New Orleans Saints' Final 2010 Special Teams Player Grades
by Andrew Juge on Jan 18, 2011 12:00 PM CST
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Below are all the GPA's for every Saints player on special teams for all 16 games plus the one playoff game. Make the jump to see how they all stacked up, and to see who my pick is for the special teams MVP.
My special teams MVP for the year is Thomas Morstead.
My least valuable special teams player is John Carney.
The Most Improved special teams player from 2009 is: Garrett Hartley (up 0.13 points from 2009)
The special teams player with the biggest drop off from 2009 is: John Carney (down 0.26 from 2009)
Thomas Morstead: 3.06 (17 games graded) - 2009 GPA was 3.00
Ramon Humber: 3.00 (1 game graded)
Jason Kyle: 2.84 (2 games graded)
Garrett Hartley: 2.80 (15 games graded) - 2009 GPA was 2.67
Courtney Roby: 2.56 (13 games graded) - 2009 GPA was 2.80
John Carney: 2.34 (2 games graded) - 2009 GPA was 2.60
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Roby by far!
While Morstead’s performance was consistent and consistently good (he was probably the most solidly performing Saint on the team in 2010), Roby gets my vote. We realized how much he contributed when he went out. We had no substitution for him either as a return man or a gunner. Special teams play suffered terribly.
On the flip side, if Morstead had gone out we probably would have been able to pick up a punter that would have be servicable, even though not spectacular.
Bet Rod Harper would have proven serviceable, if not spectacular.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Where is Rod Harper anyway?
Can we still pick him up in the off season? That guy was extremely fast! And we sure could use a large upgrade on special teams.
The Professional Blogger..Who Knows And Sees Everything.
Eagles.
Eagles signed WRs Sinorice Moss and Rod Harper, C A.Q. Shipley, and G/C Dallas Reynolds to reserve/future contracts.
We would’ve guessed Moss might find a better chance for playing time, but he’s landed in one of the deepest receiver groups in football. It’s not a good long-term situation for him. Harper is a return prospect. Shipley and Reynolds both spent the 2010 season on Philadelphia’s practice squad.
I like Hamburgers!
Yep. But he was on their practice squad at the time of Roby’s injury. He wasn’t signed to the R/F until after Eagles were eliminated, meaning the Saints could have snagged Harper any time prior to the Seattle playoff game. No telling why they didn’t.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Didn’t Prioleau lead the team in ST tackles? I think if you’re going to include Roby, you should include every member of every special teams unit. In not doing so, you’re in essence penalizing backups whose primary contributions are on special teams. It’s not Remi Ayodele’s fault that Roby isn’t good enough to crack the WR rotation.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
I suppose that would require a separate ST grade each game for each player, since quite a few pull double duty. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It would actually be more fair than as is, being that defensive players who also play STs are getting a bump in their grades throughout, then being compared to their defensive-only peers who don’t.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
For example, if Roman Harper blocked a FG and returned it for a TD, and had an otherwise C+ game on defense, you know you’d probably give him an A for that particular game. At the end of the year, that so-called “defensive” grade is inevitably going to be weighed against someone like Jabari Greer who doesn’t play special teams at all.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Anyone feel like going back and seeing what our W-L record would have been without the scoring contributions of each player that scored? You’d only have to break down the 11 wins, obviously. For example, eliminate Lance Moore’s TD(s) from each game. Do we still win 11? Eliminate Garrett Hartley’s FGs and PATs. Where do we stand without them? I think it would be interesting to see who the team’s true MVP was. At least as far as actually scoring is concerned.
Granted, yardage gained would still contribute to scoring drives cuminated by a teammate. There’s no real way to account for that, UNLESS you broke down each scoring drive and credited percentages of the scores to each player, based on the amount of field position they actually accounted for. That would seriously cut into Hartley’s value. For example, if an 80 yard drive resulted in a 40 yard FG, Hartley would get 1.5 points, whiel everyone who contributed to the other 40 yards would get their cut of the pie. Then, get it taken away in hindsight, in order to determine whether or not their contributions spelled the difference between a win or a loss that particular week.
