Sports Buzz...Jake Long tries to rebound; Dansby changes positions;

He got worse when everyone else was getting better around week 8.

 

Sean Smith is the new Yeremiah Bell.

 

In your previous post you cited PFF to prove Smith had a bad season in 2011. Go look where he was ranked In 2010.

 

How so?

 

He's more consistent at covering receivers. Vontae Davis looks like a pro bowler one week and a rookie the next week. One play he's tackling like murder, the next play completely whiffs. Sean Smith may not make big hits but he also doesn't miss tackles as often. According to PFF, Smith has come in for 167 tackle attempts during his career, and he's missed 23 of them. Vontae Davis has come in for 161 attempts and missed 27 of them.

Sean Smith was clearly a better rookie, Vontae Davis was a better second year player.

But I'm not even prepared to say Vontae was a better player in 2011. He let up 531 yards (incl. penalty yards) in 437 coverage snaps. Sean Smith let up 818 yards (incl. penalties) on 668 coverage snaps. That's 1.22 yards per snap versus 1.22 yards per snap. Same. Sean Smith missed a tackle every 6.4 attempts, Vontae Davis missed a tackle every 6.2 attempts. That's pretty close to exactly the same. Vontae Davis allowed 7.9 yards per pass on throws in his direction (incl. relevant penalties), Sean Smith allowed 7.9 yards per attempt on passes thrown his direction (incl. penalties). Vontae Davis allowed a TD catch every 22 passes thrown his direction (every 146 coverage snaps), Sean Smith allowed a TD catch every 21 passes thrown his direction (every 134 coverage snaps), virtually the same.

The thing Vontae did is give the team 4 interceptions as opposed to Smith's 2 interceptions. However, you have to balance that against the fact that Smith showed up and played in every game, gave consistent effort, didn't show up to practice drunk, whereas Vontae missed games in some eyebrow-raising circumstances, and was a distraction reportedly showing up to practice still drunk after a night of partying.

Like I said, Vontae clearly has the better potential if he puts everything together. But he's highly inconsistent, and he's his own worst enemy. Overall, I would say Smith has been the more consistent football player in his career, probably better on the balance of the three years, all things considered.

And we'll see how things shake out this year. This is classic tortoise and hare stuff. Vontae has the potential to take a dramatic leap forward this year under Kevin Coyle and all he really has to do is get out of his own way and be a little more consistent in his coverage. Yet, he's developed habits of not reaching his potential. Meanwhile, Smith continues to work on his craft, and all the reports we've had so far suggest that Smith has already begun showing that he's taken that next step. Karlos Dansby's praise of him was targeted, unabashed, and significant. And there are reports that Smith is picking off a lot of passes. So the ball is really in Vontae's court to match. If he does that, there's no doubting who the better player will be. But if he doesn't...

 

thanks for your clarity on this topic..while I see that the stats show some similarities, I'm not gonna defend my POV with more numbers, this comes down to an eye ball test on what you want out of your corner and what you have seen on the field, VD is everything I want in a corner, and has shown pretty good stretches of high level play, IMO, Sean has not shown that level of play imo, Vontae's worst game is nothing close to Sean's worst game..

I can't believe I'm still having the who's the better corner debate between these two players, I thought it was ancient history as to who was better, I think folks who went out on a limb and proclaimed Sean as becoming the better payer when both were drafted are a bit bias to what has transpired on the field.

 

Not bias at all. Facts were stated.

 

IMO Davis has made more big hits and more big plays so his fans tend to remember/focus more on those. They tend forget/minimize the bad plays on players they like. And it is a fact that Davis has made more bad plays as well. That's where the eye ball test fails. Objectively, it's pretty clear that Smith has had the slightly better and more consistent playing career. The only reasons it's still a debate is that people can't ignore the bias in their eyeballs and b/c neither player has reached his potential.

 

SS24 is missing physicality to his game, that sort of nastiness is lacking.

VD has nastiness, he can force the run as well as any Cb in the league, his issue is he lacks consistency and showed up out of shape in 2011.

That led to Nolan Carroll starting coupled with Reshad "lost" Jones not knowing his assignments meant a poor start in 2011, stats wise when RJ was pulled the defense improved..he did not know what the hell he was supposed to do and hung Cb's out to dry.

 

Everyone on this board all of a sudden loves him when we might be close to seeing his time here end.

 

Don't we normally throw Vontae against the opposing team's best WR?

If that's the case then the numbers between he and SS don't really mean as much since SS is usually drawing a much easier assignment.

 

agreed that both haven't reached their potential, but if I'm a GM, and I know what I know now, I'm taking VD..

 

VD was always the guy with the greater potential and SS was always the guy who was more consistent. In college VD had wow plays and WTF plays. He really hasn't been any different in the pros. In college SS was also similar but made a ton of INTs. The missing INTs is the big difference for him. IMO the odds of an inconsistent player remaining inconsistent are always far greater than him changing. While historically INT totals often fluctuate from year to year so I would take the more consistent player. In that draft I wanted Hakeem Nicks in the first and SS and Sintim or Kruger with the two seconds(we used that first second on Pat White). In hindsight, I would still do that but probably replace that White pick with LeSean McCoy.

 

I don't agree that Smith has been the more consistent corner Rafs but I respect your opinion.

 

Is Dansby's position all that different? LILB in a two-gap versus Mike in this 4-3 isn't a huge change (not earth shattering at least, probably beneficial for him even).

Seems like Miami's taking a page out of Seattle's book in terms of run stopping. Odrick as a five technique, Misi on the line as a nine against the TE is very heavy personnel.