On The “Instant Impact” NFL Rookie

Something every fan wants their team to pull from the NFL draft is an “instant impact” rookie—a guy like Ndamukong Suh.  A rookie who steps into a starter’s role, immediately transforms team weakness into strength, and changes the dynamic of their entire unit.  Every team—and their fans—hope, if not expect, their first-round picks to have the instant impact of a Matt Ryan, or a Joe Flacco, or a Michael Oher, or . . . wait.

All of those guys turned in subpar performances this weekend, as their teams were bounced from the playoffs.  Peter King even called for the “Matty Ice” nickname to be put on ice.  Michael Oher was abused by James Harrison—and fellow wunderkind-turned-goat Joe Flacco is taking a beating in the media, too, after taking a beating on the field.  What’s going on here?  How come so many headline-grabbing rookies are turning into mediocre second- and third-year veterans?

Part of it is the changing nature of the game.  Football used to be a game of execution: the team that executed better won.  Schematic wrinkles and innovations have always been around, but superior ability (where “ability’ = talent * skill) has always produced superior results.

In college football, ability is hard to come by.  Not only is elite talent incredibly hard to recruit, but those players aren’t yet skilled; they need to be taught to play the game.  As more and more college programs push harder and harder to succeed, less elite talents are being pressed into service earlier.

It’s that intense pressure to perform, to get talent on the field, that has major college programs recruiting true freshmen to fill immediate needs.  Lansing sports media stalwart Tim Staudt recently said about recruiting, “I remember when Duffy would sit us down in the spring and introduce us to all the new sophomores.”  Duffy (and likely, Bo and Woody) would be aghast at high school kids expecting to start!

So, we have elite talents stepping into top-level programs and starting, and we have decent talents stepping into mid-level programs and starting.  How do coaches deploy these players before they know how to play?  That’s where schematic creativity comes in.  Football coaching at the college level has become a way of maximizing a player’s natural gifts, while hiding his natural deficits.  At schools where there’s very little nearby talent (West Virginia), or where the bountiful talent is aggressively mined by rivals and the rest of the nation (Texas Tech), schematically innovative coaches have learned to consistently make silk purses out of sow’s ears.

It's been a pet theory of mine that this is affecting the NFL in two ways: 1) the same pressure to succeed is causing NFL teams to push rookies into service early, and 2) rookies have never been less prepared to step in and start.  The teaching-to-a-system, fit-in-your-niche approach taken in college is producing one-dimensional athletes who are tremendously difficult to scout.

Once, during a Fireside Chat, I asked SI Senior Writer Tim Layden  about this theory.  He disagreed—saying that even if my premise is true, the quantum leaps made in nutrition, strength, and conditioning at the college level are producing players who are much better athletes, if not much better football players. Even conceding that point, the challenge for NFL coaches has become the same: how do you start rookies that are great athletes, but who’ve learned little of the craft of their position?

The answer, of course, is for the coaches to protect those players—to hide their weaknesses and maximize their strengths.  Look what the Jets have done with Mark Sanchez—ask him to simply not make mistakes, and then every once in a while take a shot deep to keep the defense honest.  With a couple of circus-catch specialists getting open downfield, Sanchez will hit on enough of those shots for the Jets’ defense to win them game.  The interesting thing is, the Falcons did the same for Matt Ryan.  Let’s look at his career stats:

Year	Age	Att	Cmp%	Yds	TD	TD%	Int	Int%	Y/A	Y/C	Rate	Sk	Yds	NY/A	ANY/A	Sk%
2008	23	434	61.1	3440	16	3.7	11	2.5	7.9	13	87.7	17	104	7.4	7	3.8
2009	24	451	58.3	2916	22	4.9	14	3.1	6.5	11.1	80.9	19	92	6	5.6	4
2010*	25	571	62.5	3705	28	4.9	9	1.6	6.5	10.4	91	23	158	6	6.2	3.9
Career		1456	60.8	10061	66	4.5	34	2.3	6.9	11.4	86.9	59	354	6.4	6.3	3.9

In 2008, Matt Ryan exploded onto the scene, completing 61.1 percent of his passes for 3,440 yards, 16 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions.  Okay . . . maybe “exploding” is overstating things; those are unremarkable numbers.  But rookie quarterbacks almost never take care of the ball that well, and his yards-per-attempt were off the chart.  The hype train for “Matty Ice” left the station early, and picked up speed quickly.

