squirrel
Naptown
- 352 comments
- 51 likes given
- 245 likes received
Professional squirrel. Closed course. Do not attempt.
@paulcareyjr @Kyle Rodriguez I still like Brown but I'll eat my hat if there's anyone willing to trade for him...
@AJ_ By that metric just about any deal for Bradshaw is defensible. Colts are way close to the bottom in RB spending. Giving Bradshaw $4MM this year wouldn't even get them to the top 10 and they'd still be last in the AFC South. And Brown with this $1.7MM this year would have to be on the bubble in that group.
@AJ_ How much is too expensive? Shonn Greene went to the Titans for 3yr/$10MM/$4.5MM. Bradshaw is better but with injuries and more miles on his tires. Also the Giants cut Bradshaw rather than pay him $3.75MM this year.
I'm thinking Greene's deal is the yardstick here. If the Colts get Bradshaw for less then I'm happy.
I thought there was talk about Kerwynn Williams as the #3 back. Some people make it sound like he might be the second coming of Darren Sproles. So does this mean they see Williams as KR/PR only, at least for this year?
*Breaking News: Shit a Coach Says In February Means Little In June, Less In September.*
Just teasing. Great writeup! I love how grounded Luck is already. Peyton had the self-effacing humor down well but, frankly, it always seemed a little rehearsed. Luck's feels more natural. Am I making that up?
@Kyle Rodriguez @squirrel Oh, FFS. Nevermind, I see the problem now. You're looking at the drive finder and I was looking at the season stats page. For some goddamned reason PFR's numbers are different on different pages. Which are yet still different from the numbers FO uses.
Football stats are such a mess.
@Kyle Rodriguez@squirrel FO is clearly only using regular season drive stats. If you included postseason numbers you'd be comparing different numbers of games for each team, which makes no sense, and the Colts still probably wouldn't be 4th.
I think FO just muffed their math in that chart.
Okay, I see where FO has the Colts ranked 4th in yards per drive but I still don't see how they got that number. Even if you discard take-a-knee drives as FO does, I only get an average of 32.95 yards/drive which should still put the Colts at 12th on their chart.
Grr, black box statistics...
"The Colts' below-average performance in the redzone (18th overall) was exactly the reason why the team was able to pick up a ton of yards (4th in yards per drive), but were below average in points per drive (18th, ironically)."
According to PFR, I'm only seeing the Colts ranked 12th in yards per drive. Is your number perhaps adjusted for starting position? Because the Colts were 30th in that stat (average drive starting at their own 25.0).
Thanks, @buymymonkey! Always liked yours too.
@Kyle Rodriguez @squirrel That's the point though, that total AV is misleading. Do seasons with AV of 1 or 2 really matter? It shouldn't be hard to find a FA who would provide that level of value at a league-minimum salary.
By the chart Hilton already has returned the value of his pick even if he never plays again. That's precisely what the chart tells us, that roughly half the guys picked at that spot never reached the value that Hilton returned in his first year alone.
Again, I'm not trying to be a pedantic asshole. I just want to be clear how very unusual it is for a late-third pick to have rookie numbers like Marvin Harrison.
I hate to keep harping on this, but Chase Stuart's draft chart is actually a chart of AV Above Replacement, where AV of 2 is "replacement level" for a player in any one year. The real question is not how much total value do you get from a drafted player, it's how much better is that player than somebody like David Thomas who is basically just a guy.
By that measure Allen and Hilton look even better. Stuart has 8.1 as the average AVAR for Allen's draft slot. If you multiply 2 AV by 5 years and add it, then compare Allen's 6 AV in his first year, it looks like Allen needs two more years to reach the average value of his slot. But in fact Allen had AVAR of 4 his first year and needs only one more year at that level to return that average value.
Likewise Hilton's slot has average AVAR of 5.8. If you bump that to 16 AV and compare Hilton's 8 AV in 2012 it looks like he needs one more year at that pace to reach average. But Hilton had 6 AVAR in 2012, meaning he's already returned the average value for his slot. Everything additional season with positive AVAR is pure win.
