You can't give NE the win with Cooks over Stills...especially since as you said it is a very hard system to learn. I'd take Landry over Edleman in a heartbeat. Parker? He is already better than whomever wants to be the 3 WR for them. They have a huge advantage at TE, Miami has a huge advantage at RB. The biggest X factor in all of this is they also have maybe the best QB in the history of football, and we have a guy we are hoping solidifies himself as a consistent top 10 QB.
I don't need to give NE the win with Cooks over Stills. NE wins without Cooks, we saw last year. Cooks is a net zero if he bombs, and a huge positive if he is any good. Cooks is a scoring machine, who is both dangerous because he's quick, and dangerous because he's fast. I loved both these guys in New Orleans. Go look at 2014 when he was used more as a gadget then a deep wide out. He's the last guy they needed to get. For our sake, we have to hope he doesn't get their offense. our best games were where we stopped running our offense through Landry. I know you are comparing Edelman vs. Landry because they're both shorter players, but Edelman lines up wide a lot, more than Landry. Ajayi is good, but as you can see by his inconsistency in both ypg and success rate, our run blocking is a question mark.
Ummmm...I don't miss a game. That is absolutely not why I compared the two and yes I know Edleman is not a primary slot guy? I was comparing them because imo they are the best WR on their teams. Although both could be surpassed (Julian by Cooks & Landry by Parker) If you polled 32 GM's and gave them this list and said you could have X, I don't think you would see some huge discrepancy between Dolphins and Patriots. (How I would rank them) Gronk Landry Ajayi Edelman Cooks Stills Parker Thomas Mitchell/Amendola NE RB Who ya got?
Ranking them doesn't tell you how far ahead each one is. Gronk is so far ahead of everyone else. All NE needed was Gronk and a bunch of midget receivers. Last year the addition of Hogan helped them out. I noticed you didn't even list Hogan. Hogan caught 65% of his targets which is impressive considering his Adot and ypc. He was over 10 yards per target. More efficiently than Stills and Parker. Cooks, Hogan, Gronk, Edelman, Mitchell. Are their primaries. With Cooks Mitchell is expendable. There is also Dwayne Allen.
Chris Hogan is a great example of his QB making him appear better than he is. Which is a common theme for Patriot players. It's hard to compare apples to apples when looking up efficiencies. Again, I don't see some astronomical gap in skill players. Especially when we are lite years ahead of them at the RB position. The comment that drove me to point out Ryan's newfound surroundings and how good they are/will be was that IF Tannehill was put in the right situation he would be Aaron Rodgers. Aaron Rodgers would happily trade situations with Ryan Tannehill.
Tom Brady was TERRIBLE deep from 2012 until 2015, or so. His numbers skyrocketed to the top with just the addition of Hogan. Brady wasn't able to make Kenbrell Thomkins and Dobson appear better than they were. Talk of his deep passing as being done, was the new hotness. You are as good as the level you play at. Sure some receivers suffer more with bad QBs but all benefit from good QBs. Hogan put up almost 700 yards on 58 targets. That is 11.72 ypt. Brady was helped with the addition of Hogan. Don't forget the 500-800 yards their backs will put up just receiving. And they're gonna get 3.9 ypc at least, I would probably assume. You sure about Rodgers trading places? Sure they don't have much at RB, but Nelson, Cobb, and Davante? Better than our 3. Plus Bennett. IN any event, you said you challenged anyone to come up with a better coach/skill player combo than the dolphins. That includes Belichick, McDaniels and Patricia. It's not a hard challenge really. I get your point. But it's your challenge.
You seem to be leaving out RB an awful lot when comparing these teams. Ajayi is more important to the Dolphins than any Jordy, Edelman or even Landry is to their respective teams. You talked about gaps...yet haven't said much about the huge gap in Jay and whomever those other teams decide to trot out at RB. And in regards to the WR unit as a whole? I would have no issue taking Landry/Parker/Stills over Cooks/Edleman/Hogan. Maybe that isn't the consensus, but I don't see some forgone conclusion either way.
