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A-Maybin Waste…..

Photo: The Official CTBTO Photostream. License

 

(Note: Check out the new updated version of the article at our new location with a brand new look and feel: Blog-a-Bills)

Aaron Maybin‘s career as a Buffalo Bill was kind of like Halloween III (No Michael Myers? Really?): They both lasted longer than they should have and were the results of some very questionable decision-making, but we’ll never forget them because of how mind-numbingly awful both were. (Apologies to any Halloween III fans).

But how putrid was Maybin’s career, really? How epic of a failure can we truly consider this?

As depressing a question as it may be to ask (and especially to research), I think it’s one worth the time. In order to make this judgment, we took a look back at DE’s taken in the first round since 1999, but not including last year’s rookies. The results, unsurprisingly, reflected what we thought we knew: Maybin was a bust of epic proportions.

The Contenders

Year	Tm	Name	Career Sacks
1999	DAL	Ebenezer Ekuban	36.5
1999	ATL	Patrick Kerney	82.5
1999	TEN	Jevon Kearse	74
1999	SEA	Lamar King	12
2000	CLE	Courtney Brown	19
2000	BUF	Erik Flowers	5
2000	NYJ	Shaun Ellis	72.5
2000	NYJ	John Abraham	102.5
2001	GNB	Jamal Reynolds	3
2001	NWE	Richard Seymour	48.5
2001	SFO	Andre Carter	66
2001	CIN	Justin Smith	65
2002	NYJ	Bryan Thomas	31
2002	IND	Dwight Freeney	94
2002	CAR	Julius Peppers	89
2002	NOR	Charles Grant	47
2003	ARI	Calvin Pace	34.5
2003	PHI	Jerome McDougle	3
2003	CHI	Michael Haynes	5.5
2003	OAK	Tyler Brayton	15.5
2003	NWE	Ty Warren	20.5
2004	MIN	Kenechi Udeze	11
2004	NOR	Will Smith	55
2005	MIN	Erasmus James	5
2005	SDG	Luis Castillo	19
2005	DAL	Marcus R. Spears	8
2006	SFO	Manny Lawson	14.5
2006	NYG	Mathias Kiwanuka	23.5
2006	CLE	Kamerion Wimbley	35.5
2006	HOU	Mario Williams	48
2006	KAN	Tamba Hali	41.5
2007	DEN	Jarvis Moss	4.5
2007	DAL	Anthony Spencer	15.5
2007	STL	Adam Carriker	3.5
2007	ATL	Jamaal Anderson	4.5
2007	TAM	Gaines Adams	13.5
2008	NYJ	Vernon Gholston
2008	SEA	Lawrence Jackson	12.5
2008	STL	Chris Long	17.5
2008	JAX	Derrick Harvey	8
2009	BUF	Aaron Maybin
2009	PIT	Evander Hood	4
2009	KAN	Tyson Jackson	1
2009	DEN	Robert Ayers	1.5

The Raw Numbers

	Games	GS	Sacks	Tackles
All 1st Rd DEs (Career)	3582.00	2792.00	1273.50	7140.50
Per Season:	13.67	10.66	4.86	27.25
Per Game:	–	–	0.36	1.99
Per Player:	81.41	63.45	28.94	162.28
Maybin:	26.00	1.00	0.00	14.00
Maybin Per Game:	–	–	0.00	1.61

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how poorly Maybin stacks up against this competition. In fact, it doesn’t even take a Marshawn Lynch to see that Maybin is a historically notable bust. No in-depth statistical analysis is really necessary to prove this point, but we’ll take a deeper look at the numbers just to hammer the point home. (Unless otherwise noted, all comparisons are to DE’s taken in the 1st round since 1999.)

Maybin and his Contemporaries

• 2 first round DE’s have recorded 0 sacks
• Maybin and Gholston
• 6 first round DE’s didn’t record sacks in their 1st year
• McDougle, Gholston, Maybin, Ayers, Jackson, Anderson
• 5 first round DE’s didn’t record sacks in their 2nd year
• Gholston, Maybin, Carriker, Lawson, James
• 5 first round DE”s had fewer tackles in their first year than Maybin
• 1 first round DE had fewer tackles in his second year than Maybin (Erasmus James)
• All Bills Fans had as many sacks as Maybin the past two years
• All Bills Fans started as many games as Maybin did his rookie year
• All Bills Fans were scratched 6 fewer times than Maybin his 2nd year

Since 1999, the average first year for all first round DE’s selected was as such:

	Yr1 G	Yr1 GS	Yr1 Sks	Yr1 Tks
Average	14.80	8.18	3.95	25.82

Maybin’s first year was, of course, much worse than the average first year from 1st round DE’s. In fact, the average first round DE had more tackles and sacks in their first year alone than Maybin had in his entire two year career.