In the second season, attempts rose as Michael Turner’s production fell off (Ryan only played 14 games in 2009).  His completion percentage dipped, his yards-per-attempt dropped dramatically (7.9 to 6.5), and both his touchdown and interception ratio rose.  What’s happening here?  He’s being asked to shoulder more of the burden.  They’re not running, running, running, then uncorking a deep ball.  They’re not drawing the defense in with high-percentage passes, then bombing it over their heads.  Ryan is being asked to win the game—while his stats suffered for it, they indicate progress.

So, what went wrong this year?  Well, his attempts rose drastically—throwing almost 36 times a game, compared to 27 his rookie season.  YpA remained flat from his second season, at 6.5, for a total of 3,705 yards.  His touchdown percentage stayed flat from his second season, 4.9%, while his interception percentage dropped precipitously, from 3.1% to 1.6%.  So . . . nothing went wrong.  For the first time, Matt Ryan was asked to carry the Falcons offense all by himself, and he responded by playing the best football of his career.

The reality is that Ryan’s astonishing rookie year created hype it’d be almost impossible to live up to.  Is “Matty Ice” already an all-time great?  No, but he’s performed like an above-average NFL starter in only his third year—and unlike his rookie season, there’s no doubt it’s “all him.”  Maybe this is as good as he gets, but the Falcons would certainly take ten more years of this and rightfully call themselves lucky.

It’s well within my memory—and I’m only 29—that players were drafted to develop, not to play.  Now, players are drafted, plugged in the lineup, given up on, and cut before traditional wisdom says they should even be ready to play.  You have guys coming out for the draft after their true junior year, getting a couple of years to “make an impact,” and then being cut loose while they’re only 24 or 25.  Lord knows, if my industry gave up on me when I was 25, there’s zero chance I’d be where I am today.

Take the curious case of Mike Williams.  Incredibly productive in two seasons at USC (176 receptions, 2,579 yards, 30 touchdowns), he famously followed Maurice Clarett’s lead into a year of limbo, unable to make the leap to the next level, nor able to return to college.  Nevertheless, the 6’-5”, 235-pound (or thereabouts) prospect was the #1 overall prospect on Mel Kiper’s famous Big Board; theoretically the Lions got a great value when they selected him 10th overall.  We all know what happened after that: motivation and concentration issues made “BMW” more of an X3 than an M3.  He was released after just two seasons, and Kiper penned a column naming Mike Williams one of his worst evaluations ever ($).

A funny thing happened this offseason, though—Williams’ college coach, Pete Carroll, picked him up in the offseason.  Still just 27, and entering his fourth year in the league, Williams made his fourth NFL roster.  Incredibly, he evolved into the Seahawks’ top target, hauling in a team-high 65 catches for 751 yards.  Those numbers aren’t quite what you’d expect out of a #10 overall pick in his fourth NFL season—but they’re much, much closer to than not worth wasting the soap to wash his jersey.

What’s the moral of the story, here?  Not every good player is an instant-impact player.  Not every instant-impact player evolves into a Hall of Famer.  “Great for a rookie” is only “decent” overall. As the Lions round the bend into this draft season, they do so with only a few pressing needs.  I trust the Lions leadership not to reach for those needs, but I’m cautioning us as fans to do the same.  As this roster matures, the Lions should indeed be drafting to develop, not to start; the second- or third-round pick may not start right away and that’s okay.  The likes of Sammie Hill will have to hustle to make the team, and that’s okay.  The Lions have a much bigger need for a Mike Williams type, who slowly develops into a quality starter, than a Michael Clayton—who set the world on fire in his rookie year, and has barely moved the needle since.

Technorati Tags: nfl,nfl draft,rookies,mike williams,mel kiper,michael clayton,ndamukong suh,detroit lions,matt ryan

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Tinderbox: It Never Fails! Lawrence Jackson Trade

When Twitter exploded with the news that the Lions had traded a late 2011 draft pick to the Seahawks for 2008 first-round DE Lawrence Jackson, I slapped my forehead.  Of course, it never fails; I wait for the wheeling and dealing to stop so I can summarize and analyze the changes from an intelligent big-picture perspective, and the instant the post goes up the Lions pull off a trade.
“Lo-Jack,” as he’s been called since his days at USC, stands at 6’-4”, and goes 271 pounds—precisely the same stature of the man he replaced, Jason Hunter.  Jackson, as he put it, was the only guy between 260 pounds and 280 pounds on the Seahawks roster; he was a misfit there, but is prototypical here.  I’ve written several times before that this exact phenomenon—scooping up talented young players cut down for not fitting The Scheme—seems to be a specialty of Martin Mayhew’s.  Again, the Lions profit.
If you want to know what Seattle fans thought of Lo-Jack, what they think of the trade, and what his future prospects are, Phil Zaroo pointed out an excellent post by the Seahawks blog Field Gulls, “The Slow Exit of Lawrence Jackson”:

Detroit wins this trade because the Lions have bought low on a still very good, very young and very volatile talent. Detroit wins because Jackson still has much better potential than a mid- to late-round draft pick. Detroit wins because Seattle had schemed Jackson out of its defense and had to either sell low or burn a roster spot on a misfit.

