Not scheduling their games at the same time? Maybe, although I kind of doubt a lot of Broncos fans are going to tune in and watch the Jets to see how their backup QB/RB is doing. I would not be surprised if there are several other teams that never play at the same time either. The suggestion that the NFL is trying to screw the Jets to create a QB controversy is stupid.
I’d say he’s on pace to be #1, but that for now Simms still has a very firm grasp on the spot.
Despite the pretty huge difference between the their respective eras, their rate stats are shockingly close (Simms, Eli). Eli has a slight edge in passer rating, but that’s just because of his Comp% advantage, which is arguably the least important of passer rating’s component parts. Int% is almost identical, and Simms is actually a little ahead in Y/A. Certainly you could point to Eli’s postseason success as a mark in his favor, but Simms was no slouch in that department, either. AFAICT, the only important area in which Eli has been unquestionably superior is sack rate: he’s very good, Simms was actually bad.
Pretty much everything else you might consider helps the case for Simms:
- Era adjustment: This is the big one. You could demonstrate the magnitude of this difference any number of ways, but look at how their very similar raw stats have yielded very different kinds of leaderboard appearances.
– Passer Rating: Simms has 5 Top 10s, including a 3rd and two 4ths. Eli finished 7th last year and that’s it.
– Y/A: Simms w/ seven Top 10s, Eli has 3.
– Comp%: Simms has three Top 10s and two Top 5s, Eli finished 9th once (despite having moderately higher overall percentage)
– Int%: Simms has five Top 10s, including two 2nds; Eli finished 7th in '08.
– Holistic Comparison via 3rd Party: Phil Simms’ stats compare favorably with those of Troy Aikman in almost every area (with, again, the big exception of sack rate).
2) Teammates: Simms never had receiving options as good as Eli’s. Yes, there was Mark Bavaro, but even when the Giants were elite their WR corps ranged from mediocre to shitty. Simms had good O-Lines to work with, but so has Eli.
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Scheme: Even for their era, Simms’ Giants ran very boring, unimaginative offensive schemes. They weren’t exactly obsolete, but there was no new ground being broken, and always too much faith in the value of a RB who could get 3.5 yards per carry. The Simms-led Giants also did much more sitting on leads with the running game than modern teams do, which did a lot to depress Simms’ Yardage and TD totals (which are nonetheless pretty good).
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Cumulative Value: And, of course, Simms started a third again as many games as Eli has to date, while being (I hope I’ve shown) at least as efficient on a per play basis.
All that said, the trajectory of Eli’s career has been pointing up, and just a couple more seasons like last year’s would likely put him over the top in my mind.
Great analyses, VarlosZ. As someone who watched Simms’ career up close, I can’t really argue anything you’ve postulated. Simms was awful at avoiding sacks. He had no blind side vision/intuition/feel at all. That being said, with the year he was having in the 90/91 season before he got hurt I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the winning QB in XXV, which would have given him 2. His performance in XXI really turned the corner on the perception of his career. His teams beat some great teams, including Montana and the dynasty 49ers.
With all that, I’d still go Eli, even without any future success. The Simms Giants had a dominating defense. The current team is pretty darn good, but it’s not LT, Carson, Banks and co. I feel like Eli is called on to do more to win. It’s nice to be able to argue the point, in any case.
I’d say he’s at least even with Simms now, and on pace to leave Simms far behind.
If you correct for career length you have to throw out everything past 1987 for Simms. I wonder how the number of top 10s compare if only comparing the first 8 years of their careers?
I’m not convinced that all the rate stats are as close as you claim. I see you omitted TD% altogether, where Eli is pretty firmly ahead. You do mention sacks, which I mostly attribute to the QB (as opposed to OL) and I personally put a lot of stock in.
There’s also the fact that Simms only participated in every game of a season four times in his career, including his last (14th) year. I think the league went from 14 to 16 games during Phil’s career, but he never even played 14 games in a season before his first 16-game season. Eli hasn’t missed a start since his first, and that includes a second-degree separation in his throwing shoulder where ESPN proclaimed him out for at least a month.
