Before everyone goes crazy, it isimportant to realize that the Vikings and Cowboys are probably two of the bestteams in the league, and there is no shame in losing to either. That said,there is shame in getting pantsed by elite teams, and the Packers werethoroughly pantsed on Sunday. The run defense was easily overcome by a trulygreat offensive line, and Dak Prescott operated like a veteran outside ofinexplicably dropping the ball for no reason at one point. The Packers’previously stout defense wore down and injuries to the secondary continued toplague them.
Perhaps most troubling, Mike McCarthy entered the game with justone active running back, and we now know that Eddie Lacy was in no condition tobe playing, though he played valiantly.
That said, I’m not sure we needto rehash all of the issues that arose in this game. Most of them, like AaronRodgers occasional bouts of baffling inaccuracy, and a wide receiver corps thatis simply over-matched in most instances, have all been said before. What I’dlike to do instead is look at the fallout from the many injuries, examine oneof the bright spots from the Cowboy game, and introduce a new statistic Iinvented the other day.
Speed Score isn’t complicated;it’s merely shorthand for telling you how fast a player is given his size.Running a 4.4 second 40-yard dash at 175 pounds isn’t really the same as doingit at 225 pounds. Knile Davis basically broke Speed Score by running a 4.3740-yard dash at 227 pounds. In short, he ran faster thanalmost all wide receivers while weighing only 4 pounds less than Eddie Lacy.Knile Davis is a special athlete.I developed a foolproof two-stepscouting formula over the last decade. The first thing you have to figure outis if a prospect meets the minimum physical requirements for his position.Davis easily does that, as previously mentioned.
Shields was placed on injuredreserve with the potential to return this season, and while the team couldcertainly use him I hope he sits the rest of this season out. Shields hassuffered at least five concussions and they seem to be happening with greaterregularity. When healthy Shields is a great cover corner, and the secondaryhasn’t been the same without him as Damarious Randall and Quinten Rollins havestruggled (and suffered injuries in their own right).
Montgomery did put the ball onthe ground a few times and I would like to see his carries kept to a minimum inthe future for that reason, but as a receiver out of the backfield he wasoutstanding. Rodgers actually didn’t have terrible numbers on Sunday (thoughthey weren’t exactly great either) and he has Montgomery to thank for it. Theyoung, stout receiver caught 10 of his 12 targets for 98 yards, and 9 of his 10receptions were successful, (meaning the Packers were more likely to pick up afirst down after the play than they were before the play). That kind ofefficiency has been lacking from the Packer passing game, and if they don’tincrease Montgomery’s role going forward they are making a huge mistake. When the Packers took Montgomeryout of Stanford I envisioned a sort of strange hybrid of Randall Cobb andAnquan Boldin, and that comparison now strikes me as accurate. If the Packerscan feature Montgomery in the short game going forward they may finally be ableto unlock the outside receivers, and if Rodgers knows he has a reliable safetyvalve, perhaps he will finally settle down and return to making fundamentallysound throws. I hope he sees 12-15 targets a game going forward.
Before I wrote about football, Iwrote about baseball, and I still think about a lot of sports in baseballterms. One of the biggest early battles of the Sabermetric movement was againstthe concept of batting average, because batting average treats all hitsequally, and treats walks as a negative. It is now common knowledge that OnBase Percentage (or On Base Average if , if you want to be pedantic) is farsuperior to batting average, and the Slugging Percentage fills in the blanksthat OBP leaves out. Combining OBP and Slugging Percentage (SLG) gives us a morecomplete picture in the form of OPS (literally On Base Plus Slugging), and eventhe Miller Park scoreboard has abandoned batting average in favor of OPS.OPS in its raw form isn’t perfect(OBP is worth more than SLG and in a perfect world we weight them accordingly),but it’s a good concept. It tells us two things:
1. How good is this player at avoiding outs.
Avoiding outs gives yourteammates more opportunities to hit, which increases scoring. Hitting home runsas opposed to singles accomplishes in one plate appearance what might otherwisetake three. Football is a very differentsport, but in some important ways it’s also quite similar. Avoiding outs isanalogous to picking up first down. Both provide your team with additionalopportunities to play on offense. That said, dinking and dunking your way downa football field comes with risk, as eventually someone will make a mistake, orfumble, or throw an interception if given enough opportunities to do so.Hitting big plays for big chunks of yardage reduces your risk on a drive bydrive basis, just as hitting a home run means not having to rely on stringingmultiple hits together.
If you want something that isn’tas opaque as QBR or as seemingly nonsensical as Quarterback Rating, you coulddo worse. Rodgers is the 6th worst in football so far, and will go intoThursday with a worse number than Brian Hoyer’s respectable .894. Hoyer isn’t agood quarterback by any stretch, but if the Packer secondary is still inshambles, don’t be surprised if he improves on that number.
