Section126
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Okay...let's try this again...
"50 receivers are better."
NAME THEM.
I am waiting.
"50 receivers are better."
NAME THEM.
I am waiting.
I will say without question that Chris Chambers had a pretty bad season, but calling him the worst wide receiver in the league is irresponsible.
I agree and stats dont reveal the perfect storm of an inept offensive coordinator, below average line, and poor to mediocre QB he had. Having said that he shopuld be compared to other number one receivers who's job is to stretch the field. I think its pointless comparing him to possession or slot receivers. As for the number 1 category, unfortunately, he probably is near the bottom though I still dont think he's the worst. He's definitiely not the worst in ability but in terms of ability potential to actual performance he may be the worst number 1
Antonio Bryant underperformed this year. The Falcons or Bucs dont have one receiver I would trade for Chambers, Berrian is a one year wonder, the Vikings have noone. I dont think Eric Parker is any better though he probably had a better year, same with Kennison, The Jags and Titans dont have receivers that you can categorically say are better than Chambers, The Ravens Clayton is having a breakout year but will it continue for his career and there is noone on the Patriots I would take over Chambers so Chambers is somewhere around 20-24 in terms of number 1 receivers from an eyeball test
1) A quarterback will generally throw to an open receiver.
2) A quarterback who insists on throwing will generally throw to his primary receiver even if he is covered.
3) The primary receiver will generally have the best defenive player(s) assigned to him.
1 is true.
2 is not necessarily true and shouldn't be. That situation usually results in a checkdown.
3 is not at all true. Most teams line up a CB on either side of the field and they guard whoever shows up across from them.
However, it is far more likely that a good quarterback will succeed without receivers than a good wide receiver will succeed without a quarterback.
No reason to think that. Furthermore, every "good" wide receiver has put up numbers that blow Chambers out of the water.
The absolute best thing a quarterback can do is hit his receiver in stride. In recent memory Chris Chambers has been hit in stride twice - both passes from Sage Rosenfels and both 70+ yard touchdowns. Hit a receiver in stride as a good quarterback can do and his yards per catch will improve.
That's just silly, my friend. What about the second Jets game where Harrington threw Chambers a deep ball that went right through his hands in stride? Was that because the ball was too wet and Chambers was afraid of it? Come on. That's just the most recent example I can think of.
I should mention again that simply because a ball is caught does not mean it was well thrown.
And the opposite is true. Just because a ball isn't caught does not mean that it was poorly thrown.
I watched both Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison drop well-thrown passes this past weekend. They were open and had to make minimal adjustments to the thrown ball. Hey, where do they rank on your DPAR list? My point here is that even the best players will make horrible mistakes
They're really good! Why? Because they catch 63% and 64% of the passes thrown to them, and they run for more yards when they make these catches. If they caught 39% of the passes thrown in their direction, they wouldn't be as good.
Though some points may be arguable and the differences between them are negligible at times (one position for CIN and IND receivers, for example) it stands to reason that these statistics are not perfect. One cannot seriously make the case that they would rather have Arnaz Battle than Antonio Bryant or D.J. Hackett rather than Darrell Jackson. Yet, that's what the statistics suggest. This occurs with enough frequency to warrant skepticism.
It's fine to be skeptical, but it's also fine to be skeptical in the other direction and point out that maybe D.J. Hackett is, in fact, better than Darrell Jackson.
Yes, McMichael has been underutilized as well. I thought this was about Chambers, though.
BURN.
However, it is generally considered here that offensive lines do not significantly impact the wide receivers. That said, when you mention skipped passes, you fail to differentiate between a good quarterback and an awful one. All receivers have to deal with poorly thrown passes. However, the DEGREE to which receivers have to deal with these things depends on the quarterback. You cannot seriously be suggesting that Joey Harrington throws the same number - even roughly the same number - of bad passes as does Peyton Manning or Carson Palmer.
Of course they throw fewer.
