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T.O. Scares Everybody

September 17, 2008

In the early days of training camp, I mentioned that the workouts could be summarized with the phrase, “T.O. Beats Everybody.”  No player had a better, more productive camp than the man whose middle name is Eldorado.

The Caddy made Philadelphia’s ballyhooed corners look like refurbished Hyundais in the first half Monday night.  He not only beat Sheldon Brown and Lito Sheppard, he humiliated them.  Owens didn’t catch a pass in the second half, but his early level of dominance changed Philly’s second half game plan, and aided Dallas’ comeback.

Jim Johnson’s initial strategy was to blitz Tony Romo with some frequency.  On Romo’s 14 first half attempts, the Eagles blitzed five or more men on 6 plays, or 43% of the time.  The Eagles rushed four men on the remaining 8 plays.

The Eagles initially tried playing Owens with a single corner, but neither Brown nor Sheppard could stay wtih him.  He ran Brown off on a 14 yard curl route, then left both Sheppard and safety Sean Considine more than five yards in his wake on a 72 yard bomb.

Johnson showed some brass putting FS Brian Dawkins one-on-one against Owens in the second quarter. T.O. looked insulted after he easily beat Dawkins on a 4 yard slant for a touchdown.

The play that probably changed Johnson’s thinking came on Dallas’ next series.  The Cowboys had run the ball on every one of its first seven 1st-down plays and the Eagles had stuffed Marion Barber, walking eight and sometimes nine men into the box.   Romo’s 4 yarder to T.O. had caught them off guard, and probably explains why Dawkins was left alone against Owens — the Eagles were expecting another run.

Now, facing 1st and ten on his 20, Jason Garrett called his second 1st-down pass, sending Owens on a stop and go at Brown.  T.O. was again more than five yards behind the corner when he caught the ball, which he took 55 yards to the Eagles’ 25.  The play was called back by a holding penalty, but it affected the remainder of the game.

Johnson had to give the corners covering Owens deep help.  When the second half started the Eagles began playing a lot of cover two, with a safety always rotating to Owens’ side.  This meant the Eagles now were playing with seven in the box, and Marion Barber began to find running room.  He had only 14 first half yards on six carries, and he topped that on his first 2nd-half carry, a bend play around right end for 18 yards.  He gained 49 second half yards on 12 carries, a far more respectable 4.1 average.

Cover two also compromised Philly’s rush.  Thirteen of the Eagles first fourteen second-half pass calls rushed four men, a meager 7% average. The Cowboys’ line handled these rushes with relative ease, giving Romo time to work his backs and tight ends in the middle of the field against Philly linebackers.  When the Eagles went to man coverage, they still tracked T.O. with two players.  Owens cleared out the right side of the Eagles defense on a third quarter play from the Philly 17, giving Barber the space to catch a touchdown against the overmatched MLB Stewart Bradley.

That’s Why They Pay Him the Big Money

Amazingly, Garrett had the perfect play for the one time in that 14-pass sequence where Johnson blitzed.  He called a screen to Barber on a 1st down play where Johnson rushed six men.  Barber followed three blockers along the far sideline for 25 yards.  Johnson again backed off; he would blitz just twice more in the game.

In a fitting end to his evening, Owens beat the new Eagle Asante Samuel, drawing an interference call in the end zone that set up Barber’s game winning run.  T.O. left the field knowing he had gotten the better of all three Philly corners.

Owens appears to have found a 6th gear at age 34, one that makes good cornerbacks look stupid.  He not only beats everybody, he flat-out scares everybody, top-tier coordinators included.

Note: Updated offensive stats will be posted later today.

Written by Rafael Vela · Filed Under Wrapup | 39 Comments 

Who Is the Best Cornerback: Do YPA’s Mimic the SAT?

July 14, 2008

The third story in BSR’s series exploring the question, “who is the best NFL cornerback,” looks at the value of K.C. Joyner’s YPA statistic. Does it measure innate cornerbacking skill, or does it measure performance?

The Educational Testing Service, the creators of the SAT exam, long maintained that their test was uncoachable. It, like all aptitude tests, claimed to measure innate ability, what an individual was capable of achieving, not what a particular student had learned. Therefore, cramming was deemed pointless, since it would not affect a student’s outcome. This belief has been exploded in recent years, as the test has been exposed as having a clear ideological bias.

K.C. Joyner has never claimed that his yards per attempt cornerback stats measure a corner’s aptitude. They are derived from pure empirical study; Joyner looks at tape of each NFL corner each year and measures the number of throws aimed his way, the results of each throw and the number of yards gained against each player. The results would seem transparent.

Nevertheless, readers of this blog reacted to my initial posting of corner YPA averages as if the stat did measure aptitude. Several readers questioned the stats, in part because the top ten CB list did not include Champ Bailey, the Denver corner considered the game’s best by many pundits.

Bailey missed the cut, though not by much (he ranked 14th among CBs with YPAs for every one of the last four seasons). He’s lower because he lacks consistency. Here’s his line, with his overall rank by year in parentheses:

Player-team 2004 2005 2006 2007 Avg.
14. Bailey - Denver
 8.6 (66th) 7.1 (36th) 4.7 (1st) 7.8 (56th) 7.1

As you can see, Bailey’s averages floated in the bottom half in ‘04 and ‘05 before he posted one of the best seasons recorded in ‘06. He dropped back into the bottom half in ‘07, allowing more than three yards more per attempt that year. And it’s not as if Bailey sat on an island most of the game and was then surprised when an opposing QB deigned to throw his way. He was targeted 60 times, only marginally better than counterpart Dre Bly, who saw 78 balls, though Bly’s YPA was an awful 8.8.

