It’s getting to be fantasy football time, and as it happens I’m in two leagues for reasonable amounts of money where keepers are used. One league is an auction where it costs dollars to keep players. The other is a snake draft where you lose the pick where the player was taken, and if the player was undrafted you lose your pick in the last round.
It so happens that I have DeSean Jackson in the 7th and Sidney Rice in the 16th in that league. And in trying to figure out who I want to keep, the question is coming up, how good can Rice be this year? Last year he had a terrific season. In standard point scoring (6/TD, 1/10 yds), he was the 14th highest scoring receiver with 1,200 yards and 6 TDs through six games. It was his third season, he’s primed to break out as an elite fantasy (and NFL) player, right?
I think the answer to this doesn’t lie in how good he is, but how good Brett Favre can and will be again this year. And there-in lies the problem. Last year, one of the major reasons Rice had such a terrific season is because Favre had his best season in years. It’s arguable he had his best season ever, though I do think ’95 was better.
How much better was it? Last season, Favre was:
363/531, 68.4%, 4,202 yds, 33 TD (6.2%) and 7 INT (1.3%) with 7.9 YPA
Over the past ten years prior to last season, his average numbers were:
340/552, 61.6%, 3,832 yds, 25 TD (4.5%) and 19 INT (3.5%) with 6.9 YPA
And if you take his best numbers from any of those ten seasons, his numbers are:
66.5%, 4,155 yds, 32 TD (6.8%) and 15 INT (2.8%) with 7.8 YPA
That’s a combo of his best from ’07 and ’03.
Now, while the Vikes offense is likely to be very good again next year – assuming Favre can continue to play at a high level – any smart betting man has to assume there’s going to be a regression here. Last year’s numbers weren’t simply better than what Favre’s typically done the last few years…they were significantly better. It’s almost impossible to imagine him repeating those numbers. This, especially in light of both the fact that he’ll be 41 and that the Saints gave somewhat of a blueprint of how to pound him off his game.
As such, we also need to expect Rice to take a step back. At some point I may look at what happens to an emerging receiver and what his numbers look like when his QB has a terrific season, and then regresses to the mean the following season. But it simply makes sense that if Favre pulls back, so will Rice.
To improve upon his numbers, Rice will not only have to contend with a QB likely to perform below what Favre did last season, he’ll also be competing with the fact that there is one other young up-and-coming player and two established veterans around him that are likely to take opportunities. Percy Harvin played exceptionally well as a rookie and should be more prominent in the passing game his second season. And Schiancoe – while maybe not likely to improve upon his 11 TDs – is going to perform, while Berrian and his $40something million contract is going to get his fair share of balls thrown his way as well.
I expect the Vikings offense to play well again this year. However, I don’t buy the people saying Rice will improve. I think it’s far more likely he’ll regress. His only real shot in my opinion is to improve his TD numbers. And that could happen…move three of Schiancoe’s TDs to Rice and it’ll make up for 100 – 200 in lost yardage. But if Favre looks much more human with say 4,000 yards, 27 TDs and 14 INTs (still well above his average from the last ten years), plus Harvin improves and plays a more prominent role, I think Rice will have significant difficulty even just matching last year’s performance.
As for my FFL where I need to choose between Rice and DeSean? I moved Rice to a guy who let me trade my first pick in the 4th and last pick in the 5th for his first pick in the 3rd and last pick in the 4th. Makes the decision very easy for me, and I’ll let someone else worry about wondering why Rice isn’t scoring at the top of the league every week this season.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
How Good Will Sidney Rice and the Vikes Offense Be?
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Hell Week, with Donavan McNabb
Here's something interesting, from the Washington Post:Donovan McNabb's 'Hell Week' gives Redskins' offense a chance to get in sync
I never knew McNabb was one of "those" guys. There are a few NFL players who are/were famous for their offseason conditioning routines. How hard they worked to keep themselves ready. And these guys are largely huge stars, and players of great longevity: Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, Ray Lewis, guys like that. Nolan Ryan, in baseball.
Donovan McNabb's "Hell Week" is scheduled to get underway bright and early Monday morning in Arizona. ... McNabb invited the Redskins' wide receivers, tight ends and running backs to Arizona to take part in his regular offseason workout program. It's the same opportunity he offered in the past few years to his former teammates in Philadelphia. Wide receivers Devin Thomas, Santana Moss and Malcolm Kelly are among those expected to participate. McNabb calls it "Hell Week" because of the demanding nature of his workouts, and also because of the extreme summertime heat.
...
The Redskins' players were expected to land in Phoenix on Sunday with an itinerary waiting for them. The week was expected to begin with an early wake-up call and the players reporting each morning to Fischer Sports, the 20,000-square foot workout facility where McNabb does most of his offseason training. There, Brett Fischer, McNabb's trainer, will lead the group through workouts and exercises nearly identical to the ones the quarterback does during the offseason.
...
"For them, I think it's an eye-opener what we're doing," said Fischer, whose résumé lists him as a physical therapist, an athletic trainer and a strength-and-conditioning specialist. "I think it's an eye opener for them, comparing themselves with their quarterback, with how hard he's working out here. To me, it's him telling them, 'Hey, I'm taking this thing seriously to the next level. Let's go to the next level.' " ... "People, when they come in here and they see what he does, they're shocked," Fischer says.
