a CB would really need speed more than a DT, LB's could probably get by without great speed but will probably get outrun against sweeps with a faster back. This is all simmed in macro detail, the game engine doesn't just throw all the variables into an equation to get the play result, it is actually calculated using autonomous agents and artificial intelligence within each individual player.

Here is where each attribute is explained:

http://www.myfootballnow.com/getting_started/attributes