Looking at this line, I see a mediocre cornerback, with three fair seasons and one incredible one. But what of that ‘06. Was it a fluke? These number suggest not:

Best single-season YPAs, ‘04-’07 (min. 60 att.)
1. Shawn Springs, Wash. -’04 4.2
2. Dre Bly, Detroit - ‘04 4.4
3. Champ Bailey, Denver - ‘06 4.7
3. - Fred Bennett, Houston - ‘07
 4.7
5. Sheldon Brown, Phil. - ‘04
 4.9

These are the only campaigns by every down corners the past four years to average under five yards per attempt. I think what we might be seeing are a general measure of a corner’s innate capabilities. These are the guys who get 1600s in the CB SATs. In Bailey’s case, he may not be the best cover corner year in and year out but his ‘06 shows that he’s more than able to play at an elite level.

In terms of using YPA as a heuristic, we can see that a YPA in the 4s signifies a sublime season, like a pitcher with an ERA around 2.00 or a hitter with an OPS above 1.300.

So Champ Bailey can be deemed the best corner in the game if we consider peak performance. But isn’t consistency the hallmark of a top player? Would you prefer a guy who can be incredible but plays that way only once a presidential administration, or somebody who can play very well year after year? Compare Bailey to the corners with the two best YPA averages since ‘04 and see how consistency ranks higher than flash:

Player-team 2004 2005 2006 2007 Avg.
1. Springs - Washington
 4.2 (1st) 5.5 (3rd) 6.2 (15th) 6.2 (15th) 5.5
2. Newman - Dallas
 5.8 (8th) 5.8 (7th) 7.1 (29th) 6.1 (14th) 6.2

To answer the question, I’m sure the Denver Broncos are happy to have Bailey on one edge of their defense, but if you ask Dallas fans, they’ll gladly take Terence Newman. He bounced back in ‘07, despite his plantar fascia injury and is a good bet to jump back into the top ten with more help in the Dallas secondary.

Another aspect of YPAs that deserves mention here is how they remake the term “shut down corner.” Fans take this term literally; when a blogger posted Dominique Rogers-Cromartie’s college stats, which showed opponnents completing less than 30% of passes in his direction, another blogger belittled those numbers, saying they didn’t reveal any special performance.

In fact, if an NFL corner posted Rogers-Cromartie’s line on a consistent basis he would get fast-tracked to Canton.

Stopping opponents 50% of the time appears to be the threshold for being considered a shutdown corner. In the last three years only 38 corners have achieved this — 9 in 2005, 17 in 2006 and 12 last season. Since shutdown connotes performance far above 50%, I think that the term be discarded or ignored; shut down corners simply don’t exist.

Only once in that span has a corner topped 60% in success percentage, that coming last year when the Raiders Nnamdi Asomugha posed a 62.9% success rate. Asomugha is the hardest corner to throw against, topping 50% in each of the last three years, the only cornerback to do so.

Might Asomugha then claim to be the best corner? Perhaps, but his YPAs indicate that while it’s hard to complete a throw against him, teams gain large chunks of yards when they do.

The YPA is hardly a perfect cornerback stat, but playing with YPA stats reveals a new cornerback world, one that elevates the steady over the flashy. Corners with 1600 SATs are impressive, but it’s the guys with scores in the 1200 and 1300s, the cornerback nerds who grind day-after-day and year-after-year who have the most success.

Written by Rafael Vela · Filed Under NFL | 12 Comments 

Who Are the Best Cover Corners — 3 Year Averages

July 11, 2008

In part two of the series using K.C. Joyner’s YPA metrics for cornerbacks, I look at the best three year averages for cornerbacks who qualified for ratings in any of the Scientific Football Annuals from 2004 through 2007.

The pool expanded when the threshold was lowered from four to three years. 39 CBs qualified for rankings in the first instance and 64 in this group. Many of the names carry over from the first list, though there are some surprises.

Player-team YPA Avg.
1T. Shawn Springs - Washington 6.0
1T. Deshea Townsend - Pittsburgh 6.0
4T. Ken Lucas - Carolina 6.1
4T. Rod Hood - Arizona 6.1
5. Terence Newman - Dallas 6.3
6. Leigh Bodden - Detroit 6.4
10T. Champ Bailey - Denver 6.5
10T. Fred Smoot - Washington 6.5
10T. Quentin Jammer - San Diego 6.5
10T. Charles Woodson - Green Bay 6.5

Some of the usual suspects are here. Shawn Springs, Deshea Townsend, Ken Lucas, Terence Newman, Quentin Jammer, Fred Smoot and Charles Woodson carry over from the first list.

The must-discussed Champ Bailey shows up, with the more recent weighting increasing the value of his All-World 2006 season.

Who, however, are Rod Hood and Leigh Bodden? Hood was Philly’s nickel back, putting up standout numbers his last two years with the Eagles. They let him go and the Cards are happy to have him. His ‘07 YPA and his three year averages are better than any put up by the better known and much better paid Eagles trio of Sheldon Brown, Lito Sheppard and Asante Samuel.

Bodden may be a guy who helps Matt Millen hang on another year. He had stellar ‘05 and ‘06 YPAs for Cleveland. His average dropped a bit in ‘07 but his picks jumped to six. The Lions snapped him up in free agency and may have gotten a value signing.

Just missing the list: Charles Tillman of Chicago with a 6.6 average YPA and Oakland’s Nnamdi Asomugha, with a 6.7.

Next: Are YPAs like SATs?

Written by Rafael Vela · Filed Under NFL | 17 Comments 

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