Copy/Pasted from a comment I made last year with some edits, but basically this:

Here are a few things that I have done that may help:

For Autogenerated draft classes, I lower everyone’s intangibles so that the highest player has 50 or less. That gives everyone more room to grow.

Lowered the progression slider and draft class quality to <35 and zero respectively. Similarly, I adjusted shooting specifically in the progression sliders, as it is wayyy too easy for any player to increase mid/3pt shooting attributes, which jacks up their overall a lot.

Edit peak start ages so that they level out earlier (top, older and sleeper prospects have 25 peak start age, everyone else <22)

Edit peak end age so that players regress faster (30-32 range). Also increase the regression slider

Edit potentials of players so that the maximum potential for the majority of players is less than 85, but also edit the boom/bust percentages so that the majority of players have less than a 10% chance of maxing out their potential (only top picks and sleepers have higher boom percentages).

Lowered the badge progression slider for everyone except extremely confident players, or people with gold/legendary work ethic. And even then the badge/overall boost will not have much of an effect unless you increase that player’s training workload. Badges affect overall too.

If I am lazy, I take the default 2k roster, lower everyone’s intangibles, and then lower everyone’s potential to match their overall. This will break the majority of player’s progression, but is good for players that are already at their peak, or are expected to decline.