Besides the gradual, inexplicable Sehawkening of the Lions’ roster, this spells doom for longtime Lions end Jared DeVries—one of only two pre-Millen Lions left on the roster.  When DeVries was re-signed, much of the money was tied to the condition that he make the final 53—a hedge against both injury and lost performance.  It looks as though that hedge was wise, as DeVries’ knee has been keeping him out of practice—and having only Turk McBride and Willie Young behind Avril and Vanden Bosch would not have inspired confidence.
I won't engrave DeVries' epitaph, not yet--but I'm polishing the granite.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,seattle seahawks,lawrence jackson,jared devries

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2010 NFL Draft enters the “Silly Season”

Stop that! It's too silly.

Last Thursday marked the the endpoint of sanity in the NFL League Year, and the beginning of what Tom Kowalski calls “The Silly Season”.  Every NFL team employee either shuts their mouth tightly, or begins speaking out of both sides of it.  From now until April 26th, every statement a GM or Head Coach makes is at best a half-truth; at worse a vile lie.  You will encounter increasingly ridiculous trade chatter, mock drafts, hot rumors, late risers, and falling stocks, culminating in a fever pitch of ridiculous scenarios where black is white, up is down, and the Lions are locked on to Dez Bryant.

I've always used this rule of thumb: whatever the "consensus" is two weeks before the draft is most likely what will happen.  Therefore:

• The Rams will rectify their smoking crater at quarterback, and draft Sam Bradford.
• The Lions, despite clearly wanting to trade down, won't have a partner. They'll happily take Ndamukong Suh, they just won't be happy about his contract.
• The Buccaneers will giddily take whichever of the DTs makes it out of the top 3.
• The Redskins will draft Chris Samuels' eventual replacement, and Jon Jansen's next temporary replacement, at 1.4--either Okung or Williams, whomever they fancy.
• The Chiefs will either continue rebuilding their incredible offensive line of the past decade with a left tackle, or address their odious secondary with Eric Berry.

. . . and on and on, throughout the rest of the first round.  There might be some tweaks—Washington could take a quarterback for the future, the Seahawks are probably hoping Trent Williams falls, etc.—but essentially, what most reasonable people think is the ‘standard take’ is what’s most likely to happen.  If you want to see a great example of what this two-weeks-out snapshot is, look at the beat writer mock draft that Sam Farmer of the L.A. Times put together.

Note: I am not talking about what each team’s fans want to have happen, I’m talking about the national football hivemind.  As an example, the national media wrote “Matthew Stafford” next to the Lions’ name, in ink, in January 2009.  All of us Lions fans spent five months ranting and raving and frothing at the mouth about Andre Smith, Jason Smith, Eugene Monroe, Aaron Curry, and everyone’s favorite player, ‘Trade Down’—but the national groupthink was right the whole time.

The Lions have already had a spate of the “silliness”.  As if on cue, word began to break on Thursday that Albert Haynesworth was interested in coming to Detroit—and according to Michael Schottey and several others, the interest was mutual.  Amist talk of the Redskins sending the 1.4 and Haynesworth to Detroit for the 1.2, I gleefully speculated that the Lions would then trade again with the Seahawks, in a spectacular double-move.  The Redskins would get Suh, the Seahawks would get Okung, and the Lions would get to pick from  Spiller, Haden, Williams, Morgan, or Bulaga—plus pick up some mid-round selections!  Everybody wins!

Though Neil from Armchair Linebacker's . . . eyes . . . engorged at the thought of Mayhew pulling it off, it's purest fantasy.  When was the last time a team moved down out of the top five, then again out of the pick they acquired?  Don’t say “last year”; the Browns don’t count.  Seriously, though: while the possibility of a double move is nonzero, there are way too many moving parts for me to consider this scenario likely.

For starters, the Redskins would be giving up on a pass-rushing 4-3 DT with a huge contract, why would they then take Suh, and get another one?  They’d more likely take Okung—but then, if the Lions are taking Suh, and the Bucs are sitting on McCoy, the ‘Skins don’t need to move up.  Even if we suppose that they’re just that desperate to get rid of Fat Albert, I’d think the Lions would be more interested in simply trading with Seattle, and getting a better pick package out of them, than taking on Haynesworth’s deal in addition to the 1.6 contract.

