DGDB&D: a Texans blog.

Bad Would Be An Upgrade

Aug 4, 2008 2006 Draft, Hype, I was told there would be no math, Overrated, Reggie Bush, Stats, Tremendous Busts

Courtesy of Dave, we get the following tidbit from Fatty Starbucks about everyone’s favorite punt returner:

Saturday, July 26, New Orleans Saints camp

JACKSON, Miss. — “When you look at your first two years and you see the 3.8 yards per carry, do you want to puke?” I asked Reggie Bush, who was sitting on a golf cart on the running track surrounding the football field at Millsaps College.

Bush smiled. “Well, kind of. I want nine, 10 yards a carry. But I think the difference with me this year is I’m smarter. I realize four yards is a good run sometimes. I appreciate four yards; I’m not disappointed when I get stopped after four yards.”

I have heard this before. This is what the Saints were saying going into the 2007 season, and Bush wasn’t any more explosive in his second year. The difference this year, the Saints hope, is Bush was a workout fanatic around the New Orleans complex in the offseason, with lots of the strong-burst lifting (squats, mostly) that give a back the kind of explosion through holes we haven’t seen enough of in Bush. He’s most certainly on trial, and he feels it.

“What I did in college was not a fluke,” he said. “And the NFL will not be a fluke for me either.”

OK, first things first, the article already gives Bush too much credit: he has only averaged 3.7/carry over his career, not the 3.8 the author generously gives him.  Second, being “not disappointed” after you get stopped for four yards isn’t really the best outlook a guy can have, especially when the rumor is that he is too soft to be a real running back.  After all, Ron “Meringue” Dayne averaged 4.0/carry last year and I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was thrilled with the guy.

Now, yes, I realize that Reggie is actually saying something along the lines of “if I can always get four and then get more than that from time to time, I’ll be happy.”  Fine.  Whatever.  But here’s the rub: there is NOTHING to suggest that Bush is even capable of getting to that level.

In fact, let’s take it one step further.  Let’s get crazy.  Let’s throw this statement out there and see if it floats:

Reggie Bush is an offensive liability

There.  I said it.  What?  You want proof?  Fine.  First, some numbers, as compiled by the inimitable bfd:

Basically, every time Bush touches the ball, he is hurting his team.  The only exception to this rule was as a receiver in 2006 where his 8.4 yards/catch was higher than other Saints backs.  In other words, Bush is an offensive sinkhole.

In 2006, his 3.6 yards/rush was below that of the team without him.  In addition, most of his 2006 numbers are skewed by a single game against the Giants that single-handedly raises his yards/rush by nearly .5 yards for the entire season.

In 2007, both his yards/rush and yards/catch were well below that of the rest of the Saints’ RBs.  Only Mike Karney and Drew Brees, with their 34 combined rushes, managed worse rushing totals.  On the receiving side, even Karney’s 6.0 yards/reception were better than Bush’s horrific 5.7 yards/catch.  In fact, Bush’s yards/catch of 5.7 was third worst in the league, but he received the ball as many times as the two people below him, Willis McGahee and Ryan Grant, combined.

Bush’s 3.7 yards/rush in 2007 ranks him 38th out of 49 qualifiers, but considering that Aaron Stecker and Pierre Thomas both had more yards/rush more than Bush, Bush’s poor numbers are a likely function of his suckiness moreso than issues with the line.  (On the other hand, Adrian Peterson and Ced Benson ranked 46 and 47, respectively, which means that there was probably something more than just the RB that was impacting the rushing equation in Chicago.)

Then, one must consider from where Bush is scoring.  Of Bush’s 10 rushing touchdowns, six have been from one yard out, and only 10 and 15 yard rushes—the latter being his longest—are even in double-digit yards.  Bush has four receiving touchdowns, only one of which is longer than five yards—his 61-yarder that got endless, unnecessary replays.  As a running back, Bush is showing all the explosiveness of Tom Rathman. Which is to say, none.