...
After a rest, McNabb summons the players to an area high school field in the late afternoon, where they work on routes. They also will assemble for seven-on-seven drills, against other athletes trained by Fischer, including New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis. ... After the workouts, McNabb and his teammates head to a movie or dinner. The key, they say, is just being around each other as much as possible.
...
The annual week was a staple of McNabb's offseason routine with the Eagles, and it brought him closer to former teammates such as L.J. Smith, Jason Avant, Hank Baskett and Lorenzo Booker.
("Exceptionally" hard physical work is sort of a nebulous concept when applied to an NFL player. Don't they all prepare themselves exceptionally hard? Well sure, compared to me. I can barely carry the kid upstairs without getting short of breath. But supposedly some guys stand out even from the body of NFL players, in terms of how hard they train. For example, there were a ton of anecdotes about some young receiver or DB showing up to run with Jerry Rice, and never coming back for day 2.)
I never knew McNabb was one of those guys who worked exceptionally hard to prepare himself physically. Somehow that tidbit had not leaked out to national fandom.
And then on top of that, to run essentially a passing camp for your team, every year: that's pretty amazing. Lots of QBs are talked about as "leaders": Manning, Brady et al. But who the hell does that? Another tidbit that had not leaked out to national fandom. Maybe Pheagles fans knew about it, but it had not made it to national attention.
And that all by itself is interesting. McNabb has always been a somewhat controversial figure in the NFL; people have always disagreed about exactly how good he is, even before Chris' examination of McNabb's Hall pass.
And it's usually been true that people closest to the game, players and ex-coaches and ex-scouts, seem to respect him more than media types and statheads and fans. Stuff like this may be part of the reason why.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Steven Jackson's offseason
What have you done on your Summer vacation? You probably think you've had a fun and exciting Summer vacation. I think you've done nothing. Nothing!
Jackson jumps headfirst into Rams shark tank
Montana
Matt Hinton, writing on Rivals.com, brings us this:Every so often, a mass underage drinking bust at a Notre Dame party turns up a handful of Irish football players and other athletes. Sometimes those athletes have famous last names. So the Indiana State Excise Police set their sights at the top of the genetic totem pole this morning, nabbing one Nate "Yes That Montana" Montana and seven teammates among a cast of dozens
Cops swept up a bunch of college-aged kids (about 45 of them) at an off-campus party in South Bend, and not just off-campus but school is out of session too; and more than two dozen of them were Notre Dame student-athletes, including 8 football players. One of the football players was Joe Montana's son Nate.
My first impulse about this is summed up by one of the commenters on the Rivals site, posting as "chereemcglade":OMG!! College kids drinking, who has ever heard of such a terrible thing!
(That was only the second-best comment on the article, the best being from the guy who swears he thought Hannah Montana was one of Joe's kids.)
This is not something that needs to have any impact on Nate Montana's career, as far as I can see. The only reason I am posting this, and I mean the only reason, is so I can include the pic that accompanied the article:
OMG. Does he look like his dad under that helmet, or what? I got a chill when I saw that.
I would love for him to do well enough that he not only gets to start during his Notre Dame career, but also makes it to the NFL. It would be awesome to see a young Montana under center in the league again. (Hmm, Brian Kelly is now his coach.)
Not that I mean to add any extra pressure. Just getting a scholarship to play football at Notre Dame, and the chance to wear his dad's old number at the alma mater, is a terrific acomplishment. Good luck to the kid.
(By the way there's a younger brother Nick, who's going to be a freshman at Washington this upcoming season. Some of the reports I've seen on this are mixing up Nick and Nate.)
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
A History of S&C programs
Under the heading of "stuff I meant to post a week and a half ago" comes this. John D. Lukacs writes on the 4-letter dot com, “Many college football dynasties have roots in strength training.”Programs decades in the making
A great story, featuring such characters as Bob Devaney, PT Barnum, and Ara Parseghian. Meet Father Bernard Lange, Boyd Epley, Buddy Morris, Brad Roll, and Mike Gittleson. Go read it.
Boyd Epley is universally credited for his seminal role in creating the phenomenon of the strength and conditioning program in college football – and deservedly so. The first full-time paid strength coach in history, Epley is also arguably the single most important individual in the history of strength and conditioning in college athletics. ... literally lifted strength and conditioning – and all those who followed in his footsteps – out of the shadows and into the year-round spotlight that is the millennial, media-saturated, modern incarnation of college football.
...
In the opinion of Buddy Morris [at Pittsburgh], one of the most respected strength coaches in the business and an icon revered by former players, the thinking of old-school coaches and the myths concerning strength and conditioning could not have been more wrong. The weight room – not the film room, not the recruiting trail and not the huddle – was where preparation takes place and where championships were really won.
"If you look at the calendar year, 65 to 67 percent of your time is spent on preparation," Morris said, "and only about 3 to 5 percent on actual game time, the rest being other responsibilities, so if you don't enjoy the process, you're in the wrong sport."
Morris, like Epley decades ago, is on to something. Examples of both sustained and mini-dynasties in college football that have roots in strength training lore abound.