Starks and Lacy Will Miss SeriousTime
Speed Score isn’t complicated;it’s merely shorthand for telling you how fast a player is given his size.Running a 4.4 second 40-yard dash at 175 pounds isn’t really the same as doingit at 225 pounds. Knile Davis basically broke Speed Score by running a 4.3740-yard dash at 227 pounds. In short, he ran faster thanalmost all wide receivers while weighing only 4 pounds less than Eddie Lacy.Knile Davis is a special athlete.I developed a foolproof two-stepscouting formula over the last decade. The first thing you have to figure outis if a prospect meets the minimum physical requirements for his position.Davis easily does that, as previously mentioned.
The second criteria is todetermine if that player is actually good at football. Here, Davis has someissues. He tends to miss holes, frequently running into the backs of his ownblockers. He doesn’t track the ball well in the passing game and he has poorhands both receiving, and in ball security. His pass blocking is brutal aswell. In short, Davis can run straight ahead, very fast, and not much else.This isn’t really a gamblebecause the Packers gave up almost nothing to get him, and it’s often worthgambling on insane athletes, but there’s a good chance that Davis disappoints.After all, he started as the primary backup to Jamaal Charles, and waseventually passed by both Charcandrick West and Spencer Ware. There is a goodreason he was freely available.
That said, he will get a big opportunity in hisfirst game against a pathetic Bear defense while running behind one of theleague’s best offensive lines. The Packers also activated practice squadrunning back Don Jackson and given Davis’ tendency to fumble, and struggle inpass protection, Jackson may really be the guy to keep an eye on.
Sam Shields
Ladarius Gunter can oftenhold his own, but the prospect of Gunter and Demetri Goodson facing theiropponents’ two best receivers is not comforting, but every team deals withinjuries and the Packer safeties are still second to none. Hopefully Rollinsand Randall return soon, but at least the Bears aren’t terribly formidable inthe passing game.
Here’s hoping that Sam Shields gets well soon, and does whatis best for Sam Shields.
The Bright Spot: Ty Montgomery
QB-OPS
1. How good is this player at avoiding outs.
2. How much this player does with the opportunities he is given.
Avoiding outs gives yourteammates more opportunities to hit, which increases scoring. Hitting home runsas opposed to singles accomplishes in one plate appearance what might otherwisetake three. Football is a very differentsport, but in some important ways it’s also quite similar. Avoiding outs isanalogous to picking up first down. Both provide your team with additionalopportunities to play on offense. That said, dinking and dunking your way downa football field comes with risk, as eventually someone will make a mistake, orfumble, or throw an interception if given enough opportunities to do so.Hitting big plays for big chunks of yardage reduces your risk on a drive bydrive basis, just as hitting a home run means not having to rely on stringingmultiple hits together.
Completion percentage is a goodproxy for OBP. If you can reliably string even short, low risk passes together,you will reliably pick up first downs, and keep possession. Yards Per Attemptis a decent proxy for slugging percentage. If a quarterback is adept atroutinely hitting big plays it will be reflected in this statistic. Afterplaying around with some numbers I was able to combine these two statisticsinto one, and by using a few constants, it now looks very much like itsbaseball equivalent. I call it QBOPS, or Q-BOPS when talking to myself aboutit. You can see the 2016 leaderboard and Aaron Rodgers’ career numbers here.
Rodgers’ career high for a seasonwas 1.010 in 2011 (David Ortiz-like), but he’s fallen all the way to .784 sofar this season (which is more like Pittsburgh Pirate right fielder GregoryPolanco). It also, somewhat disturbingly follows a bell curve from 2008,peaking in 2011, and slowly descending into the present day. While this metricdoes ignore interceptions and touchdown passes, it captures the vast majorityof useful things quarterbacks do, and touchdown passes can actually be hugelydeceiving. Cam Newton, for instance, loses a lot of short touchdown passesbecause he is so good at running the ball in. It would be nice to incorporatepicks into the equation, but for now it serves as a nice, easy number thatalmost anyone can understand upon seeing it. Close to 1.000 is excellent,closer to .700 is bad. Your current top five are:
Top 5 2016 QBOPS
Matt Ryan-1.053Dak Prescott - 0.943
Sam Bradford - 0.938
Philip Rivers - 0.936
Andy Dalton - 0.929
Bottom 5 2016 QBOPS:
Jameis Winston - 0.767Joe Flacco - 0.763
Ryan Fitzpatrick - 0.762
Brock Osweiler - 0.756
Blaine Gabbert - 0.733
If you want something that isn’tas opaque as QBR or as seemingly nonsensical as Quarterback Rating, you coulddo worse. Rodgers is the 6th worst in football so far, and will go intoThursday with a worse number than Brian Hoyer’s respectable .894. Hoyer isn’t agood quarterback by any stretch, but if the Packer secondary is still inshambles, don’t be surprised if he improves on that number.
The Bears
Very quickly, the Bears arestill a work in progress, but running back Jordan Howard and wide receiverCameron Meredith have made them entertaining. Meredith impressed in his firststarting role with Alshon Jeffery and Kevin White injured, and as a big-bodiedred zone target he will likely stick around for awhile. The Packers are morebanged up than the Bears, who may have their best defensive player PernellMcPhee back as well, and on a short week anything can happen.