If Bush isn’t the worst RB in the league, his only real competition is Cedric Benson, but that could also be a matter of offensive line play.  When compared to his peers on the Saints, Bush is clearly the worst of the bunch and pretty easily an offensive black hole on the roster.  He’s the football equivalent of Neifi Perez, a player who gets too many touches for the incredible lack of skills he brings to the field.

Here’s hoping they play him more.

Indeed, brother.

“But, hold on,” some of you must be screaming.  “That’s not fair! The Saints offense as a whole was less good in 2007 than in 2006, so of course his yards/catch fell off!”

Really?  In 2006, the Saints averaged 5.8 yards/play.  In 2007, they averaged 5.5.  They did go from first to fifth in total offense, but does that really explain a drop-off from above-average receiving threat to abysmal?  I think not.

Besides, a swing of .3 yards/play is far from uncommon.  The Colts had a .4 yard drop-off last year.  The Chargers lost .7.  And so on, and so forth.  Small flutuations happen, even in the league’s best offenses.  30 yards per game (the Saints’ loss) is not a huge deal and it definitely does not explain how the World’s Greatest Weapon loses 2.7 yards/catch.

But wait, there’s more!  Some more numbers, this time courtesy of me.

Saints’ overall yards/play in 2007: 5.5
Saints’ yards/play on plays where Reggie touched the ball: 4.8
Saints’ yards/play on plays were he did not touch the ball: 5.8

Saints’ yards/carry overall: 3.7
Bush’s yards/carry overall: 3.7
Other Saints’ RBs yards/carry: 3.9

Other Saints’ yards/catch: 10.6
Saints’ yards/catch overall: 6.8
Bush’s yards/catch overall: 5.7

Filed under “Hmm, Things That Make You Go.”  OK, now I hear some of you saying that the loss of Deuce McAllister is why Bush’s yards/catch went down.  It’s some argument like “well, without Deuce in there to keep people honest, teams could key on Bush.”  Whatever you say, chief.

Oh, except for this: In 2007, when Deuce was out, Bush averaged 6.1 yards/catch.  When Deuce was in (or “loose,” if you will), even for part of the game, Bush put up 5.0 yards/catch. Not the greatest sample sizes, I know, but it still makes that Deuce argument seem questionable.

As an aside, I should throw in that the whole “teams had to account for Deuce” argument strikes me as particularly silly.  If McAllister, who averaged a whopping 4.3 yards/carry in 2006, had that much effect on the offense as a whole (and Bush in particular), don’t you think you’d see a marked drop-off in the Saints’ offensive production when Deuce didn’t play?  Yet, as we already covered, any drop-off was nigh negligible and is just as easily explained by “Reggie Bush brings everyone’s averages down.”

Also, to those who would suggest that Marques Colston’s yards/catch also dropped by 2.5 yards, so there must have been something bigger at play, I have three counter-arguments. First, Colston was an unknown when he entered the league in 2006 and, as such, he did not face CB1s on a regular basis, at least at first. By the start of 2007, he was the biggest threat (by far) in the passing game and, as such, was always defended by the opponents’ best CBs.  Second, Colston had 28 more catches in 2007, which would make it more difficult to keep up a ridiculous 14.8 yards/catch.  (Hell, Randy Moss averaged 15.2 in his record-breaking season last year. 14.8 is great. Only four WRs last season had as many catches as Colston and had a higher yards/catch.) Third, while Bush’s performance was so bad that it pulled the team’s yards/play down to 5.5 (remember, it was 5.8 when he didn’t touch the ball), the team only averaged 4.8 yards/play when Colston didn’t touch the ball, so comparing his drop to Reggie’s drop is not exactly apples-to-apples.

So, that’s it, right?

Of course not.  We would be remiss if we didn’t also throw the following numbers at you:

Reggie’s 8 total fumbles were tops among non-QBs and his 7 rushing fumbles were tops among everyone.

