I subjected myself to ESPN's Football Today power rankings by Jeremy Green and big surprise I came away rant ready.

His top 3 were ranked

1. San Diego Chargers

2. New England Patriots

3. Indianapolis Colts

That's not awful, I can deal. Until I listened to his convoluted and contradictory reasoning.

At three the Indianapolis Colts. Not ahead of the San Diego Chargers who have absolutely dominated the Indianapolis Colts. Dominated them. Colts fans can't complain on this one. You guys are the three team. Look at the teams that have owned the series. The two teams ahead of you. The San Diego Chargers, The New England Patriots, they have dominated the series against the Colts.

Um, Jeremy.

The Colts have played the Chargers three times in the last 4 years. The Chargers won three, including two last year. The Chargers 1st win of the 3 was against the 13-0 Colts team that looked totally disinterested after locking up the #1 seed. Besides that game was 3 years ago. There is so much roster turnover that looking at matchups more than a year or two back is useless. The Patriot's ran up a good record vs the Colts for a while but here's the series in the last 3 years.

Colts 3-Pats  1

Those two Chargers games last year? The Chargers won by a total of 6 points. Combined they won by less than a TD. Both games ended with the Colts in the redzone in the closing seconds with a chance to take the lead. A missed 30 yard FG and a perfectly defensed TD pass to Addai by Shaun Phillips is all that stood between the Colts and two wins vs the Chargers.

But Shake, You can't play what ifs. The team wins or it doesn't.

Ok, fine. I can see that line of reasoning. If that's your philosophy I can understand it. On to #2

The New England Patriots....You did not win a Superbowl title last year, so don't tell me the Patriots are not a beatable football team and the team that had them beat, The San Diego Chargers, my number one team on the Green Elevator. If LT is on the field, If Antonio Gates is on the field, the New England Patriots don't have a chance to go 19-0, because they would not have been playing in Superbowl XLII. That game came down to red zone offense that's the reason the Chargers lost and 2 of the top 5 weapons in the redzone did not play in that football game.

(Turns off Podcast)

(Unsubscribes)

Football Outsiders continued their series on the top player performances on the DVOA era. Today was on WR seasons and career totals. Colts players made several appearances on the various lists.

Last season Anthony Gonzalez was more valuable per play than all but 4 other WRs (with 50 or more targets) in the last 12 years. The top 4 included Dennis Northcutt's amazing 2002 (78% as a deep threat), Tim Dwight's 1999 in Atlanta, and two slot WRs from the greatest show on turf RIcky Proehl (1999) and Az Hakim (2001).

Reggie Wayne's 2004 season ranked 9th in per play value, and moves up to second if the cutoff is raised to 5 catches per game. 2004 Brandon Stokley finished right behind Wayne. Eric Moulds finished 1st by putting up 1368 yards with 9 TDs, with a 58% catch rate against an insane Pass D schedule.

Anthony Gonzalez ranked 9th in catch % at 73%

The Top 10 Total value seasons

1995 Micheal Irvin    630 DYAR

2007 Randy Moss    569 DYAR

1995 Jerry Rice       547 DYAR

 2001 Marvin Harrison  537 DYAR

 2006 Marvin Harrison  510 DYAR

2005  Steve Smith    497 DYAR

2004 Reggie Wayne 496 DYAR

2003  Randy Moss   482 DYAR

2002 Marvin Harrison 478 DYAR

2003 Torry Holt     474 DYAR

Wayne also appears at 13th (2006) and 18th (2007) for a total of 3, making him Marvin Harrison and Randy Moss the only players to appear more than once in the top 20 (3 for Marvin, 4 for Moss)

The leader in career DYAR over the last 12 years is Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne comes in at 10th.

Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne finish 2-3 to Randy Moss in DYAR per season (minimum 4 seasons)

Finally in the only appearance by a Colts player on a worst list. Aaron Moorehead places 8th worst in lowest DYAR per season.

After 3 games there is just barely enough data to look at the rushing performances. The first three games have been a Mike Martz wet dream.

So what does that tell us?

Not a whole lot. I'm not ready to draw any conclusions from the few carries.

Sorgi gaining the lead in QB rating over Lorenzen who fell to last was the only change in the leaders. Sorgi and Gray both improved their numbers and both closed on the other in the overall metrics. Gray closing the gap in QB rating and Sorgi in adjusted net yards per attempt. Yards per attempt remained about the same with Sorgi at 9.9, Gray with 12.7, and Lorenzen trailing with 9.4. The big difference was Lorenzen dropping way off. 4 for 10 with a pick is very bad, and he netted only 47 yards on 11 dropbacks.

UPDATE (from bbs): Sorgi's stats from 2007, when he played with mostly the second and thrid stringers, after three games:

33 completions, 54 attempts, 61% completion, 330 yards, 3 TDs, 2 INTs, 5 sacks, 1 fumble.

Much of these stats are padded by Sorgi having a stellar third pre-season game against the Lions, where his QB rating was 120. I'ts amazing how, with better talent around him, Sorgi has managed to look worse than better.

