dave mcbride

I know the number don’t show it, but I actually watch the games. While Jacobs is a good back, Barkley strikes me as twice as talented as him, and I don’t even think it’s debatable. Which tells me … that money should be spent on the offensive line.

Worst rule in the history of baseball. And I say this as a Yankees fan.

I’d be much more interested in DVOA rankings. Easy enough to put that material together.

Also a fumbling machine -- 11 fumbles on 247 total touches over his career and 3 times on 36 touches last season (a sky-high 8.3 percent rate). In comparison, Diggs has 8 total fumbles on 734 touches and Beasley has 6 fumbles on 567 touches. Newsflash: coaches care a LOT about fumbling and it's one of those semi-hidden stats that can drive decisions.

?? - The Bills sacked Cousins four times and had 10 total hits on the QB!

Well, Aaron Donald is getting $31.7 milion per year (https://overthecap.com/player/aaron-donald/2952), at least on paper, so it's not crazy. Donald is better, but only by a little bit. Chris Jones is for my money the second best DT in the league. He's unblockable.

The Royals have had 4 winning seasons following the strike year of 1994. They have also had 6 seasons with 100 or more losses. That is truly terrible. The Pirates are in the same boat - 4 winning seasons since 1993. I grew up a Pirates fan and they are the only team I have ever abandoned. That's because it came out that during all of the losing, the Pirates were in fact making a lot of money despite ownership's claims that they were losing money. I found that unforgiveable. They were literally profitable and weren't willing to spend anything to try and build a contender. So I became a Yankees fan (partly because I lived in NYC by this point because my son has been a big Yankees fan since he was little).

Now we know that all of Harty's fumbles/muffs came on ST plays, we can do the math: 9 fumbles on 193 touches (152 returns plus 41 fair catches: https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/player-stat/punt-return-faircatches?season_id=20). That's a 4.7 percent fumble rate, which is awfully high. It basically works to a fumble on a special teams play ever couple of games (assuming 4-5 kickoff opportunities and 5 or punt return opportunities).

Total fumbles -- both those lost and those recovered. Once a fumble occurs, it is essentially a crapshoot -- close to a 50/50 flip of the coin -- with regard to who recovers. No, he was hurt in New Orleans on Thanksgiving night.

It was really all about the presence or absence of Bob Sanders for that defense. He played in only four games that season, and when he came back for the playoff run they transformed immediately into an elite defense because he was THAT good at that particular point in his career. He played in all of the playoff games, and in those games, they gave up 8, 6, 27, and 10 points (the Pats had an INT return for a TD to get 7 points in the AFC championship game, and their offense scored 27; the Bear had a kickoff return for a TD in the SB and otherwise only scored 10 points). Over the course of the playoffs, the defense allowed an average of 12.75 points. Injuries were the real reason there defense was so bad. When the key defensive player got healthy, they became a lot better. The next season (2007), he was the AP Defensive Player of the Year and the Colts defense was ranked #1 overall.

He had 143 returns over the course of 2019-2021 -- 74 punt returns and 69 kickoff returns. Just an fyi. He also fumbled 8 times over those three seasons, although it's not clear whether they came on ST plays or scrimmage plays. He had 77 touches from scrimmage between 2019-2021. So, 8 fumbles on 220 total touches from 2019-2021, which is 3.6 percent. That's very high. In 2022, he had 1 fumble on 11 total touches (ST and from scrimmage). That's a 9 percent fumble rate, although the sample size is way too low. Over the four seasons, he's fumbled at a 3.9 percent rate (9 fumbles over 231 touches). Not good. Over the course of his career, McKenzie has fumbled 10 times on 296 total touches, which is 3.37 percent. However, if you take out his first season for Denver, in which he fumbled a ridiculous 6 times on 29 total touches (24 returns and 5 catches/runs), he has fumbled 4 times on 267 touches -- a respectable 1.4 percent rate. A couple of takeaways: McKenzie's propensity to fumble is greatly exaggerated if you take away that rookie season in Denver, and Harty truly is a fumbling machine.