Here's the thing, though. The difference in poorly-thrown passes between Harrington and Manning/Palmer does not even come close to reaching the difference between Chambers' level of performance and Marvin Harrison or Chad Jackson's.
The other thing? This has happened for every Dolphin quarterback. Again, you can point to Chambers "good" year last year, but he wasn't very good. Yes, he was selected to the Pro Bowl. Why? Because he had 166 throws in his direction! If he'd been thrown the ball 85 times, he would have had 40 catches and 700 yards and never sniffed the Pro Bowl.
Yes, he did score 11 touchdowns, and those are important. But does he have a "nose for the end zone" or is it just random? Did he lose that nose for the end zone this year? Did he forget it at home two years ago?
I can't believe that this is not obvious to somebody who works this closely with statistics. The quarterback has, by far, the most impact on his own statistics as well as the most impact on receiver statistics. Look at Marvin Harrison's substantial increase - in Peyton Manning's first year, he had less than 1000 yards and less than 10 touchdowns; in the eight seasons since then, he has had at least 1100 yards and at least 10 touchdowns. Odd, no? Houshmandzadeh was an unknown of no real value until Carson Palmer came along. Roy Williams suddenly had a massive increase in yards and receptions in 2006 - all from the marginal but not insignificant addition of Jon Kitna.
You're attributing quarterback performance to this when the likely reason is wide receiver aging patterns. Compare their performance to wide receivers who played with the same quarterback for the first five years of their career and you'll likely find little to no difference unless you hand-pick the guys, as you did above.
I did and the board just ATE MY POST.
That was so uncool. I only got to 47, though. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on Bertrand Berrian and Patrick Crayton, or else it would have been 50.
In short, please check out the WR metrics page at http://www.footballoutsiders.com/wr.php.
There, you'll find the 81 wide receivers who have performed better than Chris Chambers this year and been the recipient of 50 attempts or more.
Some of them play with awful quarterbacks, some great ones; some run slants and curls, others go deep.
They all played better than Chris Chambers.
I did and the board just ATE MY POST.
That was so uncool. I only got to 47, though. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on Bertrand Berrian and Patrick Crayton, or else it would have been 50.
In short, please check out the WR metrics page at http://www.footballoutsiders.com/wr.php.
There, you'll find the 81 wide receivers who have performed better than Chris Chambers this year and been the recipient of 50 attempts or more.
Some of them play with awful quarterbacks, some great ones; some run slants and curls, others go deep.
They all played better than Chris Chambers.
I did and the board just ATE MY POST.
That was so uncool. I only got to 47, though. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on Bertrand Berrian and Patrick Crayton, or else it would have been 50.
In short, please check out the WR metrics page at http://www.footballoutsiders.com/wr.php.
There, you'll find the 81 wide receivers who have performed better than Chris Chambers this year and been the recipient of 50 attempts or more.
Some of them play with awful quarterbacks, some great ones; some run slants and curls, others go deep.
They all played better than Chris Chambers.
I know he's a tight end, but he's got to be better than Jeremy Stevens at least. :evil:
TO has dropped a whole lot of passes this year, but I always considered Glenn a better WR anyway.
I think Chambers was never really the same after that concussion in Denver a few years ago. He's still kind of loopy...
:dolphins:
I now had a second post eaten. No fun.
Yes, he has, and that's why I don't say he's the best receiver. He's flawed (as are all players), but I still think he has a lot of untapped potential and is nowhere near the worst receiver in football.flintsilver, you bring up some valid points that explain away some of the problems Chambers experienced, but nowhere near enough to cover all of them. Your defenses of Chambers would be reasonable if they were the case in a single season, or even two seasons. But he's had trouble catching the ball his whole career.
That depends on the defensive scheme, but I've noticed more often than not the primary receiver gets the primary cornerback. The more pronounced the different in talent between the two cornerbacks, the more often you'll see the matchup differences.Our game charting project's found that #1 CBs don't often get matched up against #1 WRs. There are exceptions -- Champ Bailey, noticeably -- but it's a relatively minor point anyway.
