SB Nation User Blog: PozDispenser

Favre a Viking

PozDispenser — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:33:58 -0000

Favre a Viking

Georgia DT Corvey Irvin visits Bills

PozDispenser — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:33:17 -0000

Georgia DT Corvey Irvin visits Bills

Georgia DT Corvey Irvin met with Bills officials on a pre-draft visit.

Corvey Irvin scouting report

Quick Hypothetical

PozDispenser — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 04:15:12 -0000

Tomorrow we're going to see the top 3 DE's on the board (Brown, Orakpo, Maybin) show their stuff, both at DE and LB. Chances are that one of those three will be on the board for us at 11. Theres no indication that I've seen (except for the pleas from this board) to cut Kelsay or Denney, so presumedly they will here next year. How would you feel about drafting one of those top 3 to play Sam LB?

Advantages:

1. We significantly upgrade our size and athleticism at the Sam position.

2. We add a player who could theoretically be extremely dangerous as a blitzer from a two point stance.

3. We can drop said player to the line on obvious passing downs.

4. It would compensate for the major perceived weakness of each of these players (i.e. size).

Obviously this is based on a whole lot of suppositions. It would require these folks to show both the athletic ability and the ability to transition to a brand new position, but it has been done.

Thoughts?

Poll

Brown/Maybin/Orakpo at SAM?

That seems like a pretty reasonable plan.

12 votes

I don't think so. They won't be able to make that transition/they would be out of position.

17 votes

I knew there was a reason I never liked you.

3 votes

32 votes | Poll has closed

Combine Interviews/Footage

PozDispenser — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:16:03 -0000

Combine Interviews/Footage

Hey folks,

I know a bunch of you checked this out last year, but for those that haven't. The Falcons keep a pretty extensive video archive of the goings on at the combine. Right now there are some TE interviews (Pettigrew and Ingram), and they'll add as they go.

Draft History Analysis (Warning: A Bit Long)

PozDispenser — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:58:28 -0000

As you all know, in the last few weeks we've really started to get the draft talk in full swing. We've had a few discussions about how to draft, the quality of our front office's talent evaluation, etc..., and its got me thinking about how good teams draft. Are there patterns? Do they spend a lot of picks at one position? Are they able to find talent consistently in the later rounds? So I decided to break down the 2004-2006 drafts of consistently good teams, and compare them to ours. I chose 2004-2006, because I consider these players to be the core of your team. You should know by season 5 or 6 that you have an elite player, and after 3 you should know that you have at least a starter/quality player.

I seperated the players into two categories: 1. Elite players, and 2. Starters/Quality contributors. Here's where the extremely unscientific part comes in: Its mostly based on my own judgment. I think it safe to say however, that as a starter on a consistently exceptional team, you definitely have something to offer any club. For example, I included Nick Kaczur for the Patriots. I consider him to be a marginal starter at best, but he would be an exceptional player in a reserve role. I will leave out a few players that technically are stil on the rosters, but I buried in the depth chart. Also note that this does not take into account undrafted FAs. I don't really have time to factor them all in, but it should be noted that some of these find a lot of talent on the rookie FA wire (the Colts for example, are exceptional at this).

I also threw in some percentages regarding quality picks (only picks that are still on the team) per draft and overall.

Anyways, enough of my yapping-

Basically I looked at eight teams, the four teams in the championship games this year (Cards, Eagles, Steelers and Ravens) and four more teams who have been consistently successful over the last five years or so (Patriots, Giants, Colts and Chargers).

Steelers: 7 starters or elite players, 25 drafted total (28%)

Elite: Ben Roethlisberger- 1/04

Starters: Heath Miller- 1/05, Santonio Holmes- 1/06, Max Starks- 3/04, Bryant McFadden- 2/05. Chris Kemoeatu- 6/05, Willie Colon- 4/06

Yearly: 2004- 2/8 (25%), 2005- 3/8 (37.5%), 2006- 2/9 (22.2%)

Ravens: 6/24 (25%)

Elite: Haloti Ngata- 1/06

Starters: Chris Chester- 2/05, Mark Clayton- 1/05, Jason Brown- 4/05, Adam Terry- 2/05, Dawan Landry- 5/06

Yearly: 2004- 0/7 (0%), 2005- 3/7 (42.9%), 2006- 3/10 (30%)

