The Dude’s Mail Sack: Jason Elam is Bon Jovi
Fat Man blogger TJ “The Dude” Johnson posts The Dude’s Mail Revue on Thursdays, in which he takes your questions about the state of the Denver Broncos. Got a titillating question? Put a dollar bill into the Dude’s G-String and he might answer it—after bowling practice.
Continue reading "The Dude’s Mail Sack: Jason Elam is Bon Jovi"
A stop watch, a scale, and a prayer - drafting a running back
Give me a running back with the power of Walter Payton and the speed of Eric Dickerson. Now you've got a guy who can take you to the promised land. But, unfortunately, a guy like that only comes along every 50 years. And we've already seen in our lifetime a guy named Bo Jackson.
Continue reading "A stop watch, a scale, and a prayer - drafting a running back"
The Tale of Dustin Fry
We've been talking for weeks now about the nose tackles in this league, on this team and in this draft. It seems that every time I turn around, some other NFL team has decided that the intelligent answer to the short passing-based attack that has been sweeping the NFL is to move to the versatility of the 3-4 formation. As more and more teams use this attack as their primary or secondary weapon (in the case of some of the hybrids formations, another commonality in the NFL right now), there is a growing demand for nose tackles. Big ones and shorter ones, faster and slower ones, nose tackles are becoming one of the talks of the league.
The NFL Draft: A little less crapshoot, a little more blackjack
Several weeks ago, I compared the draft to a crapshoot, in which luck was as important as skill in determining success in the NFL draft. While I still believe this to be the case, I also believe there are teams that do gamble better than others. So maybe I should change my analogy to Blackjack. Even though you might demonstrate more skill than the other guys, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to win.
Part of this change in perspective is due to a recent study by Pro Football Weekly (PFW). In their 2010 Draft Guide, the magazine took at look at each team's drafts during the 5-year period of 2004-2008. It looked at several benchmarks for success, but the benchmark that was the most interesting and useful was each team's breakdown for all 7 rounds of the draft in the following 3 categories:
Continue reading "The NFL Draft: A little less crapshoot, a little more blackjack"
Analyzing nose tackles
Perusing the list of offerings from this past week, I particularly liked the article Trends that Ivan put together, and I want to compliment him on that great effort. It was a very nice job of organizing a lot of disparate information in a way that brought out and clarified many of the concepts that were within its scope. As good articles tend to do, I found that I did have a couple of questions and thoughts from it. I thought they would fit best in an article rather than a comment - I try not to write a 'War and Peace' comment more than once a month...
. After the response to the historical retrospective on choosing a quarterback, it brought me to the understanding that it will take a little time to cover the issues that have to be considered when choosing a nose tackle for a 3-4 defense. Much of this originally came up in regard to T. Cody, but this is equally important regardless of which NT you decide to draft for your team.
The Dude’s Mail Sack: A cage match between Jarvis Moss and Marcus Nash!
Fat Man blogger TJ “The Dude” Johnson posts The Dude’s Mail Revue on Thursdays, in which he takes your questions about the state of the Denver Broncos. Got a titillating question? Put a dollar bill into the Dude’s G-String and he might answer it—after bowling practice.
TJ, I know I said last week that I thought Kyle Orton's neckbeard was sexy, but that's until we signed Brady Quinn. He's absolutely dreamy. Have you seen his pecks? His biceps? Everyone wants to know, is he going to start in 2010?
Continue reading "The Dude’s Mail Sack: A cage match between Jarvis Moss and Marcus Nash!"
Draft Dez Bryant - only if you’re playing Monopoly
"The process was really thorough. We took our time. It was important for me to get the right fit for our football team."
--Matt Millen, Former General Manager, Detroit Lions
Matt McGuire, over at Walter Football, is probably best known for his mock drafts. But it's his blog that I enjoy more. Recently, he had a blog entry entitled, NFL Draft Picks Are Business Investments. He wrote something that I think deserves a lot more attention:
If I gave you $4 million to invest, would you invest that money into a company that didn't care very much about what they were doing? Would you be confident about investing in a business that didn't care about customer service, their product, employee relations, employee performance and leadership?
I doubt you would - you might as well throw the $4 million into a fire.
But what if this company had a lot of upside? Would you still be willing to lose the $4 million if you could get a large return in a couple years? It's a massive risk.
How can a company that doesn't care become profitable? It's almost impossible for that to happen.
So why should we evaluate NFL Draft prospects any differently? In translation: How can an NFL player be successful if he has a very mediocre work ethic, doesn't love the game, doesn't take the process seriously, and is immature?
Continue reading "Draft Dez Bryant - only if you’re playing Monopoly"
The Dude’s Mail Sack: Is Kyle Orton eye candy?
Fat Man blogger TJ “The Dude” Johnson posts The Dude’s Mail Revue on Thursdays, in which he takes your questions about the state of the Denver Broncos. Got a titillating question? Put a dollar bill into the Dude’s G-String and he might answer it—after bowling practice.
Hey, TJ, just give me the stats! I've noticed that with the signings of Jamal Williams, Jarvis Green, and Justin Bannan, the Broncos are getting a little long in the tooth on the defensive line. Are these guys really the answer? I mean they are really really old.
---Mike, Norman, Oklahoma
Continue reading "The Dude’s Mail Sack: Is Kyle Orton eye candy?"
The Loser’s Curse and the NFL Draft
In 2005, Cade Massey and Richard Thayer, two academics from Duke and the University of Chicago, authored a fascinating and statistically-heavy paper entitled The Loser's Curse: Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the National Football League Draft. While the paper is dated, and while it has received its fair share of criticism and analysis itself, I think the most fascinating sentence from the entire 59-page paper is the biggest and most overlooked truth from the modern-day NFL:
Buying expensive players, even if they turn out to be great performers, imposes opportunity costs elsewhere on the roster.
Visions of sugar plums: the value of Brandon Marshall
Christmas comes only once a year. And Pete Carroll isn't donning a santa costume.
While we all might have believed last week that Brandon Marshall was worth a 1st and a 3rd round pick, two things happened in the last two days that say otherwise:
- The Denver Broncos themselves placed only a 1st round tender on Marshall
- The Anquan Boldin trade
The Boldin trade, in particular, dealt what could have been a giant blow to the idea that the Broncos will be getting what we as fans hope is a fair value for the player known as The Beast.
After the jump, we'll look at the Boldin deal, it's consequences for Marshall, and what both Seattle and Denver might be considering as they discuss what Bradon Marshall is worth.
Continue reading "Visions of sugar plums: the value of Brandon Marshall"
