I must have missed that uncaught balls stat the NFL now uses.

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Football fandom is the last bastion of purposeful stupidity. Baseball and basketball numbers have so permeated everything that at least when old guys like JORR rage against the dying of the light they at least have to come to grips with why certain numbers shouldn't matter. I might disagree but it's a damn sight more honest than "I ain't never heard of that durned thing."

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Fire Phil Emery

The NFL didn't track sack numbers by defensive players until 1982. Weird that Deacon Jones coined the term, since he never recorded a single sack his entire career.

For the last time: Marshall gets targeted a lot. A significant number of those passes fall incomplete. Ergo, all of those receptions and yards and TDs carry a significant opportunity cost.

This really isn't hard to understand.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

Dave and IB it would be wonderful to see so stats to back up your claim that Marshall is just decent. How do his horrible numbers compare to the other elite receivers in the NFL? You do realize it's not his fault that his quarterbacks were bad? Just because bad quarterbacks couldn't get him the ball when he was open doesn't make him just a decent receiver. Seems really silly.

http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/wr


They are worse.


You do realize one of those quarterbacks was Jay Cutler?

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Fire Phil Emery

Irish Boy, thank you for drowning my optimism like Vick did oh-so-many dogs.

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Those Denver teams were bad. Playing catch up causes a lot of those problems. I'll take a look at. Love stats.

So am I reading this right? Marshall is ranked as the 16th best WR in the game?

Isn't that pretty good?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

16th under one metric, 38th under another. The higher one is the counting stat for them, almost like yards gained. The second stat is a percentage, kind of like yards-per-play but not really.

WR numbers can be erratic because they are less involved than RBs or QBs so the sample sizes are smaller. He was in the 50s in both measures the year before, 25 and 28 the year before that, 42 and 58 in 2008, 30 and 29 in 2007.

One constant is that his catch percentage is pretty bad throughout. For every five passes you throw to him two are going to be incomplete. We know that about him by this point in his career.

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Fire Phil Emery

And before anyone pegs me as Slave To Math I think he's likely a bit better than these numbers have him. Just not particularly close to elite.

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Fire Phil Emery

It's a bullshit stat similar to Hollinger's stat. A stat that tells you guys like MJ or Kobe aren't the best player in the league. It just doesn't pass the eye test. The are guys ahead of Marshall that aren't better and guys behind him that aren't worse. No way would I ever make a judgment on a receiver based on that stat.

Which stat are you inveighing against in particular, here?

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Fire Phil Emery

Both the DVOA and DYAR. It essentially says Jordy Nelson is the best receiver in the NFL. He isn't even the best on his team.

Stats are only useful if they confirm my intuitions.

It says nothing of the sort. Last year he was one of the most productive WRs in the NFL. In 96 passes he gained more yardage than Brandon Marshall in 142, caught more balls thrown to him, had more touchdowns, etc. He was extremely productive.

That doesn't mean he was best. He had an all-pro quarterback with weapons all across the field. There are reasons he would have such good stats regardless of what you look at. It doesn't mean that if you lined up all the wide receivers in the NFL you would draft Jordy Nelson second.

You can, and Bears fans will, turn all that around and say "well Brandon Marshall is better because of his team situations." And that's likely true; I admitted as much before. But after six seasons his production has mostly stayed within the same band; a #1 receiver on a bad team or a #2 on a good one. Put better players around him and his production will improve, sure. But only so much. By 28 years old we pretty much know what level of player he is.

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Fire Phil Emery

Not true. It doesn't take much to know that Calvin Johnson is by far the best receiver in the NFL. Just like it didn't take much to know Jordan was the best basketball player for most of the time he was in the NBA. When you see stats that tell you another player that isn't in the same class as him (eye test) is better then it's best to just call the stats bullshit.

Considering Marshall hasn't been on a really good team and has only had mediocre WR's and RB's around him I think it's safe to say he is likely going to get better with the Bears. WR's don't age like RB's either. He could possible have another 6 to 8 years left.

Those stats are cited for creating argument, but also to say "I was right all along" if/when something goes bad.

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If I'm usually open because the defense is worried about 2 or 3 other receivers then I'll probably get a lot of easy passes. If I'm the ONLY weapon on offense and the entire defense is trying to shut me down then my production probably won't be as good as the guy that is generally open.

That's true, the Bears are chock-a-block with quality skill position players right now.

In any event, it's a stone soup defense. Even if the quality of the Bears supporting offensive cast (*titter*) makes Brandon Marshall more productive, it doesn't make him a better player. The stone soup isn't tasty because of the stone, but because of all the other crap you put into it. We've seen Brandon Marshall with only OK talent around him, and it produces a player with decent production. That's not going to change this late in his career.

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Fire Phil Emery

So IB based on this stuff who would you have rather the Bears got to fill the need at WR?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

This should be interesting.

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Well I like the Jeffery pick. But in terms of free agents Vincent Jackson was right there for the same price and without having to give up two picks. Mario Manningham is a much cheaper, and admittedly worse, version of Marshall. I would have been inclined to sink my money into the line instead of at WR with someone like Ben Grubbs.

EDIT: if the rumors are true that Michael Crabtree is on his way out of San Francisco I find a way to make that happen here, whether via cheap trade or once he hits free agency.

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Fire Phil Emery

That story stuck with you. You mention it occasionally. I recommed the little red hen.

Stone Soup is a great kids book. Also a fan of Mo Willem's. Also like Tomie depaola.

The Paper Bag Princess is fantastic.

I would get Crabtree too. Why are they trying to dump him? The Bears may go from not having any WR's to having too many. I guess that's a good problem to have.

Don't you need a guy like Driver that can teach they young guys how it's done? That's usually how good teams continue to trot out good WR's. Rice did it with T.O. Harrison did it with Wayne and Driver has done it with all the guys in GB.

Big cap number, tough to work with and Harbaugh is a bit of a red ass. Drafting Jenkins is probably a bad sign for him, which is weird, because he has had decent production all things considered.

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Fire Phil Emery

Team's paying $9m for Marshall for the next 3 years, Bennett's on year 1 of an $18m contract, Jeffery's gonna get 2nd rd pick money, Hester's got 2 years left on a $40m deal, Weems is on year 1 of a 4 year deal. Knox and Sanz are on the bubble, but what do you offer a guy like Crabtree when you've already got so much cap invested in one position?

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