This is an awesome thread idea. I think that you should do this every year going forward, and you have to do it right on the cusp of training camp. That's because you really only get a true picture of someone over the course of an offseason. Other award ideas: angriest and most reactive poster during gameday threads. Requirement: at least five blow-ups over bad plays (fire whoever, cut his ass, so-and-so sucks, this effing team is on course for 8-9, etc. etc.) *on average* during the gameday threads in which said poster participates. There are a LOT of competitive candidates for this one! Also: poster who is most gullible about click-bait news stories that put forth trade/internal team controversy etc. rumors based on virtually nothing and who compulsively starts threads about them. Anyway, if you do this long enough, we could even have a preseason fantasy league draft of posters based on the awards scheme that gets handed down in late July. The points are then calculated a year later, bearing in mind that the stretch run performance (i.e., the offseason) matters a lot in the ultimate evaluation. I also think it only works if you get to be the sole judge (which means you can't get awards yourself, but you make up for that fact by getting to play god).

Thought you'd appreciate this quote from David Ignatius in a Washington Post column from the other day: "An Israeli friend remarked the other day that optimists and pessimists die the same way, but optimists live better." Embrace that line! https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/18/ukraine-war-west-gloom/

I think you're wrong. The TN passing game got a lot better after he arrived. It's a fact. And playing under Adam Gase does no QB favors whose name isn't Payton Manning. Also, he was objectively an above-average passer his final two years in Miami, with an adjusted passer rating above league average both years. Derrick Henry is a very good RB. I'm not arguing that. But he doesn't win you games. Competent-to-good QB play does, and despite the misinformed mockery of Tannehill that has populated this board for years upon years, he's objectively a pretty good QB. He's not as good as Josh Allen, obviously, but he's probably the best QB TN has had in team history (and I include McNair). The only comparable season to Tannehill's best seasons was McNair's MVP season in 2003. And when I see TN vs the Bills over the Henry years, I assume that we can beat them without Tannehill (Mariota, etc.) Henry but struggle against Tannehill, who is a great play action passer (a genuine skill). In 2018 and 2019, the Bills played Mariota twice. They won 13-12 and 14-7. In 2020 and 2021 vs Tannehill, they lost 42-16 and 34-31. In other words, the scoreboard talks, and buls**t walks.

Good points. I think Tannehill is a better than average QB when healthy, but that's JMO. The larger issue, which you raise, is that if RBs want to change things, they should be lobbying the league to get rid of the newer rules protecting QBs and allowing receivers to run wild because of increased enforcement of defensive holding/interference. That's why they're less valuable now. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, the league-average passer rating, which focuses on passing game efficiency, was in the mid 70s (it was 74 in 1981), and now it's in the high 80s. The vast improvement in passing game efficiency across the league made passing far more valuable because it produces a lot more yards per play on average (7 as opposed to around 4.3). The chance of those changes happening, of course, are nil.

Like it or not, Ryan Tannehill and the TN passing game have been far more instrumental to TN's success than Henry. With a healthy Tannehill and AJ Brown, the Titans went 12-5 in 2021 and 30-13 overall with Tannehill as as starter between 2019 and 2021. With an unhealthy Tannehill, no AJ Brown, and a healthy and productive Henry, they went 7-10 in 2022 (and 1-4 in the games Tannehill was out). Prior to Tannehill's arrival, they were perennially slightly above average even with Henry, going 9-7 three straight years until canning Marriota six games into the 2019 season. In 2019, Tannehill became the starter after six games and went 7-3 with a 117.5 rating (Marriota had gone 2-4). Tannehill also got them to the conference championship game that year. Over the next two seasons, they went 23-10, and he had a great season in 2021 (106.5 rating). Point is, when the passing game improved, TN got better. When the passing game got worse, the TN running game (which was strong in 2022) could not save the day. The passing game rules the NFL.