Reggie’s 10 dropped passes (in 12 games) tied him for third in the league (and tied him with people who played 16 games).

The claims about the Saints’ offensive lines woes are likely overblown, as they ranked between 7th and 11th overall in 2007, depending on who you ask.

Behind that line, Reggie Bush ranked 56th out of 56 according to Football Outsiders’ DPAR (Defense-Adjusted Points above Replacement). His DPAR of -8.9 means, in short, that he was worth 8.9 points less than the average NFL backup RB.

Reggie’s career-long run remains at 25 yards.  25.  Cedric Benson has a career long of 43 and he’s trying to find a job right now.  Benson also had at least one run over 30 yards every year in the league.

SO…what does all this mean?  At this point, I am not willing to go all out an call him a bust.  That said, however, I will point out that RB is generally agreed to be, by far, the easiest position to transition to from college.  DEs and QBs can take three or four years to develop (though Mario is certainly ahead of the curve), while many RBs can and do play well from the jump.  Reggie, on the other hand, has not even consistently put up numbers worthy of Blair Thomas.

His numbers do track fairly well with Eric Metcalf, however.  So he’s got that going for him.  Which is nice.

*clears throat*

Apr 15, 2008 2008 Season, Awfulness, BFD's Real Doll, Hype, Predictions Guaranteed To Go Wrong, Preview, Teams that aren't the Texans

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but…

THE 2008 SCHEDULE IS BEING RELEASED TODAY AT 1PM!!!!!

Get your calendars and PDAs ready; it’s time to start planning your live football watching for 2008.

We’ve known for quite some time (relatively speaking) that the 2008 opponents shake out as follows:

AT RELIANT
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Baltimore
Cincinnati
Chicago
Detroit
Miami

AWAY FROM RELIANT
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Cleveland
Pittsburgh
Green Bay
Minnesota
Oakland

All that remains today is to tell us the order. So, as we count down the hours, I have a few predictions for you.

1. 1. We get a Monday night game, most likely one of our games against the Baby-Eating Sisterfuckers.
2. 2. We get a Thursday night game, most likely against Green Bay or Pittsburgh.
3. 3. Our Green Bay game will be mid-October at the very earliest. Which is not really a good thing for a domed team from a hot state.
4. 4. The Bengals WRs will make Petey Faggins look like BFD’s Real Doll–worn out from hours of torture and pounding.
5. 5. Our first home game will be against Da Bears.

(h/t to reader Kevin for reminding me of this date…I was off by a week in my head)

UPDATE 1: Monday, December 1. Jacksonville @ JUGGERNAUT. Ben gets one point for being dead-on with his date. I am giving myself half a point for predicting a Monday night game for us against a division foe.

UPDATE 2: Here it is.

• Week 1 @ Steelers
• Week 2 v. Ravens
• Week 3 @ Baby-Eating Sisterfuckers
• Week 4 @ Jaguars
• Week 5 v. Colts
• Week 6 v. Dolphins
• Week 7 v. Lions
• Week 8 BYE
• Week 9 @ Vikings
• Week 10 v. Bengals
• Week 11 @ Colts
• Week 12 @ Browns
• Week 13 v. Jaguars (Mon. Night)
• Week 14 @ Packers
• Week 15 v. Baby-Eating Sisterfuckers
• Week 16 @ Raiders
• Week 17 v. Bears

Initial thoughts…that December game in Lambeau does not sound fun from a “trying to win the game” standpoint…Weeks 3-5 will go a LONG way toward showing us how we stack up against the division…look for us to go 3-0 from Weeks 6-9.

Zone Blocking - The Video!

Feb 7, 2008 Alex Gibbs, Demarcus Faggins sucks, Hype, Winstonsaurus

Bumped from my pathetic post, the lovely, talented, and extremely sexy Eric links us to a video discussing zone blocking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvtJHq_0YvA

For me, this does two things:

1. Gibbs adds a new dimension to our offense.

2. The RB is a part, not the piece. The video is helpful in the sense it’s easier to visualize the one-cut system. Denver was able to cycle through RBs because of the system, and while the RB is not entirely irrelevant, he’s only a piece of the system. The focus is getting the right OL for the system along with the proper coaching, and it’s yet another reason I don’t believe that a RB is necessary with our first round pick.