That percentage Buddy Morris gives above calls to mind what the Bronco's S&C coach said in A Few Seconds of Panic. As Fatsis relates it, the coach told him, “70% of your job is in here.”
70%? Could that be true? It's a side of sports that fans don't see at all, have almost no knowledge of. And it can make or break your team.
John Harbaugh first made his mark on the Ravens, within weeks of joining the team in January, with the offseason lifting program. I read on a message board recently that the Ravens had previously been a machine-based team, and Harbaugh had it all thrown out and replaced with free weights. I don't know if that is true; but that offseason there were quotes from him saying that the offseason program was going well: “weights are flying around.” Previously the team had lifted “by seniority,” whatever that means. Harbaugh changed it so they were lifting by position group – you can see how that would be competitive, guys lifting with their peers. There were also quotes from players about how Harbaugh was a little crazy, and “a strong dude” – he would lift with them sometimes. After Flacco’s first season, Harbaugh talked about how important it was to get Flacco into the offseason weight program, get more strength esp in his lower body.
Point being, here's a young coach who was hired by a team known primarily for its physicality, and for its lack of talent/execution in the passing game. And the first thing he goes after is the strength & conditioning program. The #1 priority. Some of that undoubtedly had to do with the timing of when he was hired: the offseason program was about to begin, and you can only start where you are. But does some of it have to do with how important S&C is? Remember Harbaugh was at Michigan as a child, when his father was an asst coach there; and around the program as a young man when his brother played there. And Mike Gittleson was there. Harbaugh must have absorbed lessons about the importance of the strength & conditioning system to the total football program, at a young age.
(You might wonder who Harbaugh hired to coach S&C when he came to the Ravens. The answer is, Bob Rogucki and John “Mother” Dunn. I know nothing at all about them. You can listen to them talk training here.)
Anecdotes about S&C run all thru sports, when the talk is about great teams and great players. Remember people used to talk about how Walter Payton ran in The Sand in the offseason. Paul Westhead’s basketball teams at Loyola Marymount used to run conditioning sprints on a sand hill. Those were supposed to be killer workouts; the point was that the Marymount players would still be running full speed late in the second half, when other teams had hit the wall.
I'm a Terps basketball fan, have been for a long time. I remember one year they lost a late-season game to rival Virginia, and the TV color guy (who was an ex-coach, it might have even been Terry Holland) described it as a game the Cavaliers won in the offseason in the weight room. In a later game, Maryland was bounced from the postseason by a St Johns team that simply out-physicaled them. Gary hired his ex-player Kurtis Shultz to run the S&C program for the Terps. Kurtis had been, shall we say, a power player on Gary's earliest Terp teams. A big powerful guy, not a guy with a lot of moves, an effort player, really a walking foul. He had gone on to be a S&C coach for 8 years, at nearby Loyola College and Johns Hopkins. He also worked with Ray Lewis some, as a personal trainer. Schultz coached with the Terps for ~3 years – and the Terps won the National Championship in 2002. Now, obviously Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter and Stevie Blake and Chris Wilcox et al had more to do with that than anyone else. But did an improved S&C program play a role? It almost had to, didn't it? Esp when you think about those particular players. Dixon and Blake were skinny, actually looked like Dickensian orphans. But they were wiry strong. Lonny was supposed to be too soft & pudgy to play in the ACC. He was credited with utterly transforming his body from his Freshman to his Junior season. And so forth.
Schultz reaped some professional reward. Marvin Lewis tabbed him to be an asst S&C coach on Lewis' first Bengals coaching staff. It was a pay cut, but “The NFL is a once in a lifetime shot,” the top of the world in the training business. Schultz moved on to be the head guy at Minnesota (I think under Mike Tice), before being pushed out when Brad Childress brought in a whole new staff. Schultz landed on Gruden's Tampa staff as an assistant. Raheem Morris later promoted him to be the head guy.
We've mentioned football, basketball. Obviously baseball has its own S&C culture. I can barely even imagine how central S&C must be to a hockey team. Even golf has been permeated with S&C, and you can thank Tiger Woods. Before Tiger, the conventional wisdom was that weight lifting would mess up your golf swing. But Tiger trained hard, and he forced the rest of the tour to train hard to stay in the game. Maybe that's a bit of an overstatement; but there's no doubt that Tiger trained hard.
What if the S&C program is the single most important thing your favorite team does? What if it's more important than whether they run a West Coast Offense, or a 3-4 D, or any of the other tactical considerations we pay all our attention to? Do you know who the S&C coaches are, of your favorite team? What kind of training do they use with their players?
Lukacs has a related little piece:Follow these rules … or else
More on the importance of the S&C coach from Pat Forde, who writes:
At Florida, strength coach Mickey Marotti runs his weight room like a Marine Corps base and has inspirational quotes from military legends and leaders such as Winston Churchill adorning the walls, is a stickler for uniform behavior, not to mention uniforms. One of Marotti's rules is that no one is allowed to train in his weight room wearing gear featuring the logo of another team, college or professional.Strength coaches doing heavy lifting
Bruce Feldman has a little related piece, ranking the Top 10 training facilities, for ESPN Insiders only.
