In the Bears system the Sam and Mike have always been the interchangeable ones. when Urlacher was hurt Hillenmeyer moved over from the Sam and Roach has been listed as the backup for both Sam and Mike, while Briggs and Iwuh have tended to be listed only at Will.
In a traditional 4-3 it’s the MLB spot that can be a step slow, in the Tampa 2 none of the LB spots can really afford to be slow since they are expected to cover so much ground.
Bollocks! If you didn’t experience the lows of the Marion Campbell era, you can’t properly appreciate the highs of Andy Reid …
Actually, listening to lots of Philly fans, that’s not true at all … I swear some of these people would rather go 10-6 with Buddy Ryan than 12-4 with Reid.
I do suggest you look up Louie Giammona though. He’s a handy rejoinder whenever someone bitches about Reid keeping Reno Mahe or Chad Hall on the roster out of favoritism …
Quoted for truth.
Washington doesn’t just bring in free agents; they bring in new coaches, new systems, and superstars with egos. The only star players in this Eagle group are Aso and VY; one is a former NFL man of the year and the other one specifically chose to come here to be a backup instead of looking for a starting gig.
The far more apt comparison would be the Patriots in 2001, who did sign a scad of medium-quality free agents, chose for their willingness to fit into a system… and who did win a championship.
Adding Donte Stallworth, Wes Welker, Randy Moss, Adalius Thomas, Sammy Morris, Tory James, and Kyle Brady, and following that with an undefeated season, is pretty good. Other than Tom Brady, that’s basically the entire cast of the best offensive season of all time, plus the biggest name defensive free agent available.
You’d think those additions would have to be more disruptive than a couple of cornerbacks and a couple linemen. Which is not to say I think there’s any kind parallel between the two situations. It really just reinforces how ridiculous that year was for the Patriots.
I haven’t seen anything that says that is the case. The articles I’ve seen say they factor it in (and presumably count YAC as being at least somewhat less value than pure passing yards), not that they eliminate it entirely.
They don’t eliminate it, but they do consider it in the rating. Another article. They point out that an 80 yard TD on a screen is lesser rating than an 80 yard TD caught 70 yards downfield. It doesn’t eliminate totally, but shorter passes with higher YAC don’t rate as highly.
At least that’s how it appears now. The great unveiling is supposed to be Friday.
I’m still not quite sure how I feel about the Sabremetricsing of football that seems to be coming more in vogue, but by and large I welcome it. I think. It will be interesting to see how fans will react when these advanced stats either strengthen or conflict with our own perceptions.
I like it in general; I probably won’t like this stat, for several reasons.
The biggest is that it’s utterly opaque. When you try to agglomerate everything into one huge number, IMO you’re actually losing the ability to explain things. Receiver catch rate is a useful and easily understood metric. Football Outsiders’ defensive stats – defeats, stops, etc. – are useful and easily understood. When you try to combine umpteen different stats into one number, sometimes you actually taking away the ability to understand things.
For example, Ellis might want argue that Eli Manning’s passer rating does him a disservice because he does better in close games or key situations. Except QBR is useless to him, because it already factors in game situation. How much of a factor? Enough of one? Too much? Hell if we know – the formula is deeply complicated, and even passionate fans are not going to be able to figure it out. We’re supposed to take all their assumptions w/r/t the weight they place on various elements on faith.
Which is the other problem I have with this stat. It’s not something that has emerged out of and been proven valuable in the marketplace of ideas. It’s been formulated by a handful of people in Bristol who are now going to spend the next few months cramming it down our throats. And they’re likely not going to be open to improvement and revision. Even if Aaron Schatz or someone can make a definitive case that the thing could be improved with this or that tweak, ESPN won’t do it: They’re going to have the damn thing copyrighted, and I’m going to bet they put a higher value on it remaining their intellectual property and (God help us) feeding Trent Dilfer’s ego than they do on actually having it be accurate/meaningful/useful.
Yeah, I would hesitate to include any ESPN venture in with the serious analysts’ efforts. I think the idea that football could be “sabermetricized” is a dangerous one, anyway. Baseball is a series of encounters that are always basically the same. Football’s a total madhouse comparatively. An actually objective measure of a quarterback’s effectiveness would basically have nothing to do with yards or touchdowns, which is still the source material for QBR. It would only measure what play was called, where the ball went, and how well it was delivered. Anything beyond that is a measure of somebody else.
I’m definitely all for funny new stats and people recording everything that can be observed. But it’s a long, long way from there to a point where you can say that a single number is even very loosely descriptive of one quarterback’s value compared to another. Even if that isn’t your goal, it’s just a hard sport to quantify. I’m completely at a loss to imagine how something like an effective play-fake could be taken into account, but you only have to watch one quarter of football to see how fundamental that sort of thing is.
And even if somebody else does find a way to measure this stuff, given that ESPN et al “experts” are still regularly deriding basic principles of objectivity in baseball, it doesn’t seem especially likely that the QBR revolution is going to change the way they cover the sport, especially, like Hamlet says, where the mainstream narratives are challenged, which is when advanced stats really become meaningful.
Saying this new stat is an improvement over the old passer rating isn’t much of a complement. I hope no other sports outlet adopts it.