Cardinals: 6/21 (28.6%)

Elite: Larry Fitzgerald- 1/04, Darnell Dockett- 3/04

Starters: Karlos Dansby- 2/04, Antrell Rolle- 1/05, Deuce Lutui- 2/06, Antonio Smith- 5/04

Yearly: 2004- 4/7 (57.1%), 2005- 1/7 (14.3%), 2006- 1/7 (14.3%)

Eagles: 6/29 (20.7%)

Elite: Shawn Andrews- 1/04, Trent Cole- 5/05, Brodrick Bunkley- 1/06

Starters: Mike Patterson- 1/05, Todd Herremans- 4/05, Chris Gocong- 3/06

Yearly: 2004- 1/10 (10%), 2005- 3/11 (27.3%), 2006- 2/8 (25%)

Patriots: 7/25 (28%)

Elite: Vince Wilfork- 1/04, Logan Mankins- 1/05

Starters: Ellis Hobbs- 3/05, Ben Watson- 1/04, Matt Cassell- 7/05, James Sanders- 4/05, Nick Kaczur- 3/05

Yearly: 2004- 2/8 (25%), 2005- 5/7 (71.4%), 2006- 0/10 (0%)

Colts: 7/26 (26.9%)

Elite: Bob Sanders- 2/04

Starters: Joseph Addai- 1/06, Marlin Jackson- 1/05, Kelvin Hayden- 2/05, Freddie Keiaho- 3/06, Charlie Johnson- 6/06, Antoine Bethea 6/06

Yearly: 2004- 1/9 (11%), 2005- 2/10 (20%), 4/7 (57.1%)

Chargers: 12/26 (46.2%)

Elite: Philip Rivers- 1/04, Shawne Merriman- 1/05, Antonio Cromartie- 1/06

Starters: Igor Olshansky- 2/04, Nick Hardwick- 3/04, Shaun Phillips- 4/04, Luis Castillo- 1/05, Vincent Jackson- 2/05, Darren Sproles- 4/05, Marcus McNeil- 2/06, Tim Dobbins- 5/06, Jeromey Clary- 6/06

Yearly: 2004- 4/11 (36.4%), 2005- 4/7 (57.1%), 2006- 4/8 (50%)

Giants: 7/18 (38.9%)

Elite: Chris Snee- 2/04, Justin Tuck- 3/05

Starters: Eli Manning 1/04, Brandon Jacobs- 4/05, Corey Webster- 2/05, Mathias Kiwanuka- 1/06, Barry Cofield- 4/06

Yearly: 2004- 2/7 (28.6%), 2005- 3/4 (75%), 2006- 2/7 (28.6%)

Bills: 5/21 (23.8%)

Elite: None

Starters: Lee Evans- 1/04, Donte Whitner- 1/06, Kyle Williams- 5/06, Brad Butler- 5/06, Duke Preston- 4/05

Yearly: 2004- 1/6 (16.6%), 2005- 1/6 (16.6%), 2006- 3/9 (33.3%)

A Disclaimer: I know most folks will take issue with Preston being on this list. I don't think he's a high quality player either. However, I'm sure there some other players who are listed above who aren't particularly good either, but I haven't watched them play enough to know it. So just to be safe I listed players who started a majority of the games at their position this year on the basis of their play on the field. I left Simpson off due his (repeated) benching during the year. I almost put Ellison on, but his promotion wasn't due to his outplaying Crowell, but rather Crowell's bizarre surgery drama.

Conclusions: First, the obvious: The Bills drafts under Donahoe in the middle of the decade were abysmal. We have only 4 of the 12 players drafted on 2004 and 2005 still on the roster: Evans, Losman, Parrish, and Preston. Losman is certainly gone this year, and conceivably, so is Preston. Which means we would have a good WR and a good PR to show for two entire drafts. The Chargers unearthed twice as many each year as we found over that two year stretch (just in the draft obviously).

Secondly, also somewhat obvious: The Bills have been terrible at unearthing elite talent, and this is generally due to the poor job we do at the top of the draft. If you look through above, while many teams have found contributors and even very good players in the later rounds, a majority of the elite players are first rounders.