The fact that Notre Dame strength and conditioning coach Paul Longo has an office, and that said office sits in a fitness complex that features more than 250 pieces of weight-training equipment, a 50-meter sprint track and a 45-yard artificial turf field, tells you what strength coaches mean to the modern college football program.
"It used to be that it almost was a boutique thing if you had a strength coach, a luxury," head coach Brian Kelly said. "It's now become a leadership position. The strength and conditioning coordinator is on parallel with the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator."
...
Because of NCAA rules, the strength coach spends more time in contact with players than anyone else on staff. Although the head coach and position coaches are limited in their dealings with players during the offseason, strength coaches have significantly greater access year-round.
...
With such a long list of responsibilities, strength coordinators now are paid like topflight assistants at most power programs. ... "After the head coach, the top three people in your program are the strength coach, the strength coach and the strength coach," said Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich. "Because of the 20-hour rule [players can participate in football-related activities for a maximum of 20 hours per week during the season], that person quickly moves to the top of the food chain. They're the closest person to the head coach. It's almost like an associate head coach."
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The Patriots From 1-82
Okay, to begin with I didn't know there was such a thing as ESPN Boston. I am fairly nauseated by the concept. I don't know how many other ESPN [insert city name]s there are. Suffice to say that not all of the major sports markets are covered.
But this isn't about that.
On the ESPN Boston site Mike Weiss ranked the New England Patriot roster in importance from 1-82. I thought it was a pretty cool idea even if I don't have much of an opinion of Stephen Gostkowski at #23 versus Taylor Price at #42.
A couple of things cross my mind though.
First, if Wes Welker is truly the Patriots' 2nd most important player, the team could be in trouble. Welker might be back by the beginning of the season. On the other hand he might hit the PUP and be out for the first 6 weeks. I'm sure Patriot fans will be relieved that I really don't believe that Wes Welker is their 2nd most important player.
The other thing that crosses my mind - and maybe this is a Duh! moment - is that you can really tell the prospects of a team by looking at their top 10 players. Maybe it isn't 10, maybe it is 8 or 12 but you get the point. It's great to have a special teams stud or a great punter but if either of those guys are among your 10 (or 20) most important players, your team is probably in big trouble.
So that Pat's top ten?Tom Brady
Agreed he is their most important player. I kind of wonder if he is still their best though.Wes Welker
If not Brady then Wilfork. It is hard to imagine this defense being very effective with Wilfork sidelined.
Jerod Mayo
Vince WilforkRandy Moss
I get what Weiss is arguing. These guys probably are a bit high on production alone, particularly Vollmer. New England needs for each of these players to become stars if they are to move back into the elite.
Brandon Meriweather
Sebastian VollmerLogan Mankins
Same thing with Butler. He had an outstanding rookie year. The team really needs for him to lock down that #1 CB spot.
Darius ButlerTully Banta-Cain
Okay.
So is this a top ten that can win a Super Bowl? I really doubt it. There are a handful of really good players but then there is another handful all of whom have to take big steps to put the team over the top. Looking at the next ten only Julian Edelman and 1st rounder Devin McCourty are young enough to also be in that category of players who might also develop, and if the team relies on Edelman it would mean that Welker is out, so no real help there.
Still, kind of a cool idea. I'm sure by midnight Chris will be hammering out the Ravens from 1-82. Hint, Chris: Flacco is #1.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Greatness, The Keltner List, and Yes, Donovan McNabb
Chris stuck a bit of a stick in the hornets nest with his recent series on Donovan McNabb. I don't know that this reflects anything particularly controversial that he wrote, but rather that everyone has their own definition of greatness and their own beliefs on what the Hall of Fame should be.
I've gone back and forth on the issue and on Chris' posts, down to considering discussing his articles on a point-by-point basis. Writing nothing was also an option. This is an interesting topic though, and since it seems to generate widespread opinions I'm going to go ahead and hammer out a few thoughts that I've been mulling over the last few days.
Statistics in football are funny things. Of the major American team sports, football is the one that least lends itself to statistical analysis. Every player on the field has a different role, and every player on the field is to a great extent dependent on every other player on the field. Statistics can identify some things. If a running back rushes for 2000 yards he had a great year, but we really didn't need statistics to tell us that. If a running back rushes for 200 yards? Well he still might have had a great year, depending on his other contributions.
What about quarterbacks? 4000 yards is a great season, right? Well, maybe. Did you know that Lynn Dickey once passed for 4000 yards in a season? I didn't. Bill Kenney, Jay Schroeder, Brian Sipe, Jon Kitna (twice), Neil Lomax, Steve Beurlein and Don Majkowski each had 4000 yard passing seasons. Two quarterbacks have passed for 5000 yards in a season, in one of those seasons the team went 14-2 and made it to the Super Bowl, in the other the team went 8-8.
What about passing touchdowns? 15 times in NFL history a quarterback has passed for 35 touchdowns in a season. All of those teams were good, even very good, however only two of them won league championships or Super Bowls*
Okay so my point, which took longer for me to make than I expected or than was probably necessary is that football statistics aren't particularly meaningful when evaluating the quality of a team or a player. Yes, the best teams/players will have better statistics than the worst ones but we don't need statistics to identify the differences.