Because you are overrating the RB position. You need a competent run game usually but you don't need an elite one. And Ajayi by himself wasn't elite. Buffalo had an elite run game. With Ajayi sure we may get a whole year out of him instead of the 12 games or so he started. But as teams sold out at the end of the year our run game sputtered. I'll bet NEs run game will be just fine and that ours won't all of a sudden be Buffalos. We don't have the blocking and we have a coach that knows we need to go to the air to our wr te and RBs. Ajayi is sick. But he needs to start catching a lot of balls.
http://www.footballnation.net/content/russell-wilson-and-proof-that-wins-are-great-qb-stat/33726/ 27 of 75 NFL champions since 1940 (36%) finished the year No. 1 in Passer Rating Differential 45 of 75 NFL champions since 1940 (60%) finished in the Top 3 in Passer Rating Differential 60 of 75 NFL champions since 1940 (80%) finished in the Top 5 in Passer Rating Differential
I think the reason passer rating differential is such a good predictor of winning is because passer rating has TD/att as one of its components. That is, one of the components of passer rating is the efficiency with which you score points. And nothing predicts the end result of a game better than points scored minus points allowed. Of course we're only talking about passing TD's here, but that's obviously highly correlated with overall points scored. So it's not a surprise that passer rating differential predicts winning that well. I think you'd also get high predictability if we created an equivalent stat for running backs that contained TD/carry as a component. The more interesting question is how well something like passing Y/A differential predicts win% compared to say rushing Y/C differential. I don't know the answer, but it would be very interesting to find out.
Well you said "the QBs" and not, "these QBs." It's Gronk by a country mile. Although I will say this year, Brady did okay without Gronk after game 12 compared to his previous years without him. Gronk with a bunch of midget white receivers all these years and Brady was dominant. Brady without Gronk prior to this year and he wasn't so great. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/12/pat...ski-not-good-ryan-fitzpatrick-went-to-harvard ----------------------------- The hulking tight end has missed 19 games over his career. Tom Brady has started 17 of those games. And over a season’s worth of games, here is his statline: Comp%: 57.3 Yards/attempts: 6.5 Rating: 82.4 Those numbers would rank 31st, 30th and 27th in the NFL this season, respectively. Compare those numbers to Ryan Fitzpatrick’s over the last five seasons: Comp%: 60.5 Yards/attempts: 7.0 Rating: 84.4 Statistically, at least, Brady essentially turns into Fitzpatrick when Gronk isn’t healthy. Of course, Brady is the better player, but it doesn’t show up in the numbers. Now here are Brady’s numbers when Gronkowski plays: Comp%: 65.3 Yards/attempts: 7.9 Rating: 103.5 So basically Brady produces like the all-time great quarterback he is with Gronk and like a mediocre quarterback without him. --------------------------------------- Prior to this past season, Brady was Ryan Fitzpatrick without Gronk, and Brady with Gronk. Now, that article was written in December, before Brady played 100+ ball the rest of the year without Gronk and of course, the superbowl. So this year, Belichick and him finally figured out how to have a good offense without Gronk (I suspect Hogan had something to do with that). The Patriots have not had a reliable deep receiver since Moss and Stallworth. Their last reliable WR to line up outside and run wide routes (not midget routes like Edelman) would be Brandon Lloyd. Look at their 2013 WR roster and tell me you don't want to throw up. In any event, Brady with Gronk and Edelman and warm bodies, is already a pretty top notch offense. Hogan expands the field as shown by his almost 12 ypt. I believe that may be tops in the league (his ypc is). Gronk, Cooks, Hogan and Edelman complement Brady perfectly. Your question wasn't, which set is better plucked out of the team and placed somewhere else. It was, which QB is surrounded by a better situation. And that set with Brady and Belichick, is better than our set by far. Our set isn't bad, mind you. It's pretty good and the potential is sky high (Stills, Parker). Landry is our best WR. If we are to catch NE, he needs to be our 3rd best. Which would be great, because he's great. And if Stills and Parker lurch into 1 and 2, our offense is humming. We were top 10 in running last year in ypg. Go look at the top 10 http://www.nfl.com/stats/categoryst...3-p=1&conference=ALL&d-447263-s=RUSHING_YARDS Notice anything? The top 10 run offense that are also top in scoring, have great passing games. Titans, Carolina, Texans, Niners, Dolphins, not in the top 10 scoring. Don't be surprised if teams without a marquee running back have just as good of a run game as ours.
