Top 10 LB Corps of all time.....

[milkman]

On NFL Network right now.

Curious to see where Lanier, Bell and Lynch fall in their ranking.

2000 Ravens are #10.

[Athis]

object width="425" height="350">

[milkman]

I see a couple of people here rating LT as the best LB of all time, and I know that is a view that is shared by a majority of people.

However, having seen them both play, I would contend that Bobby Bell was better.

He (Bell) was every bit as good as a pass rusher, and better as both a run defender and in pass coverage.

Taylor gets the recognition as the result of the fact that he was used as a pass rusher more and because he has the sack numbers.

Bell played before sacks were an official stat, and he rushed the passer less often, but I would not be surprised to learn that even though he probalby only rushed the passer less than half as much as LT, he still managed to sack the QB more than half LT's numbers.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by cdcox

I like to do rating scales. But in rating football players, I don't think a bounded scale that goes 1-100 scale works very well. I think you need an unbounded scale, like an IQ scale. Let's say we can assign a number that represents a LBs skill LBIQ and that number has no bound. I an going to assume that LBIQ is then distributed normally across all able-bodied males in the age rage of 21 to 35 (typical NFL playing ages). Now everyone who is in the NFL is clearly in the far left tail of that distribution. But as you consider rarer and rarer individuals the distance of separation between one player and the next best player gets larger and larger.

I think your rating system partially captured that in that you put LT at 100 and no one else above 90. But I think the distances between other players might be suspect. Carson is a HOFer, while none of the Saints are. HOF is not a perfect measure because it is subjective. But in the era we are considering, only 14 LB have been inducted. That is going to put you really far out on the distribution. With LT you are looking at the best LB of all time. Carson is a HOFer. Both the '70 Steelers and the Chiefs had two players that made the HOF. As another indicator of quality beyond HOF, The Sporting News ranked the top 100 NFL players of all time. LT, Bell, Lanier, Lambert and Ham were all on that list. If you consider the differences in skill between those players and the Saints, I think it is pretty large.

To illustrate the gap among good and elite players, consider Silling (a pass rush specialist) against Thomas. Swilling had 106 sacks over 12 seasons compared to Thomas' 126 sacks over 9 seasons. That is 14 sacks per season compared to 8.8. Thomas was 60% more productive at rushing the QB as Swilling. And Thomas is not yet in the HOF, and would probably never be considered in the top 100 players. The gaps in ability get huge when you start comparing very good to elite.

I agree with your premise, though it's always been a bit counterintuitive to me, to be honest. I would tend to think that the differences between players at the 99th percentile and the 99.5th percentile should be noticeable but miniscule, but apparently that's not the case. It's particularly noticeable to me with kickers. There are really only 25 guys in the world who can kick a ball into the end zone? And then a few of those guys are 10 yards better than the rest? Bizarre. It seems like human engineering limits would nose-dive the curve toward zero at some point instead of remaining asymptotic.

Truthfully, I think probably you're noticing my own bias against Harry Carson in your critique. I liked Harry Carson and thought he was a fine football player, but I honestly never saw him as a hall of famer. I actually don't think he was as good as Mills or Johnson during any given season, though I recognize that he played longer. I guess a bunch of sportswriters disagree with me, though.

[Buck]

Bump for the n00bs

[Rain Man]

Repost.