Yes, he had better, considering he doesn't get many catchable balls thrown his way (especially not deep passes). I'm not making excuses for that play or any other. I had mentioned that lots of receivers - especially elite receivers - make noticeable errors like that.With the game against the Jets, you said "In recent memory Chris Chambers has been hit in stride twice". I would call a game two weeks ago recent memory, much more so than last season. As for it being a deep pass, if Chambers is really a good wide receiver who's supposed to be running these deep routes, well, he better catch those.
I fail to see how you refuted those arguments. You keep bringing up Jeff Blake. Blake has a career rating of 78.0, which is higher than the QB rating of six of the quarterbacks Chambers has played with. (In 2000, Blake had a QB rating of 82.7.) Of the other two (Griese and Culpepper) both were below the 78.0 mark as Dolphins (they accounted for nine games in total). I should note that Griese and Culpepper threw seven touchdowns between them as Dolphins; Chambers caught four of them.You're making the same arguments I've refuted in my initial piece. You can blame one quarterback for Chris Chambers performance. It's understandable. You can't, though, blame six. At some point, Chambers is the problem, not them.
Gage had poor statistics even as an afterthought. You can't say what would've happened if Justin Gage were thrown to 166 times because if he were, he would be a primary receiver. He would've been covered more, for one. Still, Gage was thrown to 55 times - multiply his stats by three, and you've got 93 catches, 1039 yards, and 6 touchdowns. This would've put him at 5th in the NFC in catches, 10th in yards, and 15th in touchdowns. Hardly Pro Bowl rankings. This doesn't even consider that statistics obviously do not scale because Gage wasn't a primary receiver.They're your statistics, not mine, so I don't have to accept them as ground truth.
Of course. I'm also not familiar with the concepts of variance or sample size, which is why I take them as ground truth.
Oh wait -- nope.
Your mock argument that the Pro Bowl voters should have taken Justin Gage instead of Chris Chambers is interesting. Gage had a worse QB, Kyle Orton, throwing to him. If he had gotten 166 throws, he probably would've made the Pro Bowl.
Making stuff up? It's actually quite simple. My point is that for Gus Frerotte and Peyton Manning to hit the same number of cardboard-cutout receivers, Frerotte would have to throw 32 more passes because he has terrible accuracy.Times targeted - or "receiver attempts - is a stupid statistic because it does not necessarily correlate with catchable balls. Using a rough estimate (QB completion percentage) 166 passes from Gus Frerotte is equivalent to 132 from Peyton Manning.
Now you're just flat out making up stuff. Sorry. I cut out here.
It doesn't correlate with catchable balls, no, but it doesn't correlate with horribly-run routes, either. You're attributing all of the blame to Harrington, or Fiedler, or any of the other quarterbacks. I'm attributing it to one person, not six. Occam's Razor.
That depends on the quarterback, and I'm sticking with that one. I cannot fathom how you could say that Roy Williams did not improve because he had a better quarterback this year or that Marty Booker dropped off for some reason other than bad quarterbacking.As for the aging patterns bit, again, do the research. Compare wide receivers who played with two QBs to wide receivers who played with one. They'll grow at roughly the same rate.
I haven't said the words "Jeff Blake" (since my initial piece, so "keep bringing up" is kinda strange) or used DPAR as my only explanation.
I'm sorry, but Occam's Razor does fit.
You point out that Chambers has been the Dolphins' leading receiver and I point out that's because he gets the ball more than anyone else, by far. I point out that no one else who gets the ball that much, across the league, puts up remotely similar catch percentages. This costs the Dolphins yards, points, and eventually, games. You say it's because of the six quarterbacks. I point out similar quarterbacks working with similar wide receivers don't see those WRs put up the same numbers, and that it might be the one wide receiver's fault and not the six QB's. Occam's Razor.