Everyone out! C’mon. No, not you, Scottie. Not you, Number 2. Not you, Frau. Not you, Goldmember. Not you, guys back there. Not you, henchman holding a wrench. Not you, henchman arbitrarily turning knobs, making it seem like you’re doing something.

Dec 27, 2007 Adimchinobe Echemandu is fun to say, Corky Johnson, Free Agency, Hype, Nigerian Mafia, Nnamdi Asomugha, Tremendous Busts, Undrafted Free Agent watch list

Tim beat me to the punch on this, but Adimchinobi Echemandu was cut by the Texans yesterday, ending my dream that he would become the new Nigerian Nightmare.

While the official reason given was that the team needed to cut someone to make room for DelJuan Robinson (more on him in a minute), the fact remains that there had to be some underlying reason for why Joe E. was the person chosen. One can only assume that either Kubiak never got past Joe’s back-to-back performances against Oakland and New Orleans (2 carries for 6 yards, then 1 carry for 2 yards and a fumble lost) or the team is completely committed to using Darius Walker the rest of the way in order to evaluate him.

Either way, I can live with the decision. After all, this was a guy that we signed out of absolutely nowhere and those kinds of players rarely get mulligans. Besides, it’s not like he bounced back after that New Orleans game–in two more games he had 7 carries for 15 yards. Walker, on the other hand, is averaging 3.7 yards per carry and has 13 catches for 81 yards in his three games of action. Now, the pessimists–of whom I am a charter member–will point out that Walker showed last week that he lacks the speed to be a true number one back in the and that he would be best suited as a 3rd-down back, so an evaluation of his “long-term potential” is rather pointless. (The numbers certainly support this: he ran a 4.56 and a 4.57 at the NFL Combine; for the sake of comparison, Najeh Davenport ran a 4.44 at his Combine. Davenport also pooped in a hamper, which has nothing to do with Darius Walker but is still worth mentioning.) While this may be true, I think the general consensus was that Echemandu was not going to be the answer, regardless of how Walker did or did not pan out. Fair enough.

All of this overlooks the main reason I was high on Echemandu from the start. Namely, that a certain cousin of his is arguably the best or second-best cover corner in the NFL and can opt out of his contract at the end of the season. I was hoping that some family ties might have made it easier to entice him. With the emergence of Fred Bennett, however, and assuming that Dunta Robinson will be back and be 100% at some point next year, then giving Nate-Clements-money to Nnamdi Asomugha is probably not the highest best use of our free agent dollars (see, e.g., Pat Williams, Alan Faneca, Jared Allen, Demorrio Williams…)

Which sorta segues into DelJuan Robinson. The Second-team All-SEC tackle was undrafted out of Mississippi State, primarily due to a knee injury that limited his senior season to 8 games. In those 8 games, he had 12.5 tackles for a loss, which was fifth-best in the SEC. At MSU’s Pro Day, Robinson ran a 5.07 40, a 2.88 20, and put up 23 reps on the bench. He was part of the group of undrafted free agents that the Texans signed in May, was released by the team at the end of August, and was signed to the practice squad shortly thereafter. Because defensive line was the one place that didn’t turn into a M*A*S*H unit, Robinson had not gotten a shot at the active roster. Until now.

But let me ask you this: if you are the front office and you have four healthy defensive tackles, one of whom is retarded, but have injuries throughout your linebacking corps, secondary, and offensive line, why would you activate another defensive tackle? The only answer I can come up with is “because we are washing our hands of the retarded guy.” If that’s the case, it makes sense to see if Deljuan can play and let Travis languish until the time comes to set him free. (If they make Johnson a June 1 casualty next year–either by cutting him then or cutting him prior to that date but designating him as one of the two June 1s allowable under the CBA–there will be a cap hit of almost $2.5MM in 2008 and 2009 as opposed to a $5MM hit in 2008 if they cut him right now just to make a point). Besides, they might be able to convince Cincinnati that Travis would fit right in on their roster and get something in trade for him.