P.S. I fully realize that if Colston wasn’t catching passes, SOMEONE would be accounting for those yards/points. Even if that someone was Joe Bleaux off the street, it’s Colston who represented that value in 2010. That’s all I’d really care about. Under this methodology, the player who’s single game contributions bumped us above the scoring total of our opponent the most times would be the team MVP.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
I don’t have to look it up. Brees threw 33 TD passes accounting for 198 point out of the 384 points that the Saints scored, or roughly 51.5 percent. To argue against Brees in said scenario, you’d have to review every single TD pass and attribute it to either Brees hitting an obviously open receiver, or him threading a perfect pass and decide which of the two, Brees or receiver, deserves the points.
"Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself.' And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked 'em up."
Excluding Brees. But even if you included him, you’re not taking margin of victory into account.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Not that I think it wouldn’t be him if you did. Just saying it appears you’re skimming over that. Are there any games in which we outscored our opponent with just rushing TDs and FGs? Maybe in the first Tampa game or against Carolina. The passing yardage would probably tilt that.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
I’d like to see a separate W-L record without each offensive contributor.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
There’s honestly no doubt in my mind that Brees made the biggest difference. I mainly just want to see how the other guys would stack up.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Though, if you want to get technical about it, without the yardage contributions, you’re talking about more time + better field position for the opponent, which would likely equate to a higher score to offset. It’s probably next to impossible to get a 100% accurate value grade.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Sounds like you just assigned yourself some homework.
"Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself.' And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked 'em up."
It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Only 11 wins and maybe seven scoring drives in a win, tops? Only two in the Vikings game. With do-overs (read: on account of penalties) the yardage gained could possibly exceed the length of the drive. Brees would have to split his passing yardage with his receivers, though.. So, a one play TD drive (regardless of length) would be worth 6 points. If it was a run, the RB would get the full 6. If it was a pass, Brees would get 3 and the receiver would get 3. On multiple play drives, it would be broken down incrementally as such. No bonus for being the guy who actually crossed the goal line, so getting there would be just as important.
I’ll run through the Vikings game as an example, since it’s a quick study:
Scoring Drive #1
Brees 69 yds pass = 34.5 yds = 3.06 pts
Bush 8 yds rush = 8 yds = 0.71 pts
Colson 28 yds rec = 14 yds = 1.24 pts
Moore 12 yds rec = 6 yds = 0.53 pts
Henderson 29 yds rec = 14.5 yds = 1.28 pts
Hartley 2 yd PAT = 2 yds = 0.18 pts
Total yds = 79 = 7 pts
Scoring Drive #2
Brees 38 yds pass, -3 rush = 16 yds = 1.58 pts
Thomas 28 yds rush, 15 yd rec = 35.5 yds = 3.5 pts
Bush 6 yds rush = 6 yds = 0.59 pts
Moore 9 yds rec = 4.5 yds = 0.44 pts
Colston 14 yds rec = 7 yds = 0.69 pts
Hartley 2 yd PAT = 2 yds = 0.20 pts
Total yds = 71 yds = 7 pts
Margin of victory = 5 pts
As you can see, I decided to include PATs as yardage gained and give Hartley a smidgeon of credit for his practically insignificant contribution to the collective 7 pts. This is in accordance with how I’d score a FG drive. He’d then be getting credit with a large portion of the total yardage that contributed to just 3 pts, so it pretty much offsets.
Production on non-scoring drives doesn’t matter. Again, I realize there’s inherent value there, in terms of TOP … I just don’t know how to calculate that value, without getting overly in depth on the play-play-play analysis.
As is, the high scorer for this game was Drew Brees with 4.64 pts contributed. That’s not enough to account for the margin of victory, so no one individual player would get credit for this victory. Had Brees scored 5 pts exactly, he would get credit for a tie. If he score 5.01 pts or more, he’d get credit for the win. If more than one player could claim credit for the win, they would split the win accordingly, based on their value. So, let’s say Brees had scored 7.42 and Thomas had scored 5.21. In that case, Brees would get credit for 0.59 wins, Thomas 0.41 wins.
