If you manually set the draft beforehand, then what do you use the weights for?

This is probably the most ridiculous question ever. But, sure, I'll answer it.

1) Players are sorted in the left column of the war room using your weights. That means that the best players USING YOUR WEIGHTS are filtered to the top while the worst players are filtered to the bottom. This allows for you to more quickly move players onto your draft board.

2) When you use your own weights, you can very quickly see how much you are going to value a player whether or not it's the draft, FA, during a trade, etc., without having to dig into the player that much. Just because the trade balancer says that it's perfectly reasonable to trade a 2nd round pick for a player that you have as a 48, you might want to think twice before doing it. That is unless you're being offered that 2nd round pick and then you just hit accept and move on with your day.

Assuming you are managing one team:

Without weights, that is 53 players that you have to memorize the individual skill ratings for, or else you're going to have to open the player card every time you need to do something that only involves your team (rearrange depth chart, etc.).

For anything that involves players not on your team (trades, FA, draft, etc.), you will ALWAYS have to open up every player card just to get an idea if that players is any good or not in YOUR eyes.

Seems to me to be a huge waste of time to NOT use weights.

How so? I already told you I didn't use weights, so didn't know the benefits/drawbacks of such.
I would have looked into it eventually, but thanks for saving me the trouble with the explanation.

As far as wasting time NOT using weights, to each their own. My way has gotten results with a championship last season... but I am not going to say it is the ONLY way to get good results.

Edit: Serious question... will weights also take into account OOP players if you want to swap them or will you have to sort through each card individually if you plan to play a player OOP?

Every time the scores are presented to you for any player at any position they are using your weights. So yes, when you put a player in the depth chart out of their assigned position, or when you look at the alternate position scores on their card, you are seeing the aggregate result based on your own personal weights.

Excellent info, thanks!

And this is why setting your weights is essential.

Essential is probably not the right word (as I won last season without using them).
Time-saver would be better... but I get your point.

Just sat through a complete **** fest from my QB, 20/49, 289 yards and sacked 10 times.

I moved to a 5WR spread offence this off season, and the more I think about it, it was probably stupid. What is the point of running a spread offence if my QB is just going to stare down one receiver? Its not going to work as the scheme does in real life, will it? I look at the teams across the league, and although rating are subjective due to weights, I think that my 4th and 5th WR are going to be better than most teams 4th and 5th string CB. But that also appears irrelevant the more I think about it, as I can't force my QB to look their way.

And on the same subject, my LT gave up 4 sacks in the game. 100 acceleration, 100 strength, 98 pass blocking. Suppose it's his fault that after every snap my QB sprints for the sideline as fast as possible like he's had a dodgy breakfast burrito? Just stay in the **** pocket.