Greatness is usually self-evident. We know it when we see it. In the 2008 Super Bowl David Tyree had 3 catches for 43 yards and a TD. A nice game from a secondary receiver. What the statistics don't tell us is that one of those catches - the most important catch - was the single greatest or most improbable reception in Super Bowl history. Everyone who saw it instantly knew it was great and no one needed to run to the box score later to confirm what their eyes had seen.
Now Donovan McNabb. Is he a great quarterback? This is a very tough question. He has done great things for sure. He has had great games, even great seasons. He has led his team deep into the playoffs repeatedly and he has done it with teams that lacked the firepower that the greatest teams of the era had. No one confuses the Eagle defense with the Raven or Steeler or Buccaneer or Bear defenses that were great this last decade, no one confuses the offenses with the Ram or Colt or Patriot or Saint offenses. The Eagle accomplishments despite these shortcomings are impressive. So are these shortcomings McNabb's undoing? As you will see, I think they are not.
So the Keltner List. I'm sure many people have devised similar checklists for football but I am too lazy to find one I like so we'll just go ahead and adapt this one.
So is McNabb a Hall of Famer? I'm actually kind of suprised that there is much of a debate. If you look at any one component of his career you wouldn't think so, but he has accumulated accomplishments in all components of his career, and it is that accumulation that puts him over the top. We haven't even discussed his playoff passing accomplishments. He is currently 11th all-time in playoff passing yardage. He will probably move to 7th with one more game. He is tied for 9th in playoff passing touchdowns. He is 4 career TDs behind Peyton and Brady, and while he may not catch either, I think the perception is that they are both much more accomplished playoff quarterbacks. The numbers seem to disagree.
Donovan McNabb was never regarded as the best player in football.
Most years, yes. If nothing else he was certainly the most important player on his team for the last decade.
No, he was probably never considered the best quarterback in football. That said though, from about 2001 - 2005 if a team was starting a team from scratch and needed a quarterback, McNabb would have rated just behind Peyton and Brady. Maybe behind Carson Palmer too at the end of that stretch.
Yes. From 2000 - 2009 his team went to the playoffs 8 times, to the Conference Championship 5 times and to the Super Bowl once.
Yes.
Can't answer this one for fairly obvious reasons. Assuming that Peyton, Favre, Brady and Warner get elected, McNabb would be next up.
Yes. Half of his comparables listed at PFR are Hall of Famers. Assuming McNabb continues to build his resume, his comparables should only improve.
Yes.
Yes.
Cannot answer.
Once again, cannot answer this. He never won the MVP. Tough to find the voting history. My gut says that he never got a lot of votes.
Okay, here we go. 19 quarterbacks in NFL history have 6 Pro Bowl selections (or more). Other than active players (Favre and Peyton) every player from this group is in the Hall of Fame. If we go down to 5 Pro Bowl selections there are 5 more players; Tom Brady and 4 Hall of Famers.**
This seems self-evident. Yes.
Not really. He was drafted as one of the "new" quarterbacks back in the misguided days when multithreat quarterbacks became a brief fad. I suppose it is meaningful that only Culpepper and McNabb succeeded from that group.
Yes.
One other point where I disagree with Chris. I don't believe he needs to win a Super Bowl to go to the Hall of Fame. While that can make the difference with more marginal players, McNabb isn't marginal. I have little doubt that he will be elected.
*George Blanda also accomplished this for Houston in 1961 but I am reluctant to include results from the AFL.. Houston did win the league championship that year
**Likewise these lists do not include 3 players who were primarily AFL players. These guys got no respect. John Hadl and Jack Kemp each went to 6+ Pro Bowls with the AFL/NFL and neither are in the Hall.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Sports Love
It's not football, but the Lebron announcement is big news across sports. Check out the open letter from Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert.
Read more...Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The QB - Does McNabb Belong in the Hall of Fame, or the Hall of Very Good?
I ended the last article with a brief look at McNabb and what may or may not be a Hall of Fame career. It’s a question that I believe deserves a significant look. McNabb has been a great quarterback through his 11 years thus far, but is it worthy of Hall of Fame consideration?
The answer to this is pretty complicated, and begins with the caveat that his career isn’t over yet, so there’s no way to make a definitive argument one way or the other today. If McNabb blows up for 4,500 yards, 30 TDs and 15 INTs per season the next three years and wins two Superbowls, he’s almost certainly a lock to get in. If he implodes next year and washes out of the game completely without adding anything to what he’s done thus far, he’s likely not to be considered.
For purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that he plays another 3-5 years, averaging around 3,200 yards, 20 TDs and 10 INTs per year, which are slightly lower than his historic numbers. Tack on another 500 rushing yards and 5-10 rushing TDs, and McNabb would round out his career with numbers that look something like this:
3,900 / 6,550 … 59% completion rate … 45,500 yards, 300 TDs, 140 INTs
3,750 rush yds, 35 rush TDs, 5.7 YPC
This puts him at 6.9 YPA and an 87.0 QB rating for his career. I’m simply not going to assume anything about post-season play because that’s way too hard to predict. But the above numbers assume basically four more years at the annual production levels I noted, and those are I believe pretty fair assumptions.
These numbers would give him the following places for overall career passing leaders:
#6 overall completions
#8 overall attempts
#8 overall yards
t- #5 overall passing TDs
#60 overall INTs (!!!)