Essentially it comes down to roughly equivalent except Eli is much more durable, has a noticeably higher completion percentage (which is Eli’s biggest weakness,) has a significant edge in TD%, and is sacked far less. Seems pretty clear to me.
Not so sure how much era adjustment helps Simms, who had trouble keeping his starting job on his own team.
Damn, it is nearly May - why hasn’t Rex Ryan predicted a Super Bowl win yet?
Yeah, definitely true that Eli is a lot more important to his team’s success than Simms ever was; it’s pretty much inconceivable that the modern Giants could make a deep playoff run with Eli sidelined by injury.
Simms would still come out a very slightly ahead for the most part, though I’m not sure that particular correction is fair to him. The years from '88 to ‘93 were his age 34-39 seasons, which we’d expect to represent a long decline phase, but they actually contained some of his best seasons. It’s an unusual career shape. I don’t know if it’s just a weird maturation process, or a measure of how much Simms’ stats were depressed by scheme/era in the first half of his career – or some combination of the two – but I don’t think we can just lop off the most productive part of his career before comparing the two players.
However, it’s true that my list of Top 10’s was a little misleading for the simple reason that Simms had 11 seasons as a starter to Eli’s 8.
Interesting. I left out TD% because I thought it was pretty much a wash. Basically, I figured that Eli’s advantage (4.7% to 4.3%) isn’t big enough to overcome the era adjustment for this stat: Simms was playing in an era when a good QB on a winning team stood a very good chance of throwing 15 TDs, which just doesn’t happen today. This is true, but apparently I failed to consider the rise of the short passing game, because the two eras are basically on par with each other in terms of TD%.
That said, I also don’t really care so much about TD% in general. YMMV.
Yep, durability is definitely a mark in Eli’s favor, though the fact remains that Simms started a lot more games than Eli has and should get credit for them. Don’t think Comp% helps Eli: that stat really is affected by era in a huge way. League average is now solidly above 60%, while for Simms it basically hovered between 54% and 56% except for an uptick to about 57.5% at the very end of his career; that eats up Eli’s whole advantage and then some.
Got occasionally benched when he was a newbie on a wretched team or an old man with a starting-caliber backup; not going to hold that against him too much.
As for the era, I think it helps him a ton, because if you take into account the magnitude of the change, Simms has BIG advantages in Y/A and Int%, which I’d argue are the two most important conventional stats, in addition to having played more games. I like Eli a lot, and I suspect that his best years are ahead of him, but so far he’s had a lot of underwhelming or worse seasons.
(Sorry for the response that’s broken into a million pieces.)
Considering that both teams play four night games, and are separated by two time zones, that’s not very surprising.
I won’t say there’s zero influence, but the schedule-making process is extremely complex, and there’s just too many other things involved, from getting the best games on national TV, to other uses for the stadiums, to giving everyone a Thursday game, to trying to even out travel burdens, and on and on, to allow much room for trying to hand-craft storylines.
I would not be stunned if they made an effort to put the Jacksonville game late in the Jets’ season, in case Tebow was going back as a starter. But anything more than that would be awfully hard to pull off.
Finally, the difference isn’t all that great: Jacksonville and Seattle are both good defenses they play late. Miami looks to be terrible and is a natural Tebow-storyline location … but both Miami games are early-season.
Just don’t see it.
The Bengals season opener is a Monday night game against the Ravens in Baltimore. Interesting way to start the year. Parts of the Bengals schedule are pretty tough this season, with four games against the Ravens and Steelers, games against the NFC East and the Broncos (Peyton is coming to Cincinnati! Yay!), but that’s balanced out by games against the Browns and the AFC West.
Apparently the Colts have informed Andrew Luck that he will be their pick. Of course it’s not official, but this is probably as close as it can get before draft day. Not sure of contracts are still going to be negotiated prior to the draft under the new CBA but the slotting system will largely render that question trivial.