This feeds into my latest theory: with Bradford a clear-cut #1 overall, and Jimmy Clausen failing to push his stock up to match, the Lions are trying to get people to believe that they’re going to draft Russell Okung.  Just as Mayhew spent the two weeks prior to the draft trying to create leverage by negotiating a deal with Aaron Curry, I believe Mayhew is going to spend the days up to this draft convincing the hivemind that he’s going to take the best LT on the board off the board.

If Okung is gone, Washington will have to settle for Willams or Bulaga. If Okung and Williams are gone, Kansas City might go Berry—or, they might take Bulaga, and leave no tackles for Seattle.  Further, Seattle would vastly prefer the athletic  Williams to the powerful Bulaga—they’re implementing the zone blocking system, remember?—so if the Lions take Okung, they’ll likely lose out on their man either way.

Of course, the Lions might really be interested in taking Okung.  They might really be completely put off by spending $70M on a defensive tackle, regardless of how awesome he is or how desperately they might need him.  They might really be willing to elevate money over need, to take a lesser prospect who offers better positional “value”, and to pass on a smart, hardworking, once-in-five-years talent at the position around which Schwartz has built his defense and his reputation . . .

But that would be silly.

Technorati Tags: nfl,nfl draft,russell okung,ndamukong suh,detroit lions,washington redskins,seattle seahawks

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Rob Sims to the Lions, Martin Mayhew for the Win

  The Lions have traded a fifth-round pick, plus reserve-roster DE Robert Henderson, to the Seahawks for LG Rob Sims and a seventh-round pick.  The acquisition of Sims, a 26-year-old left guard with three seasons atop the Seahawks’ depth chart, for a fifth-rounder would have qualified as a steal.  Getting a seventh-round pick in return for Henderson, himself a 2008 sixth-rounder who’s never made an active roster, is gravy.

As I wrote last week, the Seahawks were willing to deal Sims so cheaply for two reasons: One, he’s a poor fit for new Seahawks OL coach Alex Gibbs’ zone blocking system; two, he’s a restricted free agent on a one-year tender, who will walk after this season without a long-term deal.

That brings us to the draft.  On first blush, this eliminates Russell Okung as a possibility for the Lions—with well-compensated starters at LT, LG, C, RG, and RT, paying Okung $40,000,000 to either ride the bench, or relegate one of those starters to the bench, makes no sense whatsoever.

However, Tom Kowalski of Mlive.com thinks Martin Mayhew's about to make no sense. Since Sims has signed his RFA tender, by definition a one-year deal, the Lions have nothing invested in him but a fifth-round pick.  If they don’t sign him to a long term extension before the draft, then Okung can sit on the bench for one year, and then force Backus to slide inside for 2011.

Kowalski correctly points out, as I have over the past few months, that the Lions are drafting for the long-term; the 2009 and 2010 draft classes will become the core of the team for 2011 and beyond:

But drafting a player with a #2 overall pick? That’s a massive investment. If the Lions stand pat and draft Okung—or Suh, or Berry, or whoever—then that player must be a cornerstone of the roster for years to come. If the Lions are convinced that one of those players is going to be a perfect fit for the team, on and off the field, with Hall of Fame upside . . . well, they’re going to take him, Chester Pitts be damned.

Now, Sims is not Pitts--he's much younger, just entering his prime.  But if Sims isn’t extended before the draft, then there’s no reason to believe he’s going to be here in 2011, and therefore no reason to believe the Lions won’t draft an offensive tackle.

Still, I think the Lions don’t draft Okung at 1.2.  I don’t think he’s the right type of player for what Scott Linehan wants to do on offense, and I don’t think that the Lions want to spend that much money into three offensive tackles—or really, spend 1.2 money at all.  I think they want to trade back, and take a tackle who’s a better fit, like Oklahoma’s Trent Williams, or Iowa’s Bryan Bulaga.

Not only would one of these players be a better fit for the Lions, but if they were drafted at, say, Seattle's 1.6 spot, they'd cost practically half the price that Okung at 1.2 would.  Seattle, as we know, is desperate to replace aging LT Walter Jones, and could certainly use an upgrade at RT as well.  Seattle’s clearly not afraid to spend money to reshape their franchise in new HC Pete Carroll’s image, and they’re clearly not afraid to make deals with Martin Mayhew and the Lions.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,seattle seahawks,rob sims,russell okung,pete carroll

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