The average 2nd year for the first round DE’s in question:

	Yr2 G	Yr2 GS	Yr2 Sks	Yr2 Tks
Average	13.36	9.57	4.50	27.45

Here we can see that, on average, DE’s saw their stats improve from their first to their second year in the league. Maybin, of course, regressed during his 2nd year in the league, going from a whopping 9 tackles and 0 games started in his first year to not dressing for 6 games and recording all of 5 tackles in his 2nd year.

Clearly, Maybin does not stack up well at all against his contemporaries. But the story actually gets a little worse when we expand the study just a tiny bit.

For instance, if we include 2nd round DE’s selected during that time, we find only 6 drafted (out of 38) that recorded 0 sacks for their careers. Combined with the first round picks, that means 8 out of 82 DEs drafted in the 1st or 2nd round since 1999 have gone on to record 0 sacks in their career, with only one player (Gholston) drafted higher than Maybin successfully achieving this (dubious) accomplishment.

Expanding this further (and even more damning to Maybin), fifteen defensive backs taken in the first round since 1999 have recorded more sacks than Maybin did during his stint in Buffalo.

That’s right: 15 DBs, who by their very nature should record more INTs than sacks, managed to bring the QB down once more than Maybin did in the NFL.

The Verdict

Without expanding the study to go back even further, it’s difficult to say that Maybin is the worst bust of all time. But, in looking at the stats and figures above, it doesn’t seem a stretch to say he is the worst bust in the past 10 years from the DE position. One might make an argument for Gholston, but there is one important thing to remember about Gholston when compared to Maybin: Gholston is, as of this writing, still employed, whereas Maybin is not.

Will some team take a flier on Maybin? I suppose anything is possible. But the word is Maybin has actually lost weight since his first year in the league. He came in at around 250 pounds, and supposedly was down to 228 during this training camp. Exactly where does a 228 pound LB or DE come into play in any defensive scheme? There are DBs who would appear to have more upper body strength than Maybin, so I would have a very difficult time believing that Maybin will go on to a successful career anywhere in football.

In the end, there doesn’t seem to be much use in crying over spilled milk or worrying about sunk costs, but it is kind of fun to point fingers, so lest we forget:

Former coach Dick Jauron, for instance, was the deciding voice on the Aaron Maybin pick.

Thanks a lot, Dick.

ESPN’s QBR – Color Me Unimpressed

(Note: Check out the new updated version of the article at our new location with a brand new look and feel: Blog-a-Bills)

As many of us know (mostly from having had it hammered into our heads thanks to the fine folks over in ESPN’s marketing department and not through any free will of our own), ESPN recently unveiled a new QB rating system to replace the  flawed passer rating that has been used as an evaluating tool for QB’s since 1971

Given that it could be what one would consider an advanced metric, it seems relevant to post a few thoughts on the topic. (For the record, and to keep this Bills-based, Ryan Fitzpatrick scored a 48.7 out of 100 last year in ESPN’s QBR, good for 17th out of the 33 QBs who qualified last year).

In what we all should consider to be shady at best and malicious at worst, ESPN won’t actually release the exact nature of the formula. Why, you might ask, should we have a problem with that?

Chase Stuart over at pro-football-reference.com puts it best (read his whole post on ESPN’s new rating here):

Unfortunately, ESPN is keeping its formula a secret from the public. There are lots of legitimate reasons for doing this, but that decision makes it impossible to fully criticize the ESPN QBR. It’s possible that there are serious bugs in the formula, but we have no way of knowing or discovering them. It’s hard to get excited about a rating that says “Matt Hasselbeck is better than Sam Bradford because Hasselbeck has a 42.4 rating and Bradford a 41.0.” Well, why is Hasselbeck’s rating because than Bradford’s? Because ESPN says so, of course. That’s just not very convincing. For all the flaws in traditional passer rating or any of the formulas I’ve come up with over the years, you at least know what the flaws are. You can recreate the rankings because you have access to the formula. You can catch errors. You understand why rankings appear the way they do. And you can catch a simple programming mistake that throws off the computer ratings because of human error.

Too Early to Cry Over Spill-t Milk?

Photo: Josh Schultz. License

(Note: Check out the new updated version of the article at our new location with a brand new look and feel: Blog-a-Bills)

The Bills have had an interesting recent past when it comes to the drafting of skill position players in the 1st round (in the same way that a train wreck is interesting). Names such as Willis McGahee, Marshawn Lynch, and (for some) Lee Evans bring shudders down the spines of many Bills fans as wasted first round picks. (This phenomenon isn’t limited to RBs or WRs, lest we forget JP Losman or Mike Williams).