And he’d be somewhere in the top 20 in passer rating, though this is difficult to predict given that 13 of the 17 people currently in front of him are still active. I’ve already shown QB rating is improving dramatically, and he’s actually not likely at all to hold any of these places for very long.
There-in lays the problem. While it’s incredibly impressive that McNabb will likely finish top ten in all the major passing statistical categories; given the improvement of QB play over the recent years, we should probably expect him to fall out of the top ten no less than a decade after his retirement. There are several QBs playing today that would certainly pass these numbers just by playing 10 more years (though not all of them will).
From here, the discussion could diverge in several directions. So I’m going to step back and examine the arguments for why he should and why he shouldn’t be considered a legitimate HoF candidate.
The argument for induction
A good portion of the argument for his induction has already been made, as a top ten finisher in the most common statistical categories. He’ll finish with better numbers than many modern age Hall of Famers like Montana, Kelly, Aikman and Young. And despite the fact that at least a reasonable portion of this can be said to be due to improvements in QB play and the passing game over the last decade, the reality is he’s been playing at a high level for an exceptionally long time. Each of the four I just mentioned played 8-11 years at a very high level. McNabb already has ten years of high level play under his belt (stripping his rookie year which wasn’t bad for a rookie save a terrible completion rate), and will likely get another few on top of it.
Despite what I believe many people think, longevity has to be a fairly critical consideration. Playing five years and averaging 3,200 yards, 20 TDs and 10 INTs is decent but certainly nothing special in the NFL. Playing ten years at that level is pretty good. Being able to do it for fifteen years? Well, one of the major reasons that McNabb will finish his career top ten in those categories is precisely because not many players can play for that long at that high a level.
It’s almost the Emmitt Smith argument. Emmitt was a great runner, but he wasn’t a dominator for the vast majority of his career. What he was, was a great runner for longer than pretty much anyone had ever been a great runner. No one else has ever run for 1,000+ yards in 11 separate seasons, and it’s possible no one ever will. And at the end of McNabb’s career, it’s likely he will have thrown for over 3,000 yards ten or more times; a rarity for a reason. There’s a legitimate argument to make that a player being great for a very long time deserves HoF consideration just as much as a player who was exceptional for a moderate amount of time.
We also must consider some of the more subjective measures…ones that aren’t monitored just by statistics. The reality is that McNabb is good at winning games. It’s partly a function of playing for a great organization with a great coach and solid surrounding cast. But he’s a big part of why they win games. McNabb carries a .651 regular season winning percentage, is 9-7 in the playoffs, has been to five Conference Championship games and to the Superbowl once. Only a very select few quarterbacks can make such a claim. Marino can’t. Moon can’t. Fouts can’t. His track record of winning must be a strong consideration.
In addition, McNabb has played a majority of his career with almost no help at receiver. Names like Chad Lewis, Todd Pinkston and James Thrash do not particularly strike fear into the hearts of DBs. The one season McNabb did have a legitimately great threat at receiver – ’04 with TO – he had by far his best season, completing 64% of his passes for nearly 3,900 yards with a better than 3:1 TD:INT ratio. Translate those numbers over even a five year stretch of his career, and this may not even be a discussion. Assume he'd been drafted one year earlier, and gone #1 overall to Indi, playing his entire career with Marvin Harrsion / Reggie Wayne / Dallas Clark, and we may instead be discussing where he belongs in the discussion of the greatest QBs ever to play the game.
One last strong consideration must also be that he’s one of the best rushing QBs of all time. He likely finishes with 3,500 – 4,000 rushing yards and over 30 rushing TDs at between 5.5 and 6 YPA. These numbers are untouched by a vast majority of other QBs that also qualify as prolific passers. Cunningham and Young can boast such claims, as can Steve McNair. Elway has solid rushing overall numbers but more because of a higher number of attempts than most other QBs get, his YPA don’t compare. Other than those few, almost no other QB that has been as good of a rusher has been such a capable passer.
The argument against induction
While McNabb’s overall numbers are impressive, one thing we must do is attempt to normalize them in some fashion. Getting into the HoF is not about how great you are in comparison with the other players that are in the Hall. It’s how great you are in comparison with the players you played with. In the email discussion, Patrick had this to say, which echoes my sentiments exactly:There can only be so many HoF players at a position at a time. Right now we have Peyton and Brady and Favre for sure .... Warner is very likely. Brees is building credentials and a few others may be on the way up. Is there room for McNabb in that group? I don't know...
Since there really isn’t a great way to make a strong, objective argument in how to compare players of certain times without using statistics, I’ve attempted to develop a framework for comparing McNabb to other QBs during his tenure, and compare that with current and future Hall of Famers as well as guys with impressive stats that can either be considered on the margin or just “Hall of Very Good” candidates vs. their respective co-workers.
Using the data from the first two in this series, I ranked the players according to anything I thought could be considered a major stat category. This involved a lot of sorting and cut/paste rankings for all the different categories. This allowed me to get a data set that showed McNabb’s 11 seasons, and where he ranked in all of them. I had this for all the QBs in my data set. Then I could average what McNabb and his peers were ranked across their careers.
