I never said that their program/system was the only thing that determined whether a player was good or bad, but I said it's a factor. I think Gordon was worth a 2nd round pick, he'll probably be solid but I don't think he's a superstar. We will see if he can be a factor catching the ball out of the backfield, I know they keep showing that he's working on it. The only 2014 oline rankings for NCAA I can really find has Wisconsin rating pretty highly in most categories. http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaaol
I'd say tied for 12th with Miss St is pretty high, particularly when you consider the top 10 there. Good company. Edit: It does appear they were better at pass pro though, looking at those stats anyway.
It is getting almost funny how badly some of the reports about the Dolphins are...PFF and the.rest of them can go take a long walk off of a short pier.
I read an interesting article that scientifically proved that skeptics in the presence of psychic mediums mucked up their psychic abilities to a degree. Well, I see player prejudice to be roughly correlative. Even I brought up the history of Wisconsin's backs underwhelming in the NFL. Whether it's accurate or not, it still has a negative/skeptical effect on the player. Which is why Rafi and CK get so defensive, because they presumably have much better insight. They view it probably as an unnecessary scourge, that mars people ignorantly or lazily. Nothing worse, I imagine, when a sea of prejudice brings down what you thought was a supremely talented player. Only to hear those same people filled with this prejudice say,"See, I told you so..."
The front office probably "underrates" him too, good chance they would've taken Gurley at 14 if he was there.
I think what's lost in this discussion is they're ranking RB corps as a whole. Yeah, we have Lamar Miller, but the rest aren't exactly proven. 't
Whoa this thread turned into a cluster****....guess it's my fault lol. anyway, back to the list, you could argue Miami should be slotted at 17 above San Francisco and Carolina... but at #19 and 20 you got St. Louis and the Jets and they both have better backfields...so that's why I say you can't really argue the ranking much.
Agree, depending on how much a person is trying t pretend to know what's what. Like a professional being paid, or a draft website or some such. Also, I totally agree with the Tedford compared to College Name point. The Missouri TE thing is just shorthand for me not wanting to look deeper, but may have some vercatiy based on the same coach or the same system for both prospects... not the name of the school though. Thing is, I don't get paid to spend time staying up to date on intra-school coaching and system changes, so I take shortcuts and sometimes my knowledge is out of date or inaccurate. Perhaps I am part of the problem by propagating these perceptions.
Boy, I remember back in the day when the media loved the Miami Dolphins. I sure don't know what in the hell is going on with the media now, and why they all seem to dog us. Well, come on Miami, make them all eat their words, and make them all kiss your a$$ before you even give them the time of day.
Nah, the author even apologetically acknowledges that he hates these types of collumns. I just threw it on the board like a monkey throwing feces. Just wanted more threads to look at...
Fixed. Sorry, thought your media rant had its genesis from opening post article... Doesn't PFF present it's findings as if wielded by unbiased robots? Still say the better ocd fantasy writers offer the most detailed and comprehensive analysis.
Yards per carry isn't a very good measure of RB performance. It just gives an incomplete picture of what the player did. But Miller's 5 ypc last year seems to be pretty indicative of his season. Here' an interesting post: http://www.footballperspective.com/running-back-heat-maps/ I'd love to know how that compares across history because that sounds crazy. That should be the new definition of consistency for a running back. Here's another post looking at running backs last year. As an experiment he looked at how many of the best rushing attempts you could take away from a player to make him league average: http://www.footballperspective.com/take-away-his-x-best-carries-and-hes-average/ So again, Miller wasn't inflating his numbers with long runs that didn't mean much. He was consistently getting above average yardage. That's probably a significant part of why the offense was able to score despite the relative dink and dunk nature of the passing game.
I'm fine with this, but what happens if you try and take that and turn around and tell someone else he's wrong, based on what you know and admit to be inferior research and rationale? If you do that, I think you just sort of have to be prepared for someone to come out of the woodwork and lay some lessons on you that aren't going to be particularly pleasant.
Oh yeah, that could bring up a debate. I wouldn't tell someone they were wrong, for instance, in thinking Missou COULD produce a good NFL prospect but to overcome my bias at this point, I'd be looking at the film/reports to see if this particular player was different from the prior ones: had he been used differently and developed to be ready for the NFL, was he displaying good blocking skills, even in flashes and even if under-utilized by the scheme, etc.
The problem is basing it on the school rather than on the prospect. Those who base it on the school usually are looking at a school's tendency to produce stats at a position. Mizzou TEs or Wisconsin RBs tend to produce stats and people who base too much on stats tend to over rate them and teams tend to over draft them. I haven't touted any past Mizzou TEs or past Wisconsin RBs (before Gordon) as good NFL prospects b/c I focus more on the skills than on the stats. It would be just as silly to say that the next Stanford QB will be good b/c Luck was. The point is that saying a player will be good or bad in the NFL b/c a past player from that school was good or bad is just a stupid thing to say.
Right... the one way that the school REALLY comes up, even with your approach (which I happen to agree with) is in strength of competition. Watching film of a Div III guy and gleaning something from how they perform relative to their opposition is different than vs Div I talent. That said, if you're good at talent eval, I am sure you can still see the inherent skill level of the individual. Like, does he do certain technical things well, are his natural athletic traits translating to how he performs on the field, etc. I think that's why small school talent are considered 'gems' or 'acorns' of whatever, because you are taking more risk in assessing them. Drafting a Div I guy is like what buying IBM used to be: you're less likely to get fired. Drafting a player from a lesser known program with lesser competition could get you fired, if you use 'too high' a pick. I sort of veered away from your original point there, but I do agree that scouting the individual is what matters, generally.
And that's most definitely why he's considered a "secret superstar" by some...he's not peeling off long runs for TDs all year, he's just been remarkably consistent (which many of us didn't see coming...shows what we know). If he can continue to improve and Ajayi can be even half as good as his billing...sheesh.
Sometimes the system makes it difficult to project a player to the next level. I remember that with Rodgers I finally conceded that I had no idea where to project him. The Tedford QB history made me leery and he looked so mechanical that I couldn't figure out how he'd play at the next level. That uncertainty made me drop him on my board, but it wasn't b/c I saw something bad (or good). It was that felt very unsure about how to project him at the next level.
I remember Tedford crusading to convince teams this kid had a good deep ball. That was one knock I remember there being about Tedford QB's. Unless I am mis-remembering. Question, Raf, when you were a paid scout (you were, right?) did you ever get pressure from above/outside that got in the way of you being 100% true to your own feelings on a prospect in your recommendations?
I worked for an agent so the only pressure I got was to find a way to help him sell how the player fit into a team's system. But it wasn't really about being dishonest b/c teams tended to form their own opinions about players from tapes we sent. If they liked something it wasn't my job to tell them they were wrong. Mostly my job was to scout a player and tell the agent if this guy had NFL potential.
Sounds fun. You have any players you''re proud of discovering for the agent, or at least were memorable scouting experiences? (also, now I know who to ask about whether players fit a scheme or not)
He was not a big agent by any means so we were mostly looking at fringe NFL talent, but the best guy I (or we) arguably "discovered" was Doug Gabriel out of UCF.
Back to running back tandems, the reason Miller is so low is because there is no evidence the Dolphins will lean on Miller to shoulder a big load. So we're talking 15-20 carries a game, if things don't change. So you need to look to #2 to see how well the pair will do.