Third. These teams are excellent at drafting for the O and D lines. Of the 58 players listed, 29 play on the lines (compared to 9 total between RB, WR and TE). They combined to draft 73 in that time frame, which means that they hit on a lineman roughly 2 out of every 5 times. The Bills have hit on 3 of 9, or 2 of 9 if Preston is removed. Either way, we hit below their average; between 1 of 5 and 1 of 3.

The Good News: By far the best year of the three I examined was the first year under the Jauron/Levy/Modrak regime. We got two very good values for the O and D lines with Butler and Williams. We have at least a solid talent (if well below expectation) in Whitner and potential from Youboty. We can even throw in some good special teams play and a solid backup with Ellison.

Overall, the above teams averaged finding 2-3 higher quality players per draft. We seem to have accomplished that in 2006, and signs are good that 2007 may be the same (Lynch, Poz, and TE). While we have missed at the top of the draft in the past, we appear to have certainly hit with Lynch (although I don't consider him elite yet), and McKelvin has shown flashes. Only time will tell.

Ok, I'm exhausted. Was this at all helpful? Pointless? Feel free to weigh in.

The Call

PozDispenser — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:23:15 -0000

We've talked about this on the a few seperate threads, but I feel we needed a post just focusing on it. In the interest of full disclosure let me say that I thought the it was a ridiculous play call. There have been some folks who have defended the call (if not the execution) expertly enough that I felt we should take a closer look at our opinions. Maybe this is just setting up a brand new pointless argument, but I hope we'll all at least feel better. I want to examine the possible outcomes that could be reasonably expected and weigh the costs and benefits.

Here goes nothing...

Situation: 2nd and 5. Ball on the BUF 27 yard line. 2:06 on the clock. Jets have used one timeout.

The Call: I-Form, TE (Derek Fine) strongside. Both Evans and Reed ran crossing ran drag patterns across the face of the LBs. Fine looked to be running a seam pattern. Play action to Lynch. It looks like McIntyre was to chip Bryan Thomas on the edge (number 99) and then release into the flat. He was picked up by Lynch.

It seems to me that Losman's initial read was not McIntyre in the flat, but rather Fine down the seam. This would've been dictated by coverage. The LBs were playing underneath on the crossing routes, and presumedly Fine would've been open behind them. To his credit, I believe that Losman felt the pressure from his blind side. His checkdown was McIntyre, who had not released and Losman clearly did not have a clean throwing lane. Losman rolled to get that lane, and to allow McIntyre time to open up. The rest you know.

If the Jets did not suspect a pass, they reacted very well to it. Note that David Harris (52) did not blitz until it was certain to be a pass. One would expect the LBs to attack the line of scrimmage, which they did not. Clearly the Jets guessed right

Scenarios: There's now way Schonert could know he would be out-called, so let's look at the situation itself and determine possible outcomes:

1. The Jets buy the play action (or if we somehow complete it anyways). First down, maybe more. If the Jets bit, then one or both of the crossing would've been open, and maybe Fine as well. The result would be a first down.

2. The Jets don't buy it, and Losman throws it away. Certainly light year better than what happened, but there was still a problem. There was six seconds before the half. Six seconds is a lot of time in football. Given that the NFL standard for protection is about three seconds, Losman would have to make the remainder with his legs or his arm. If he threw it away beforehand, its very likely that there would still be a second or two on the clock, giving the Jets what amounts to a free timeout.

3. The Jets don't buy it and Losman takes off with it. I have no idea what were the instructions given to Losman before the play, so it could very well be that he was meant to read the LBs and simply tuck and run if it wasn't there. This would most likely take the clock down to two minutes, and hopefully would've resulted in a first down, although positive yardage at all would be a win.

4. The Jets don't buy it and Losman gets sacked. Would most likely take the clock down to two minutes, but a conversion is unlikely on third down.

5. The Jets sell out on a run blitz. I tend to put less weight on this eventuality, because theoretically even Losman could make the read to get the ball out quickly. It does increase the chance of an off target pass which could be intercepted or incomplete. If he was forced to go hot and it was incomplete, it would certainly be before the two minute warning. Again, extra TO for the Jets.

Conclusions: Not sure I've persuaded or dissauded anyone from their stance, but leave me firmly in the 'horrible call' camp. I think the sticking point for me is the amount of time that would've been necessary to run off. With 3, maybe 4 seconds to run off the clock, an incomplete pass most likely would've still taking us to two minute warning. Not so at 6 seconds. It ultimately comes down to a complete gamble: that the Jets would buy the play action. It was an educated guess, and I like that Turk is willing to take chances, but I can't agree with it in light of how well we were running the ball, and the fact that it generally gave us poor options should it not take the Jets by surprise. Not then, not when we had it.