For example, in the data set below, McNabb’s “Average of Yards” rank is 14.0. This means that across his career, he was on average 14th in total passing yards by season.
I then compared this against four different groups of other passers. The first I called “Old HoF,” which I defined as the HoF QBs in my data that played a majority of their careers prior to the five yard contact rule change. The second is “New HoF,” the HoF QBs playing a majority of their career after the rule change. The third is “Future HoF,” QBs that I believe are likely to make it into the HoF. The last is “Marginal,” which was an arbitrary group. These are QBs that have amassed impressive stats over the course of their careers, and may at some point be Hall candidates, but I don’t think will ever make it. The names in each group are as follows:
Old HoF: Jurgenson, Unitas, Tarkenton, Namath, Staubach, Griese and Bradshaw
New HoF: Fouts, Kelly, Marino, Young, Montana, Moon, Aikman and Elway
Future HoF: P Manning, Brady, Warner, Brees and Favre
Marginal: D Bledsoe, McNair, Testaverde, Esiason, Simms, Cunningham and Brad Johnson
Higher numbers are worse for all “Average” categories
A few things jump out from these numbers. The first has to be how impressive McNabb’s INT rank and INT % rank are vs. the competition. Part of this I’m sure is due to his lower completion percentage. If the ball’s not getting near the receiver’s reach often, it’s probably not in the DB’s reach either. But this doesn’t fully explain how exceptional he’s been at not throwing INTs. Even in the playoffs, where he’s gained reputation with some as a choker, he’s thrown 24 TDs to only 17 INTs.
The second fully supports the argument that McNabb really shouldn’t be a legitimate Hall candidate. Other than his INT rank, his other rankings don’t stand up well to any of the HoF’er categories, and really only compare to the Marginal categories. For the count categories, it’s only relevant to compare him to the Future HoF category. These are his peers; his direct competition in getting into the Hall as the players who played a majority of their careers at the same time he played his. And his numbers are low vs. that group, despite being fairly impressive overall. He of course still has time to add to these numbers, but so do those other players on this list (Warner’s the exception). Overall, he statistically doesn’t stack up to his competition.
Conclusion???
The question is complex, and I don’t think Jim, Patrick or I could come to a definitive answer. There are pretty powerful arguments on both sides, and this leads to a fence-straddling unlike most I’ve encountered in football arguments.
My general sense is that there’s one final factor that will wind up determining if McNabb makes it or not. I believe the final determinant of whether or not he makes it will be predicated on whether or not he wins a Superbowl. If he does, I think it puts him over the top. Six Conference Championship games, two Superbowls, one Lombardy, with his pedigree, I think would be difficult to deny him entry.
However, if he doesn’t win that Superbowl, I feel like McNabb is the sort of marginal player who will likely spend several years on the list of candidates to be considered, but will always be passed over for a more deserving candidate.
So ends the quarterback / passing game analysis series, at least for now. I’ll hang onto the data and may dig in some more in the future for some other interesting tid-bits. Thanks to those that read this whole thing…I know it’s been a lot. And thanks especially to Patrick and Jim who really shaped these articles significantly with the discussion we’ve had over the past few days.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The QB - The Evolution of the Passers
As mentioned in this earlier post, one thing I wanted to look at was how much quarterback play has improved recently. I decided to take a look at the last several decades, because what I wasn’t sure of was whether recent play has spiked – i.e. QBs are improving at an accelerated rate – or if it’s just part of an overall trend.
It's worth calling out that this is probably as much of a statement about how much passing offenses have evolved over the last few decades as it is telling how much the QB has evolved. The rules of the game have changed over the years, and a couple of key innovations have happened which opened up passing offenses. Those deserve to be discussed a bit before getting into the statistics of the players themselves.
The Rules of the Game Have Changed
Much as I dislike the Steelers, there’s a great site set up by Steeler fans that lays out some (all?) of the major rule changes and when they occurred. A summary of the evolution of the rules governing the passing game:
Between 1974 and 1978, the NFL adopted rules to dramatically open up the pass. Prior to ’74, it was virtually anything goes against WRs. The physical corners like Night Train Lane and Dick LeBeau ruled the roost, able to knock receivers off their route with near impunity. In 1974, the NFL began restricting the contact DBs could have with receivers down the field. In 1977, defenders were limited to only contacting the receiver once down the field.
And in 1978, we got the big rule change that ushered in what many people refer to as the modern era of the passing game. The new rule established that defenders could not come in contact with receivers beyond five yards past the line of scrimmage. This opened up the long passing game, and over the next ten years, the QBs in this data segment threw 15% more passes per game than they had in the nearly 2 decades back to 1960. And that’s just QBs with over 200 attempts. Attempts per QB per game have continued to increase ever since, although not at the same rate.
Note the shift in the trend line (6-order polynomial) between ’78 and ’88. Two interesting outliers bear mentioning. I started by looking at total attempts, but 1982 stood out as a massive outlier, which I realized was due to the strike-shortened season. I normalized this by simply adjusting to look at passes per QB per game, which also helped me strip out the bias in the NFL moving from 14 to 16 games in a season. Then, in 1987 there’s an unnatural dip in attempts per game. Removing that outlier actually adjusts the decade from a 15% increase in per game attempts to 17% per game. Between ’79 and ’88 there’s no season with less than 24 att/game except ’87, at 21.3 per game. It’s an outlier for which I can’t seem to find a cause, but clearly stands out.