So while I might have had high hopes for him, if you are telling me we had to sacrifice Joe Echemandu to get rid of Travis Johnson…well, that’s a deal I’d make any day of the week.

Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that.

Aug 27, 2007 Colts Shmolts, Hype, Stats, Super Mario

Over the last week, on a couple different message boards as well as some random comment threads at the Dysfunctional Family Robinson, I’ve seen posts to the effect of “using stats to compare football players is stupid.”

Now, to the extent that someone would claim that Super Mario and Dwight Freeney had similar seasons last year based on the sacks each recorded, I would agree. That’s just dumb. But no one with two ounces of sense¹ would make such a claim, so I highly doubt that’s what the makers of these anti-statistic statements are saying.

It seems like there are people claiming that statistical comparisons of football players are de facto misleading because… well… I’m not sure why. The usual reason tends to include something about “intangibles” or “not truly reflecting the game.”

My initial reaction is one of bemusement. If we all agree that statistics are context-dependent, that especially in football one has to look at the big picture, then a statistical comparison is as valid as any other and is one of the few means we have to remove nearly all the subjectivity. Why would this be stupid?

Looking more closely, though, I think it’s precisely this removal of subjectivity that causes people to bristle at purely numerical comparisons. When we take away the platitudes, reputations, and “intangibles,” all we are left with is performance. Suddenly, the player that is great because he’s “clutch” is only above average when you look at what he’s really doing between the hashmarks. In that situation, it’s easier for some people to disregard the message rather than altering their own beliefs. No surprise there; people are almost always loathe to admit that a personal belief is faulty.

The not-quite-ironic-but-still-kinda-funny thing about all of this is that we’ve seen it all before. Major League Baseball went through the same thing from the mid 80s to the late 90s. The old school cognoscenti derided the sabermetric crowd as eggheads who didn’t take things like clutch hitting into account. Remarkably enough, over the ensuing two decades, the vast majority of baseball fans came around. Today, nearly all are familiar with metrics like OPS and many are comfortable with VORP and ERA+. While none of these measurements are much more than 20 years old, only Luddites like Joe Morgan claim straight-faced that those metrics do not measure baseball production better than comparing Runs and Wins.

Given the improvements in understanding baseball that came from accepting the sabermetric offerings, I imagine that a similar movement will sweep the NFL. To be sure, guys like Football Outsiders have already started the ball rolling. Until new measurements become commonplace, however, we have to use the numbers we do have. While I will be the first to admit that raw numbers can be used to “prove” some things that simply aren’t true, that does not mean that all statistical comparisons are flawed from the start. To say that they are is the only “stupid” part of the whole debate.

¹ Cowboy fans need not apply.

Chuck D isn’t sure whether to buy the hype

Jun 9, 2007 Amobi Okoye is 19, Hype, Preview, Tequila, Vacation-related posts

Greetings from the Redneck Riviera! Stage Two of Vacation 2007 took us from Phoenix, where it was 109 degrees with zero humidity, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where it is 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity.

Not that you care about the weather, or even about my whereabouts.

Anyway, on the drive down here Thursday night, I was thinking about hype. More accurately, I was trying to think of things that had lived up to their advanced level of promotion. The list was pretty short.

Pulp Fiction. Roger Creager in concert. Bo Jackson’s arm. Patron tequila. Miami nightlife. The Mousetrap. LeBron James. That’s about it.

What does this have to do with anything? Well… I was thinking about all of that in the context of Manchild.

[Author's Note: Right here is where I'd planned to do a long post about defensive tackles taken with top 10 picks. That will have to wait, though, as a I have a beach and cooler full of beer calling me. More later.]