It's not that they have nothing left in the tank; it's that it's easier to find replacements who perform at roughly the same level. College football is crawling with competent RBs, and the position is a lot less complex than, say, WR, where you have to develop a sophisticated route tree. Because of that, vet receivers have value even if they've lost a tenth of a second on their 40 time. With the RB position, you either have "vision" or you don't. There's always another fresh guy out there who can come in and do what most starting RBs can do. Also, the ones who can run routes well and function as good weapons in the passing game -- McCaffrey, Kamara, Le'veon Bell -- did in fact get paid. McCaffrey's contract turned out to be an albatross for Carolina because of the fact that he was oft-injured (during his first contract!) and didn't help them win. McCaffrey had one of the best RB season of any running back in the past dozen years in 2019 (2,392 yards, 19 TDs, 5.6 yards per touch/target). Yet they were a miserable team, going 5-11. Bell's contract was bad; he had ridiculous personal issues and ended up being banged up. He was an excellent receiver, however. And bear in mind that the Steelers replaced Bell with James Connor, who had 1471 yards from scrimmage and 13 TDs in his first season. The offense overall was excellent (4th in yards, 6th in points) despite being 31st in both rushing yards and rushing attempts. Kamara had a great first season under that contract (1688 yards; 21 TDs; 5.7 yards per touch/target) but declined a bit in 2021 and 2022. The league rewards the passing game.

He was literally eighth overall and sixth among running backs. You can't exclude receiving yardage when judging running backs. Pass catching ability and route running is literally why McCaffrey and Kamara got paid, which seems to be the root of your concern. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2022/scrimmage.htm Kamara has a 5 year/75 million contract (a bad contract, btw; he's in decline) and McCaffrey makes over $16 million per year. Those are Hopkins/OBJ numbers. It's because they can catch the damn ball and make plays in the receiving game.

I think it's impossible to argue that WR quality doesn't affect QB play. GB went from having a great passing offense to a mediocre one when they let Adams get away last season. He's elite, and they had no replacement.

This. ^^

Any list of top 8 backs that doesn't include the undrafted Austin Ekeler is doing it wrong. He was 8th in yards from scrimmage and first in TDs (18). Regardless, we're talking past each other at this point. I think the following: a) although it still matters, of course, the running game is far less important than the passing game; b) running backs are easily replaced because there are so many competent ones, and virtually all teams think this way; c) individual player stats aren't the best way to measure production because most teams have RBs by committee; d) productive running games are primarily a product of good o-lines; and e) it is the height of foolishness to overspend on the RB position.

You can believe what you want to believe. Every GM in the league except for the dumb ones (Dave Gettleman) think the VORP of RBs is lower than that of practically of every other position given the glut of people who can play the position competently. College football is jammed with guys good enough to play RB in the NFL; it's why so many undrafted/late round pick RBs turn out to be fine. Wide receiver, cornerback, and defensive end? Not so much.

No, I'm referring to the undrafted Dontrell Hilliard, who has a large enough sample size over the past two seasons (78 carries for 495 yards for TN) to suggest that maybe individual star RBs' value is overrated. I believe that if they had let Henry go instead of AJ Brown, their offense would have been better last season. He's more valuable than Henry. But you don't have to believe me -- virtually every team in the league would agree with that view.

The guy behind Derrick Henry has averaged 6.3 ypc over the past two seasons. And it turns out that Tony Pollard was better than Zeke the last couple of years. To paraphrase Charles DeGaulle, the graves are filled with indispensable running backs. Nick Chubb doesn't win his team games; the passing game does. Same with Ekeler. Barkley finally played on a winner when the team hired a good passing-game coach -- Daboll -- and the QB stepped up his game (plus the team was very lucky in close games). In Barkley's best season by far, the team went 5-11. Chubb (much like Marshawn for the Bills) generally plays for losing teams -- the Browns have had losing seasons in four out of his five season there, and in their only winning season (2020), the QB actually had a good season (95.9 passer rating) that also turned out to be the best of his career. As for McCaffrey, he's a terrific receiver (not a third-option dump-off specialist), and hence he's paid accordingly. No position is easier to replace except maybe linebacker. Guards who can play decently are harder to replace. People really need wrap their heads around the concept of "value above replacement player" and the fact that there is an oversupply of decent running backs. I'm old enough to remember Mike Gillislee looking like a superstar for the Bills (calling out @BADOLBILZ!).