The rules continued to evolve in the mid-‘90s to help the passing game flourish. In ’95, QBs gained the ability to use a microphone to receive communications from the sideline. In ’96, they re-emphasized the five yard downfield contact rule. In ’01, protection of the passer began being emphasized even more, allowing QBs to worry less about where and when they’d be hit; and in ’06, defenders were restricted from hitting passers below the knee. It’s known as the “Tom Brady rule” but in reality it was put in place more due to Carson Palmer’s knee injury in the post-season loss to the Steelers where Palmer – coming off a season where he could have been MVP if not for Peyton’s amazing year – went down very early in the game. Somewhere in the mid-‘00s as well saw an additional re-emphasis of the five yards downfield contact rule, though I can’t find exactly when that happened.
The Passing Game has Seen at Least Two Major Innovations
The first was Don Air Coryell’s (RIP) offensive innovation with the Chargers between ’78 and ’83. Leading Dan Fouts to a Hall of Fame career, Coryell emphasized an attack on every part of the field. His contributions led to two things that have redefined offensive positions in the league. One was changing the tight end position from a blocker little used as a receiver into a down-field attacker. The second was the evolution of the running back position in the creation of the H-back (for passing game purposes as a pass blocker) and using the RB as a receiver. He’s credited with evolving offenses, and forcing defensive evolution to defend his passing attack, forever changing the landscape of the league.
The second was Bill Walsh’s development of the West Coast Offense in the mid-‘80s. This emphasized short, precise passing in order to later open up defenses to allow for longer plays. Montana worked this system to near perfection, completing 64% of his passes for 7.8 YPA with 190 TDs (5.5%) to 91 INTs (2.6%) between ’83 and ’90. He went 84-24 regular and 11-5 post season in that stretch, including three Superbowl wins. It of course helps to have Jerry Rice as your side-kick through much of that.
The WCO and “Air Coryell” offenses are seen in some form across virtually the entire NFL today. Some props should be given to “Mad Mike Martz” and his crazy-effective passing offense run with the Rams (a derivation of the Air Coryell offense). But this largely didn’t really innovate or change the dynamics of the league in near the fashion of Coryell’s and Walsh’s offensive advancements.
And with this, we come to the core of how much better quarterback play has been in the last few years. I started with the hypothesis that QB play over the last decade has been improving at an accelerating rate. The data seem to support this, though not to the extent to which I thought. The below graph shows the median and maximum QB rating for the top 25 passers, by season.
This only graphs back to the mid-‘70s, when 25 QBs qualified. Once again, I added a 6-order polynomial trend line for the median QB rating to show how it’s trended over the years. You can see the increase trending in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. The trend then flattens from the mid-‘80s to the mid-to-late-‘90s, increasing just a little bit. In the late ‘90s, the increase begins to accelerate again, with a recent somewhat sharp increase in the rate of improvement.
The early increase tracks nicely with the five yard contact rule change, and the Walsh/Coryell innovations. The more recent one, however, does not. In the past five years, median QB rating has increased about 5% faster than median QB rating over a five year stretch a decade ago. But where we see real change is in the extremes. The first graph below shows the number of QBs with a > 100 and > 90 QB rating by season. The second graph shows the number with a < 80 QB rating by season (remember, only taking the top 25 QBs by season).
Once again, 6-order polynomial trend lines were drawn to show emerging trends of QBs with higher than 90 and lower than 80 ratings.
The decline of QBs rated under 80 has been fairly steady since 1975. But it’s also been a sharp decline. Given the trending of this data, it’s possible that 10-15 years from now the NFL will see 25 passers with over 200 attempts that have a greater than 80 QB rating.
On the flip side, there’s been a sharp increase recently in the number of QBs with a greater than 90 QB rating. I left pre-’76 in this graph more for illustrative purposes, to show that there were QBs that were capable of throwing 200+ times for some very impressive ratings. But over the last decade, a significant increase in the number of QBs with > 90 QB rating has been seen. The past ten years have seen 85% more QBs with a 90+ QB rating than the previous ten years. While QBs with a 100+ QB rating have increased in that time, there aren’t enough instances to truly see how this is trending.
In conclusion, QB play has almost certainly improved a fair amount over the past several years, including an impressive improvement over the last few years. Almost certainly some portion of this is due to improved passing offense overall…better receivers, better offenses, more favorable rules. But I also think the passers themselves have gotten better at the game in that time.
What that means is we are not able to look at “overall” numbers to come to any sort of conclusion as to who the best is, or even how good a player is. This leads to the McNabb discussion. McNabb will almost certainly finish his career in the top ten in completions, attempts, passing yards and TDs; and in an amazing achievement, will likely not crack the top 50 in INTs thrown. But we can’t evaluate him based on his overall numbers, given how much QB play and passing offenses are improving. We will need to look at where he stands vs. other QBs in his tenure, and compare him to where the HoF QBs stood vs. QBs in their own time.
Thus laying the foundation for the third post of the series, which I will get into tomorrow. In the mean-time, feel free to provide any thoughts or feedback on this below.
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