Why are you quoting me with these random stats?? I was simply asking where you would rank the skill players of these two teams, since some feel NE has the advantage "hands down" in that regard. Weirdo. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Those stats sound like proof that pass defense and pass offense are a great predictor of wins. QBs are a part of that but certainly not all.
It is. So if you ask me which skill positions are most important, I'd say everything that goes into those two.
I already told you why ranking doesn't work. Because there is a big gap between Gronk at 1, and anybody you put at 2. Your original question asked who has better player and coach situation. Seeing as people are talking about the Patriots maybe going 19-0 (which is silly, but they're talking about it) they're not doing so because of their oline. It's because of the skill position and coaching. You want me to rank their players? I'll tell you right now Cooks is better than any receiver we have.
If you believe Cooks is already better than any of our guy's, then no, I do not want you too. My original comments were that imo Ryan has as good of skill players on his team than anyone in the league, and a fantastic coach so he is in a great situation to succeed. Is BB and those guy's better collectively? If so? I do not think it is a wide margin at all. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The reason why BB and the Patriots skill players are better then ours (cheating aside) , is quite simple. They are proven. Ours is potential. New England, right now, is better. Far better. We'll see how it looks after the season, but, right now, I bet most players would pick to play for NE over Miami, if they were picking only based on coach and skill players. I'm hopeful that will be different at the end of the season.
what about the cowboys? What about Atlanta? What about Tennessee? What about Oakland? Those are all teams that could be better than Miami for coaching/skill positions.
That's why I asked if you are ranking them in order of how they help their team, or just ranking them. Because you originally left off Hogan but in that offense on that team Hogan is a huge cog. So it appears you were just ranking them based on talent. And on that basis, Cooks is better than all of our WRs. Almost 700 yards on 56 targets and he's not even on your list. Parker, for comparison, had 90 targets for 768 yards about 8.6 ypt. Respectable. In any event, your original comments were a challenge. Sure, it was rhetorical but don't expect a challenge like that in the mains to go unchallenged! Tanny is in a good spot. Let's leave it at that.
I think Atlanta certainly is close. I give them the nod at WR with Julio being such a dominant WR. Although if you take out #1's? I'm going Stills/Parker over Sanu/Gabriel. But I like Ajayi better than Freeman personally. If Jay had the space Freeman did? I think he would be Ricky Williams good. TE is a wash imo from a talent standpoint. Cowboys? Na. Jason Garrett has been a year away from being fired 2x already. Zeke is better than Ajayi but we trump them 2-1 with WR's. Witten is certainly better of course. Oakland? I don't think so at all. Crabtree is Carr dependent and I doubt they get much from the RB spot, we have better talent at TE and imo a much better coach. Tennessee...even worse. Coaching is a landslide, Wr's are not even close...I like Murray so I'll give him a wash. So they get an edge at TE, and that's about it. Someone else mentioned PITT. When healthy? Yes. They have a better RB, TE and WR core. I wouldn't say much for the coaching however. So if we are evaluating the skill players/coaches as follows? I think you can have the Dolphins, Steelers, Pats, Falcons at or around the top.
So keeping everything else you would trade Ajayi, Landry, Stills Parker Thomas/Fasano for Gronk, Edlman, Cooks, Hogan and RB (TBD)? I wouldn't. Our best player doesn't miss games and our WR's compliment each other as well as any unit in football.
But, we're still looking at potential, while NE, Cooks aside, is looking at production. I'd trade Thomas/Fasano for Gronk. Parker hasn't shown he can consistently be better than Edelman.
The only WR you are looking for potential from is Parker. The other 2 are in their prime. And Parker at this point would be comparable to Hogan. (Teams 3rd WR) so are you really taking Chris Hogan over Devante Parker?
Im not splitting nearly as many hairs as you guy's. Haven't even really considered everyones 3rd down backs.
And that isn't the standard we need...Forget Aaron Rodgers. Can Tannehill be Matt Ryan? If so, that's plenty good enough.
I don't know. I'm thinking about the Pats system, and how effective their guys are in it, and I'm hard pressed to say that our skill players are more more effective in our system than they are in theirs. We certainly have the potential to be as effective, but I don't think we've shown yet that we are. Gronk, Hogan, Edelman were all extremely effective.