Just wanted to emphatically underline how awesome the 2012 draft really was. I feel confident it will go down as the best Colts draft of all time (and Chapman hasn't even played a down yet).
Brad has been going full retard for the last week or so. Manufactured outrage is manufactured.
Huh, I literally just now reloaded and got the new Livefyre comment interface. Wish I'd had that 15 minutes ago.
The Vontae Davis trade is interesting. At the time I was nervous about giving up both a 2nd and 6th round pick because even the 6th round pick has value. Since then I've learned three new things: First, the 2012 Colts were better than we thought and their second rounder was low second, not high second. Next, the sixth rounder depended on Vontae playing 65% of defensive snaps and his injury kept him just shy of that. Finally, I read Chase Stuart's article on creating a draft chart where he made the good point that only AV over 2 is meaningful when evaluating picks; call it AV Above Replacement.
So the Colts gave up the #54 pick which by Chase's measure is worth 9.2 AVAR over five years. The five year term is important because that's the maximum length of a rookie contract and cheap rookies are the real competitive advantage to be gained in the draft. Vontae has one year left on his rookie deal and in 2012 he put up an AVAR of 2. Strictly speaking that means in 2013 he needs an AVAR of 7 (AV of 9) for the Colts to realize the value of the #54 pick before Vontae gets his payday. That's unlikely since AV of defensive backs is heavily tied to their team's overall defensive performance and the Colts just aren't that strong yet on D. But if Vontae continues at the level he reached by the end of last season (and if he plays all 16 games) he could get pretty close. And then the Colts should have the inside track to keep him if they still want him.
Plus it's not hard to make the case that Vontae was the last piece of the puzzle that got the Colts to the playoffs in Luck's first year. That alone might be worth it for the confidence and energy it gives this young team even if you can't put a number on it.
Incidentally, Vontae in his three years in Miami put up AVAR of 11. Miami drafted him #25 which has expected AVAR of 14.1. So Miami got most of the expected AVAR for Vontae in just three years and then traded him for another expected 9.2 AVAR from an even cheaper rookie. From a strictly numerical perspective you could say Miami "won" that trade. However, as a few people pointed out, given the choice between keeping Vontae Davis and drafting Jamar Taylor, wouldn't you rather just keep Vontae? Yet another way that numbers don't tell the whole story.
Also - can't believe I missed this at first - the Colts second round pick was #54 not #46 (worth 9.2 rather than 10.2).
Quick nitpick: You mention the AV of the #46 pick is 10.2 through the first five seasons. I assume you're referencing Chase Stuart's chart (http://www.footballperspective.com/draft-value-chart/). Keep in mind that chart subtracts the first two points of AV each season (because AV of 2 for the year is roughly just-a-guy level of play). Vontae's adjusted AV thus far in his career is 13, not 21, but he's only been playing for four seasons, not five.
@NateWalton Grigson had guys he wanted and he paid what he thought he needed to pay to get them to sign now. He's a guy who had about $40 mil to spend and he acted like it but still kept enough future flexibility to deal with Luckageddon in three years. Mission accomplished.
@GregC I'm sure Irsay preferred Luck all along. Everyone knew he preferred Luck. It was like the worst-kept secret in sports history. But he didn't prematurely close the door on RG3, nor did he cut the nuts off his new GM by taking the decision completely out of Grigson's hands. I thought these were good things.
Irsay saying he had "no idea" who they would draft was waaay stretching the truth but getting all jilted-lover about it is unfair. What would he accomplish by publicly confirming his choice in advance, other than satisfying our curiosity?
@GregC I'm not sure why you say Irsay was lying. It's not like he carved the decision in stone and sealed it in a bank vault for three months. If he could have changed his mind at any time then the decision wasn't made yet.
Even if Irsay always preferred to cut Peyton - even if he STRONGLY preferred it - so what? He took all the time allowed to him to gather every piece of relevant information before making it final. With millions of dollars riding on one decision the man is allowed to take his time, and he's not obligated to open his whole deliberation to the world.