Do that for the other 10 wins, add up the credited individual player wins and there you have your new and improved offensive MVP list, OL excluded.
I think that’s a helluva lot better than simply giving Brees, Thomas and Henderson all credit for this win, simply because they’re the players who happened to cap off these two successful TEAM drives with a 6 pt TD.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Hmm...
I don’t “do” math. There’s a reason for the English degrees…but it seems like with this formula, especially the sharing of yardage through the air, that an over abundance of points would be placed on the run game. Now…we all know your bias toward upping the run game (I for one do agree with you on this), however, it seems like because of this, on any team with a decent strong running game the RBs (who also catches the occasional ball out of the backfield) would be close to out right winning the MVP every time. The exception being a 4500 30+ TD QB. Now maybe this is the way it should be in some regard, however, I’m willing to bet you could have a 2000 yard receiver with 15TDs in this scenario not sniff a regular season MVP…and that’s just wrong.
"Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not 'every man for himself.' And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked 'em up."
You’e thinking in terms of overall production. I’m just talking about the stuff that truly matters in hindsight. It’s not wrong, if all the WRs are doing is catching TDs a la Cris Carter in Philly. 4500, 2000 none of that cumulative stuff should factor in. It’s what you did to contribute to the scoring drives (only) in wins (only). Same goes for RBs. Thomas accounted for half the yardage on the 2nd scoring drive and got credit for half the points. With a couple of minor exceptions, Brees accounted for the other half, but he didn’t do it alone. I get what you’re saying, but it’s not like any RB is going to carry his team down the field on an entire scoring drive. And if he does, then he absolutely SHOULD get credit for that entire drive. Conversely, let’s say a QB, RB and WR account for 40 yards each on an 80 yard TD drive. Would it be more fair to give them each 1/3 of the TD value? Well, roughly 1/3 since the kicker needs his crumbs. I mean, I guess you could do that, but you’d STILL never have a WR sniff MVP, as his QB would continue to match or better his production on those drives. Plus, the QB is involved in EVERY passing play, whereas RBs spell one another fairly often. Just looking at this example, Brees would get credit for the win, if you gave him full passing yards, while Thomas wouldn’t. They both scored TDs and were equally instrumental in the win, imo. In this case, I’d personally rather see neither get it than one or the other. Let’s face it, the defense is the true reason we managed to beat the Vikings. No one stood out as exceptional on offense.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
I really don’t know which way is more fair. I DO know that QB passing TDs aren’t considered when it comes to the league’s scoring leaders. By giving them half credit, you’re improving upon that. At the same time, WRs get full credit and wouldn’t here.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
Ok, I started to calculate it the other way and immediately spotted a concern. Let’s say you have an 80 yard TD drive. You’re running a RBBC and one of your RBs accounts for 40 yards. Under the current scoring he gets credit for half the TD, as he should. If you did it the other way, then the methodology of the OTHER 40 yards would determine what percentage he’d ultimately be credited. Think about it. If a second RB handled the other 40, it would remain a 50/50 split. If they passed the ball the rest of the way, now he’s only entitled to 33%? I don’t think so. On top of which, the kicker’s 2 yd contribution would become even LESS significant percentage wise on pass-only drives. Why? What did he do to deserve the decrease? The QB/WR split is the right way to score it. Sure, you could make the same argument for a WR who gained 40 of the 80, but the average completion is roughly twice the length of the average rushing attempt. An average WR is EXPECTED to produce more than an average RB. An average QB is EXPECTED to produce even more than an average WR. I mean, I guess you could get technical and work in a true handicap in there for each position, I just don’t see it as much of a difference maker over as few drives per game as we’re talking about to bother with all that extra division.
"I was not on the boat in question" -Darren Sharper
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