The Bears have signed a pair of experienced backups at positions of need in the past couple of day. With the draft a week away I think this gives some insight into where the Bears won’t be investing in the first few rounds.
They added former 49ers OG and 2008 2nd round pick Chilo Rachal yesterday. A young guy with experience and some upside remaining. I found this PFF article from last offseason pretty interesting. They really liked his 2010 performance, especially in the run game where the Bears will probably be focused, and if the hype is to be believed he could be a guy who could make a leap under Tice’s tutelage.
Today they followed that up with the addition of 24 year old former Tampa OLB, also class of 2008, Geno Hayes. Hayes is a perfect fit for the Tampa 2 with great speed and ball skills, but he struggled mightily last season.
Both guys are young and had very good 2010 campaigns before regressing in year 3 and being benched last season. In essence they are the ideal “buy low” type players. If either guy gets to their 2010 levels of play the Bears are going to be much better than they were last year, if they are only as good as their 2011 performance then the Bears are better on the second string than they were last year.
Rachal could very well beat out either Chris Williams or Chris Spencer/Roberto Garza at the OG spots and Hayes should beat out Nick Roach on the strong side. If Briggs gets hurt he could shift to the weak side too. They are both certainly better than either Edwin Williams or Dom DiCicco were as 2011 second stringers.
While these are primarily depth moves with upside they probably indicate that the Bears are not likely looking at the interior of the O-Line or LB in the first 2 rounds of the draft. I think DeCastro and Kuechly are both going to be excellent players but there’s other areas that will have a much greater impact in the first round. I’m happy about these moves.
You keep thinking that. Chilo was absolutely horrendous this past year. That article was written well before Rachal lost his starting job, three horrible games into the 2011 season, to Adam Snyder, who himself isn’t any good. When Snyder got injured late in the season, there was a dramatic drop in line play until he returned. Cutler will still be running for his life on passing downs.
Here’s a great article about what goes into designing the NFL schedule.
How was he in 2010? Any explanation for the drop off?
Rachal was part of the Singletary-mandated, run-only O-line that couldn’t run it.:smack: He still showed some promise in the run game, but it just never came to fruition. He was always a liability on pass plays.
Everyone expects Tice to run the ball like crazy so the fit might not be too bad. Not sure how much of pass blocking, especially on the interior, is coachable and how much is talent but I suspect that any good run blocker can become a fair pass blocking OG. Granted having a competent OT next to you and a scheme that works is crucial, but when you aren’t tasked with taking on edge speed rushers he should have all the physical tools.
I don’t know about that. The Dolphins won 6 of their last 9 games after an admittedly horrific start last season, and were 6th in scoring defense and a not-horrible 20th in scoring.
Jim Brown is announcing the #4 pick for the Browns, which makes it slightly more likely to be Richardson I’d think, but he also announced a previous first rounder in years past, so maybe not.
Too bad it won’t be a certain offensive lineman from Troy University (3rd round, probably)
He feels good. I knew that he would now.
Any thoughts on the rumors that Asante Samuel could be heading to the Falcons or Jerome Simpson signing with the Vikings?
The Falcons retained Grimes this offseason so I’m not sure Samuel is a dire need and I’m not sure what their cap situation is or how Samuel fits in the scheme, but it’s interesting to see what Samuel will be worth with the Eagles having so few suitors and so little leverage.
Simpson to the Vikes makes a lot of sense. He’s suspended for the first 3 games which isn’t really that big of a deal for a rebuilding team like the Vikes. It’s not like those 3 games will be decisive, though with the Jags, Colts and 49ers on the schedule it was a opportunity for the Vikes to get off to a strong start. Of course that doesn’t mean they still won’t, since Simpson isn’t likely to be a workhorse. With Ponder’s suspect arm you wonder how well Simpson will fit into a west coast scheme. Anyways, Simpson is one more crazy athletic WR for the NFC North. The Bears better to sound in the defensive backfield this year.