First, using team offensive yards to prove the value of someone receiving the ball seems like an extraordinarily broad brush to paint with. Not only ST/field position, but the offense gaining an early lead, PI calls, or bad weather all affect offensive yards. Too many variables to prove a correlation, IMO.
Even the stats listed above - Finley trumped all the 'JAGS' so I don't get your point.
I'm really not a huge Finley homer - I thought he was pretty solid, the team was better off with than w/o him, but I never felt he was the same after 2010. I'm just saying I disagree with how you're trying to make your case.
Originally Posted by: musccy
The total offense yard stat [attempts to] measure Finley’s impact on overall offensive production and yes there are too many variables to "prove" my argument. To remove most of the variables you'd have to do a play by play thing. Heck, like i said Finley played only 62% of snaps maybe in a game where the O only gained 300 yards, 299 were gained when Finley was playing; that said:
I don’t give a flying hoot about whether a TE is a good receiver; he must be a COMPLETE player to make the offense more potent, which is the ONLY thing that matters. Ed West was infinitely better than Finley and limiting your opinion to receiving stats might lead to a misunderstanding of the truth. In Finley’s “best” year [2011] he had 5 penalties; 11 drops [12% DR] and his blocking was horrible. Wouldn’t we have been better with a TE with half the yards on a few more than half the targets, 0 or 1 drops, 0 or 1 penalties, that caused 3 less sacks, 15 less pressures and 30 less bad run blocks? And don’t forget: the other 40 or so targets don’t go away; they go to a WR or RB. So When Finley is replaced by, say Ed West, West catches half the yards, which is almost made up by the other targets to WRs and RBs; you don’t get the drops or stupid penalties; the passing game improves because the QB is better protected; and the run game improves because you got 6 blockers instead of 5. And whadda ya know: with Ed West the offense is 40-60 yards per game better than with Finley. Of course, Finley’s idiocy and bad blocking was countermanded by MM to a degree by allowing him on the field only 62% of the time.
Finley didn’t “trump” the JAGS. My “point” is that even in receiving, Finley’s greatest strength, he BARELY out performed these LESS THAN JAGS. And if you adjust for the 10 games that the less than JAGs had w/o AR, which accounts for about 20-25% of their target opportunities, it could be argued that Finley was out performed by the less than JAGs in receiving, his only strength.
Just like with Finley: the number of drops, penalties, bad blocks and INCs and INTs thrown because of a bad routes run will be the judge of whether Cook is valuable, whether the stat sheet shows him with 300 or 1000 yards receiving in 2016. How’s that for getting back on topic?😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