Across the league, luminary running backs such as Trung Canidate, Tim Biakabatuka, and William Green have all served as cautionary tales for taking multiple-threat RBs, like CJ Spiller, in the 1st round of the NFL draft.

We all bore witness to CJ’s less-than-stellar rookie year with the Bills. His play and his stats did nothing to ease those bust concerns:

G	Rushes	Average	Rec	Yds	Yds/Rec	TDs	Yds/Sm
14	74	283	24	157	6.5	1	440

Due in large part to his performance, the fact that many Bills fans were incredibly displeased with what many saw as a “luxury pick”, and Buffalo’s (over?)-sensitivity to busts since the whole Aaron Maybin debacle (wait – he’s still on the team?), the questions have already been asked by fans and the media: Is CJ a bust?

Strength of Schedule: What is it Good For?

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Absolutely Nothing?

Every year during this time, before preseason games have begun but after training camp has started, optimism abounds in many NFL cities (with the possible exception of cities that may or may not rhyme with Muffalo). We, as fans, breathlessly await word of how draft picks perform in their first taste of any kind of NFL action, eagerly anticipate news of the latest step in a recovery from injury, and parse every training-camp related Tweet to hear about any training camp surprises (like Stevie Johnson).

Finally, many of us parse the year’s upcoming schedule, guessing at wins and losses during each week, in an attempt to predict how many wins are possible. It is during this process we most often pay attention to the “strength” of our team’s schedule. As Bills fans, many of us undoubtedly have heard or read that the Bills have the 2nd hardest schedule in the league this year, which may affect the level of optimism we have about this years’ team.

All this begs the question: How much can we actually tell about a team’s chances in the upcoming year from strength of schedule alone?

Before we delve into this question, a few quick notes on the information used in this study:

1. Strength of schedule is defined here as it is when the NFL first releases schedules: a compilation of the previous year’s win/loss records for all the team’s opponents in the upcoming year.
2. The 2010, 2009 and 2008 seasons are included in this analysis.
3. In the tables below, Wins refers to how many actual wins that team picked up that year, while point differential refers to the cumulative point differential for a team that year.

Pos-t Mortem

Photo: Ed Yourdon. License

(Note: Check out this piece at our new location with a new look and feel… Blog-a-Bills….)(

We all had high hopes for Paul Posluszny when he was drafted by the Bills. He seemed the prototypical linebacker and a Buffalo guy; no-neck, ostensibly tough-as-nails, and he came from the same school as Shane Conlan (which seemed to matter to some at the time). But as his career progressed with the Bills, and injuries helped slow him down, the public perception about Pos flipped to the point where one would think he had run over some pedestrians while drunk on Chippewa.

Since the lockout ended, I’ve seen and/or heard people describe his problem as being unable to make tackles closer than 5, 7 or 10 yards to the line of scrimmage. Obviously, one must take those complaints with a grain of salt, and many were made with the intent of getting a laugh. But, as Bills fans, we’ve all heard this complaint before. Specifically, we heard it about London Fletcher, who is still a productive MLB years after the Bills let him go.

So, is this a case of Bills fans simply finding more to dislike about the man because of his (statistically proven) inability to produce the “big” play? Or is he actually making tackles that much farther down the field than his peers? And, even if he is, it’s better than watching Chris Kelsay do anything, isn’t it?

Welcome to Blog-a-Bills

    Photo: Ed Yourdon. License

 

What the Hell is Blog-a-Bills?

First and foremost, yes, I chose a picture of Chris Kelsay chasing a play from behind intentionally (not that he knows any other way to get involved in a play).

Enough of that, though. Blog-a-Bills is a blog devoted to (surprise, surprise) the Buffalo Bills.

As a goal, we will avoid the kind of hyperbole and anecdotal evidence typical of both WGR550 and, well, much of the Internet.

Instead, we hope to use the more advanced NFL metrics available, common sense, and statistical backings for our assertions.

We will not be “the place” to get the latest breaking news. We will not take part in senseless bashing of this player or that (regardless of the occasional Kelsay knock). We won’t refer to Ralph Wilson as a doddering old fool (except for that one time as an example of what we won’t do). This is a blog borne of passion and annoyance with much of the current discourse about the Bills.

So what will we be? Hopefully, perhaps arrogantly, a place to get reasoned, thought-out and meticulously researched commentary on the Bills and media coverage of the Bills, with a poorly-worded dollop of humor here and there, with the occasional rant and/or tangent into general pop culture; a site that encourages passioned yet reasoned debate about the Bills.

Enjoy. If not, don’t worry, this isn’t my day job. It not working will not end me.