Just finished my first game of Madden 09. It was an exciting shootout, 7-0 over the Bears. The first 3 1/2 quarters of offense looked like they were coached by Mike Martz and QBed by Jim Sorgi (7.6 per completion 4 sacks, redzone INT), but a deep strike down the seam to Clark in the final minute led to a 5 yard Addai TD up the middle. INTs from Bob and Bethea (and using my "rewind" after Ugoh got blown by on a play action leading to a strip sack and TD return) kept the Bears off the board.

I was really disappointed that there didn't seem to be any improvements to last years franchise mode. The scouting is still painfully slow and awkward, the pre-week training still suckers me into the same boring minigames with the promise of a fraction of a attribute point for 3 players.

The one big improvement I noticed was that the problem finally turned me off of last years Madden didn't seem to be an issue. The downfield fumbles. Last year they were so common and unpreventable I had to stop playing for the safety of all throwable objects within reach of the Xbox 360.

That horrible flaw was replaced by a minor annoyance. The WRs and returnmen take a while to gather themselves after catching the ball making YAC or good returns difficult.

The NFL history fun facts at the load menus are a great addition, although you'll have to speed read as they fly to the next one pretty quickly.

It's an improvement, but I'm completely expecting it to get blown out of the water by NCAA again.

I suck at the drills too much to make superstar playable. I could literally run a 40 faster than one of the 40 times I got in-game.

How do the rest of you who have played like it?

I've seen a ton of talk about Tom Brady as a early first round, and sometimes 1st overall pick in fantasy drafts. It's dumb. Brady had an amazing season last year. He took me to the last years Stampede Blue league championship game (got him by autodraft since I was at work). But the reality is that Brady is going to come back down to earth. Brady's 08 was the 5th QB in the history of the league with 40+ TDs here are the totals the next year with their 40+ season total in parenthesis and the drop in brackets.

Continue reading this post »

The Tom Brady edition.

I've seen a ton of talk about Tom Brady as a early first round, and sometimes 1st overall pick in fantasy drafts. It's dumb. It's painfully dumb, it hurts me to see it so much so that I am going to try to kill the chance I see it in a Stampede Blue league even though it would help me if someone did it.

Brady had an amazing season last year. He took me to the last years Stampede Blue league championship game (got him by autodraft since I was at work). But the reality is that Brady is going to come back down to earth. Brady's 08 was the 5th QB in the history of the league with 40+ TDs here are the totals the next year with their 40+ season total in parenthesis and the drop in brackets.

Manning 2005: 28 (49) [-21]

Marino 1985: 30 (48) [-18]

Marino 1987: 26 (44) [-18]

Warner 1999: 21 (41) [-20]

The least anyone dropped off was 18 Touchdowns. It's a small sample, but the result is very intuitive. Teams will gameplan to stop or limit the QB to an even greater extent after a record season. How often did Manning see safeties shallow or single coverage on the outside after his 49 TD season? Combine that with regression to the mean and you get 20 TD dropoffs.

Lets up the sample with 10 more great seasons. Here is every season with at least 35 TDs with the following season and drop off.

Brett Favre 1996: 39 (35) [-4]

Dante Culpepper 2004: 39 (6) [-33] no, those numbers aren't flipped around he threw 6 TDs

Brett Favre 1995: 38 (39) [+1]

George Blanda 1961: 36 (27) [-9]

Y.A. Tittle 1963: 36 (10) [-26] not flipped around, only 10 TDs

Steve Young 1998: 36 (3) [-33] only 3 TDs

Steve Beuerlein 1999: 36 (19) [-17]

Kurt Warner: 2001: 36 (3) [-33] again, not flipped around 3 TDs

Tony Romo 2007: 36 (?) [?]

Brett Favre 1997: 35 (31) [-4]

Steve Young 1994: 35 (20) [-15]

Only Brett Favre maintained a high level of TD passes for more than one year. Interestingly his INT % increased each of the years after the 35 TD performance. From 2.3 in his first 35+ season to 2.4 then 3.1 and finally 4.2 following the third 35+ season, suggesting he did a bit of gunslinging to keep the TD total up.

The odds are very very strongly against Tom Brady coming close to repeating last season. So chill on him for a second. I will not draft Brady in the first round in any league that doesn't start multiple QBs (I'm not in any at this time). He more the likely won't even come close to last season's marks. Only Favre hasn't had a significant dropoff in TDs after a 35+ TD season and only Favre and Blanda didn't drop by 15 or more TDs.

It wasn't just the worst game of the Colts season by both offensive and total DVOA. It contained the third worst game by a tight end in the last 12 years.

Dallas Clark two weeks removed from a concussion that kept him out of the previous game and flanked by Reggie Wayne, Craphonso Thorpe and Ben Utecht caught only 3 of 10 passes intended for him gaining only 15 yards.

eww.

Clark was very good the rest of the season putting up numbers that placed him as a solid #2 WR (FO listed him as a WR since he spent far more time in the slot than in-line), but that game was absolutely awful, especially by Clark (though he may not remember it or have known where he was at the time).