dolfan_101
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wow what $#&^^% company! :rolleyes2:
Football Outsiders: NFL's Most Underrated/Overrated
- Thread starter riley513
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wow what $#&^^% company! :rolleyes2:
where's th'fish
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People on this side don't get Football Outsiders. I don't bother posting their stuff here anymore.
Now, it seems to me this is a group that delves deep into stats and numerical formulas and such to describe a player's performance on some sort of objective standard...I get the premise and maybe it's an interesting venture, but football doesn't work like baseball...Ben Jarvis Green Ellis is an example of an underrated player...really...the guy wouldn't even crack the 2 deep on half the teams in the league...the Patriots have a very clear philosophy...build around Brady. BJGE, Danny Woodhead, Kevin Faulk, etc are decent enough guys and the Patriots might even win it all with them this year, but let's not get carried away...According to their stat, DYAR, he's the 3rd most valuable RB in the league...what?
DYAR is cummulative, and speaks to how much contribution a player made above (or below) an average, from-the-bench player.
DVOA measures how valuable you are per play. This is a more telling stat to see valuable players within limited use.
Previous experience. They've had unpopular stances before (claiming the Patriots weren't great, barely even good, in those early Superbowl years; forecasting the Chargers as division leaders in 2004; predicting KC as division champ last year, etc). They're not afraid to say a player is better or worse than popular wisdom would tell you. And they're open about which teams each individual writer roots for, and try to stay away from writing about their own teams.
It's not above debate, that's for sure. But everything points to them being objective.
Clipse
mediocrity sucks
Retarded, that's what those stats are. How the **** can you make a stat that determines how valuable or how much contribution a player makes. It's dumb. But it is coming from BSPN so it should be expected obviously.
According to Pro Football Focus, Welker had 14, and Marshall had 13. He also was 10th worst in the league in drop percentage (drops/targets); Welker was right below him. Wayne doesn't figure, and neither does Terrell Owens. These numbers are for the 2011 season.
From 2008 through 2011, Marshall ranks as the 9th worst in passes dropped, with 11.28% (considering his 2011 number is 13.13%, he was worse in 2011 than in previous years).
Where do your numbers come from?
Ok..and BJGE was #2 in the entire NFL in DVOA
Now, would you honestly sit here and tell me you would take that guy over:
Adrian Peterson
Chris Johnson
Steven Jackson
Michael Turner
Frank Gore
Ray Rice
among others?
IMO, he's in an offense that allows for a production per play from the RB to be abnormally high...you replace him with a truly elite RB and it's not even close. However, put BJGE on the Vikings and Toby Gerhart is the starter.
First of all, it doesn't come from ESPN. It's published there, but the data is collected and analyzed by Football Outsiders.
Second of all, you're welcome to read their explanation of their methods. But in brief:
DVOA takes every play and calculate average outcomes for every situation, position, etc. For instance (and this is a completely made up stat) say a RB earns, on average, 3.5 yards on 1st and 10. So, when measuring an individual performance, you compare it to the average, and say how much better or worse someone did. If runningback X ran for 7 yards on first down, he earns (I believe) 100% DVOA, since he is 100% better than the average in that situation. And so on.
So when you tally it up throughout the season, you get a number that estimates how valuable that player was.
Perhaps you have a better solution?
Among RBs.
I believe Green-Ellis benefits from the Patriots scheme. They switched to a 2-TE base formation over the last two seasons, and their running game has shot up because of it. But I don't believe he's an elite back. He's a product of the system.
Ben Roethlisberger is another good example. He was #2 in DVOA for QBs, but I wouldn't pick him above Rivers or Rodgers if I was building a team. He's a product of that system.
Stats are not the end-all be-all, and I would never argue as such. Common sense, observation, and understanding of football is very much required to make an educated guess. But stats are *also* required to make an educated guess. They don't define ultimately, but they DO help.
dolfan_101
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Then how can you say ESPN is objective when they look past all this plus the numbers when it comes to VD and BM.
This is one of the reason dropped passes are not an official NFL stat. It is too subjective.
I got my numbers from here... http://stats.washingtonpost.com/fb/leaders.asp?type=Receiving&range=NFL&rank=232
Fearthephins34
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take a look at the league leaders in drops every year. last year some notables were, desean jackson, miles austin, wes welker, steve smith (x2), mike williams, and sanatonio holmes. there are some elite recievers on that list. does that make them overrated? When judging if a player is overrated or not you cant look at 1 year of stats. yes brandon had a dissapointing year stat wise last year. but overall talent wise hes still one of the best in the league and one of the most dangerous. just a year ago he set the record for most catches in a game. not to mention hes also one of the best blocking wideouts in the game today.
As for Vontae i guess it depends how you value him. if you see if as an elite WR then yes, he probably is overrated, I don't think hes quite there yet. But i don't see him as that so to me hes not overrated. overrating and underrating a player is all based on how YOU view them and then its opinion after that.
If either of those were legitimate stats, Football Outsiders wouldn't keep adjusting their parameters as often as they do.
Once again, this is published on ESPN, but developed *outside* ESPN.
I don't see how they're looking past everything else when writing this article. To the naked eye Marshall didn't have a great year last year.