I'm sure this will be contentious, maybe without point, but I felt like we needed it in depth. So discuss!

Five Things

PozDispenser — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:06:03 -0000

I've never done my own FanPost (I feel like I should add a little "trademarked" symbol after that), but I got to workter getting jerked around by the NYC subway for an hour, and felt I needed to spread some positivity to myself and others. I was going to put this all on MARVelous's recent "3 Things" post, but I found I actually had a lot more positive things to say then I assumed I would. So in no particular order...

1) Trent Edwards. Like many of you, I've spent more than a little time in the last six weeks or so hurling ineffectual insults at our struggling QB (Note: Pointing out how poorly they're playing to your TV set seems to rarely make a difference. I keep doing it anyways). But what I've seen, in addition to endless dump passes, is a command of a lot of the little things you need to be good QB in this league. Trent uses his cadence and hard count very effectively (I'm specifically thinking about the Ravens game last year and the Chiefs game this year). As Jaworski likes to see, he processes information quickly (we saw the contrast sharply with Losman the last two weeks). Most importantly, we've seen Trent march the Bills down at the end of the game and put them in a position to win. We obviously didn't win all those games, but that says a lot about his calm and focus under pressure.

Lest anyone think that the process is taking too long for Edwards, let me direct you to the career of one Drew Brees. His second year as a starter he started 11 games, here's the pertinent stats:

2,108 yards, 5.9 yards per attempt, 57.6% completion percentage, 11 TDs, 15 INTs

Edwards:

2.378 yards, 7.3 yards per attempt, 66.0% completion percentage, 10 TDs, 10 INTs.

Am I approaching this scientifically? Wouldn't dream of it. I am however, pointing out that I'd be much happier with '08 Edwards than '03 Brees. And Brees turned out a little ok.

2) The Defense. We all know they've had some issues, but they've also made major progress in some areas. Let's throw a bunch of numbers at y'all:

3rd Down percentage: 36%. Aside from the Patriots game, we've actually gotten teams off of the field on 3rd down. We're 9th in the league and almost 10% better than last season.

20+ Yard Completions: 28. Generally, we don't get beaten deep. We're 4th in the NFL (although we're middle of the pack in 40+ yarders). We were dead last in 2007 (55).

Yards Per Carry: 4.0. Not a surprise probably, what with the acquistion of Stroud and the emergence of Kyle Williams, but important to point out nonetheless. We're only 16th in the league, but more importantly, we're giving up about half a yard less per carry from last year (4.4).

I might also add that we're significantly better in total yards per game (362.9 in '07 to 313.2 this year), passing yards per game (238.4 to 203.1) and rushing (124.6 to 110.2).

3) The Offense. As ugly as it has sometimes gotten here, we've made a lot of progress here too. Even more numbers:

Points: 21.5. Not exactly an awe-inspiring figure, and only 22nd in the league, however- we were 30th last year and are scoring almost a touchdown more (15.8). Huzzah!

Avg. Yards Per Pass Attempt: 7.3. Often touted as a real indicator of an effective passing game, currently we're comfortably over that magic number 7. We also happen to be 11th in the league up from 23rd last year (6.4). Even with all those check downs, our downfield passing game actually exists this year! Yippie! More proof: We have 37 passes of 20+ yards or more, which is 10th in the league and 4 more than last year with 3 games to go. Bueno!

Completion Percentage: 65.1%. Even though I'm skeptical at how much a completion percentage says about a passing game in the 21st century, this is much better than last year. We're 6th in the league, up from 23rd last year (59.1%). Combine that with the average per pass attempt, there's a lot to be optimistic about in the passing game.

4) Blake Costanzo. I had to give the man some love. Man has two forced fumbles on kickoff returns and a bunch of special teams tackles. All this while being saddled with unlikely name of "Blake Costanzo".

5) Youth. I know "potential" has become a dirty word, but we have a boatload of key players who are still learning/entering their prime. We have only 14 players older than 27, and only 7 players who are 30 or older (Stroud, Moorman, Whittle, Lindell, Schobel, Royal, and Denney).