Team Ring of Honor Players for MUT
I'm sure there are a lot of other people out there who like to play MUT with a themed team of their favorite team. While there have been improvements in this relating to the team chemistry upgrades, I'd like to suggest a way to help further this. Typically, every team will have weak spots where you may have to plug in a gold player for your themed team because that's the best player for that team available (Yeah if you're a Rams or Patriots fan you probably don't have that problem with all of the Super Bowl players that just came out). What I would like to see in addition to Legends is a "Team Ring of Honor" set of players for each team.
For example, I am a big 49ers fan, so I always make my MUT roster 49ers themed. In this year's Madden, the best center available is 79 overall Weston Richburg. The best ROLB (barring an unlikely power up for Malcolm Smith's recent SB past card) is 77 overall Elijah Lee. So what I would like to see is EA release 5 "Ring of Honor" players for each team, perhaps at the end of the season, to address the weaknesses that each team may have. For the 49ers, for example, they could do a Jesse Sapolou (center during the mid 80's to mid 90's), Lee Woodall (outisde linebacker during the 90's), Merton Hanks (safety during the 90's), Ken Norton Jr (middle linebacker during the 90's), and perhaps someone like Bryant Young, who they did do this year as a LTD legend.
The criteria for the "Ring of Honor" players would be that they are not HOF (legend) players who spent at least their prime with the team that they are associated with. All of the players I mentioned above were at least Pro Bowlers and/or All Pros. That's just a sample for the 49ers, I'm sure a Browns fan would be able to ring off a list of at least 5 such players for their team.
I know that EA has to pay retired players to appear in the game, but considering these aren't HOF players, I doubt it would be a huge sum. EA could either make the money back by releasing a special edition "Ring of Honor" game for, say 20 dollars more than retail price of the regular Madden release, which would give the player access to the ring of honor players for the team they select. Or they could make it a points only purchase in the store, for the equivalent of $20 or $30 bucks.
Of course these players wouldn't be as highly rated as the actual legend players that are released. Before UL's get released they could be capped at an 89 or so. I'd cap them at a 93 or 94 overall once UL's come out. They could upgrade with training like power ups. I've been thinking about this for years and would love to see it happen in a future madden release.