In 49erland, there is finally some positivity, CB Carlos Rodgers and center Jonathan Goodwin*. There are still more areas of need, but it was a steady stream out of town until recently.
An unsubstantiated rumor has the 49ers trying to shop Taylor Mays. I was stoked when we drafted him, but the dude has no nose for the ball. He couldn’t smell pigskin opening a bag of pork rinds. He would make a better linebacker than safety.
I herd Colin Cowherd predict the 49ers would either inexplicably get 9 to 11 wins, or purposefully tank the season to get Luck. I might abandon the team if Harbaugh pulled that bullshit, no matter how good Luck is.
*: former Saints center, now with SF, vs former 49ers nose tackle, now with NOLA, in the first preseason game.
I am so stealing this.
Fuck you, Donte Whitner!
:mad:
Teehee.
I expect we will be bedfellows in ineptitude in the AFCN again this season. Who knows though? The Browns look to be on the uptick with Holmgren holding the reins and McCoy looks to be a gamer…the Bengals have a lot of young talent in the likes of AJ Green, Jordan Shipley, Jermaine Gresham, Jerome Simpson, Andy Dalton…its going to come down to defense in this division.
Yeah I have no illusions about the Browns being good, but I’d bet you they’re not going to be the catastrophe that will be the Bengals this year.
I’m going to the opening day game against the Bengals in Cleveland so I can enjoy some fun, winning football before the wheels fall off.
Why would you think the Bengals would be a catastrophe this season? They won the division in 2009, sweeping it…had a horrid 2010 campaign WITH Carson Palmer at the helm, went 4-12…the defense underachieved…but the Bengals haven’t been horrible in either their draft this season or their free agency, despite being Warren Sapped by Donte Whitner. They have a lot of young talent. They return everyone on defense except Jonathon Joseph, who will be replaced by Nate Clements, who doesn’t suck. We shored up our offensive line, which we needed to do…we have awesome talent at skill positions and resigned Cedric Benson, who when not suspended is a stud (and I still say, like you with the pimping of Jerome Harrison, look out for Bernard Scott this year in a WCO system)…I am not going to predict how well they will do but I do think they will be competitive, which is all I can ask for when your franchise QB, who in my mind was never a good leader, quits on you and you are going to war with a rookie QB. All accounts of his (Andy Dalton’s, aka “Ginger”) progress are extremely positive. Its going to come down to the effectiveness of the lines on both sides of the ball for them…if the revamped oline protects (and I think Andre Smith is going to have a monster year at RT) and the Dline penetrates like it did at the end of last season with the younger guys like Carlos Dunlap, Geno Atkins and Michael Johnson, we could have a fighting chance at something.
How is the Eagles line looking without Patterson? I think he may be done.
They are now 5-16 in there last 21 games. I think there is far more evidence that the bengals were a bad team that had a fluky run for half a season (Only one of their wins in 2009 was actually by more than 10) than they are a good team that underachieved badly over the last year plus.
They are very thin right now. They had to sign four players at that spot in the last day or so just to fill out the bodies needed to hold practice. Part of that was because Cullen Jenkins couldn’t practice, part because two other DTs got hurt (one seriously, Victor Abiamiri, the world’s first man of glass if ever there was one).
But, that said, they’re actually still pretty deep at that spot. Mike Patterson is a good player and he’ll be missed, but he’s primarily good against the run, which is something that Antonio Dixon does better anyway. Jenkins will provide elite pass rush from inside (something the Eagles haven’t had since Corey Simon). They have a few young guys who are really promising (DT Cedric Thornton has been very impressive so far). Both Landri and Hargrove have starting experience and Hargrove in particular has good pass rush ability if he keeps himself out of trouble.
I’d much rather have Patterson, but the Eagles aren’t in trouble at that spot yet. Now if Jenkins goes down (again), they’ll have a hard time making the scheme work. They’re all about maximum pressure on the QB from the front four. Now, maybe the secondary is good enough to allow the front four to pressure anyway, but we’ll see. Has to happen though. But you could do worse than a rotation of Jenkins, Dixon, Trevor Laws (high energy guy who can provide pressure from inside), Thornton, and one of either Hargrove or Landri potentially.
Btw, Patterson most definitely isn’t done. He may not even need surgery. The most likely outcome is he misses the season, but there’s no reason he can’t come back fully from this. Rooting for him, he’s supposedly a very good person.
The Patterson injury underscores something that will absolutely cripple this Eagles team at some point, and why I won’t be getting excited about the team’s potential until it makes the Super Bowl - of their main guys on offense and defense - Vick, McCoy, Maclin, D Jackson, Asomugha, Samuel, Jenkins, T. Cole, J. Babin, and J. Peters, only Maclin and Babin started all 16 games last year. Granted, Cole was benched in a meaningless Dallas game week 17, but it’s alarming. And Maclin is currently recovering from some mystery illness that won’t allow him to practice at full speed and has been lingering since March.
Asomugha has missed 6 games in 8 NFL seasons. I wouldn’t worry about him too much.
I’m very surprised by the Jets letting Jerrico Cotchery go. They’re going to start Burress, and have a bunch of no-names as backups (or possibly the 37 yo Derrick Mason). Unless Shonn Greene can go back to who he was in 2009, I don’t see how this team doesn’t go backwards this year.