Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
When a single bad play can really do a lot of damage to your rating, comparing a guy with 320 snaps to a guy with 130 isn't really that useful.
Cooper's played about 1/3 the snaps that Smith has (which has a value in its own right). That's 200 fewer chances to give up that long pass play that knocks a point off his coverage rating.
I'd take Smith's contributions to the team thus far over Coopers. And ultimately, PFF's rankings agree.
The issue I have and have always had with PFF is that people like Clay try to assign a predictive weight to it and I just don't think it's worth a damn in that regard. That's why he looks like a jackass now for wailing about the Smith signing based on nothing more than what PFF told him. PFF is very matchup/situation dependent and in the end it tells you very little about what a player will do, but rather only what they've done. While past performance is a good barometer for future results, PFF is simply too erratic on a week to week basis for me to trust it to give a long-term outlook.
|
And that's why some people pour over film, and others work the statistics, but without properly framing both, you're never going to be spot on because evaluation by its very nature is going to have some subjectivity and there will never be a metric for exact talent and performance especially when the game has 22 people on the field and success on an individual level may never dictate success as a unit and vice versa.
It's truly a blending of these observation tools and techniques combined with the accumulated understanding of the game and it's technical side like X's and Os that paints the clearer picture and why scouting talent is such if not the ultimate asset and resource in a teams success short or long term.