In the latest version, your players earn XP for achieving certain goals, which you then can spend on improving their skills. You can select which skills to spend them on and you can save them for the things that require huge amounts of XP like making your player more consistent or making them a 'clutch' player who always performs better at crucial times in games and the season. It's a really good system and rewards you for getting all of your players involved in the game at different times rather than always relying on one or two players as some people tend to do. Your coach earns XP in a similar way, and this can be used for purchasing such things as positional 'upgrades' which make players at the position you upgrade earn XP much faster, or XP can be spent on making it easier to negotiate for players at a selected position in free agency or improving how many scouting points you earn each week to scout the rookie draft class. It's a superb system, and the rookie scouting is fantastic. This is definitely the most in depth and all encompassing sports game I've ever played, if you have any interest in the NFL you should own it. If you have any interest in seeing how a good sports game should be done you should own it.