DeVante Parker

[ColdZealDonkeyStrike]

Im curious, other than the RZ stats I posted last month what do you think hasn't had context?

Off the top of my head, I disagreed with your conclusion about the RZ statistics, Cutler's career stats, Cutler's deep ball accuracy, and reception perception numbers.
RZ statistics has been discussed.
Cutler's end of season stats are not very impressive I agree, but that has a lot to do with badly timed injuries and poor weapons for the meat of his career (I posted some in this thread). He has still been pretty good at feeding his top guys, particularly ones shaped like Parker, so his end of year stats can look like Tannehill's and it can still be an upgrade for Parker.
Cutler's deep ball accuracy being lower than Tannehill's also missed the point people were making about Cutler suiting Parker more. Cutler is more inclined to let his playmaker's make plays in single coverage than Tannehill. That suits Parker's game more, I think.
For Reception Perception, Harmon has commented a few times that he doesn't know how to account for players that were playing injured. One example I can remember was Sammy Watkins year 1 vs. year 2 when Watkins had much better RP scores year 2. Parker probably falls into this category considering he wasn't practicing fully for most of last year. RP of last season also wouldn't account for Parker's personal improvements this offseason, which has been a common theme from every group who has watched him practice this year. The coaches and players comments I take with a huge grain of salt, but when the uber-critical Miami sports media starts echoing the same thing, it says a lot for me.

[ColdZealDonkeyStrike]

I found this relevant to this conversation and entertaining.

So, Jay, how open does DeVante Parker have to be for you to throw him the ball?

“Not open at all,” Cutler said Sunday. “Covered. As long as there’s just one (defender), the ball’s going to go up to him.”

Say what you want about Cutler's body language, but his candid press conferences crack me up. I honestly thought it was a fake quote when I first saw it.

[ericanadian]

How is this QB any different than the one he had before, look at their career numbers, the main difference between Tannehill and Cutler is their interception rates

Cutler is waaaay different. He loves throwing it up to big receivers ala Marshall and Alshon. And he's competent with the deep ball. These should fit perfectly with Parker. Tannehill was much more conservative, which explains the interceptions. Can't just look at the numbers when comparing QBs

No you can't just look at the numbers but they certainly tell a story. First off, Tannehill and Cutler have career adjusted yards/attempt of 6.68 and 6.69 respectively and in 2015 when they both played at least 15 games they had the same air yards/attempt of 3.8 (13th in the NFL that year) so Tannehill hasn't really been more conservative than Cutler at all, they both take shots down the field

Then there's this tweet by Scott Barrett about Cutler that he put out a few weeks ago: https://twitter.com/ScottBarrettDFB/sta ... 1624918016 which kinda torpedoes the argument that Cutler has a nice deep ball since he's not even average when throwing downfield anywhere but deep right

And since I know someone will ask Parker was targeted deep right 6 times last year as opposed to 11 times deep left and 5 times deep middle, he primarily lines up as the X-receiver which is on the left/weak side of the field so the odds of him benefiting from Cutler's strange acuity at throwing deep right aren't great either, that's typically where Stills will be in 3WR sets

YPA would leave you thinking Brady & Carr go deep a lot relative to the league average. They do not. Cutler hit 47.4% of his 20+ DoT throws compared to Tannehill at 37.2%. Parsing the data down to left vs right is ridiculous when Cutler had not even 200 passes last season..

[PingPwng]

I found this relevant to this conversation and entertaining.

So, Jay, how open does DeVante Parker have to be for you to throw him the ball?

“Not open at all,” Cutler said Sunday. “Covered. As long as there’s just one (defender), the ball’s going to go up to him.”

Say what you want about Cutler's body language, but his candid press conferences crack me up. I honestly thought it was a fake quote when I first saw it.

Classic Jay!

[Vcize]

Im curious, other than the RZ stats I posted last month what do you think hasn't had context?

I'm strongly in the camp of JTD on this one.

There seems to be a trend lately not just here, but even in actual football journalism of presenting a statistic that sounds impressive on its own, but that when taken in context is completely worthless.

We saw it recently with Melvin Gordon where some podcaster presented how much higher Gordon's YPC was with his short yardage carries removed and it caught on. "WOW THAT'S A BIG NUMBER!!!". Great shock value, but what they failed to do was see how that compared to the rest of the league, and it terms of that when you looked at it in the context of all RBs, it wasn't actually a big number. It was really average. Most RB's saw their YPC increase by an equally big number, if not bigger.

So here we have Parker vs. Landry's red zone catch rate. "LANDRY CATCHES A HIGHER PERCENTAGE IN THE RED ZONE THAN PARKER!!!". Shock value. But in context, worthless.

You see, in context, virtually every lead outside WR has an inside receiver on his team (either slot receiver or TE) that catches a higher percentage of passes in the redzone, including most of the elite WRs. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Teams generally guard the goaline when defending in the red zone. So slot WRs and TEs running underneath are allowed to catch and be tackled short of the endzone, whereas balls thrown in the endzone or closer to the goaline (where the outside receivers are likely to be) are much more heavily guarded.

So let's look at the context via the actual numbers. Here are the red zone catch percentages of some teammates last year...

Parker: 62.5%
Landry: 77.7%

Beckham: 42.8%
Shepard: 75%

Dez: 50%
Beasely: 75%

A Brown: 60%
E Rogers: 66%

Julio: 44%
Gabriel: 100%

Hilton: 61%
Doyle: 75%

M Thomas: 68%
Snead: 66%

Nelson: 65%
Adams: 60%
Cobb: 70%

Evans: 47%
Brate: 63%

Context.

[StableOfRBs]

Im curious, other than the RZ stats I posted last month what do you think hasn't had context?

Off the top of my head, I disagreed with your conclusion about the RZ statistics, Cutler's career stats, Cutler's deep ball accuracy, and reception perception numbers.
RZ statistics has been discussed.

Cutler's end of season stats are not very impressive I agree, but that has a lot to do with badly timed injuries and poor weapons for the meat of his career (I posted some in this thread).

He has still been pretty good at feeding his top guys, particularly ones shaped like Parker, so his end of year stats can look like Tannehill's and it can still be an upgrade for Parker.

Cutler's deep ball accuracy being lower than Tannehill's also missed the point people were making about Cutler suiting Parker more.

Cutler is more inclined to let his playmaker's make plays in single coverage than Tannehill. That suits Parker's game more, I think.

For Reception Perception, Harmon has commented a few times that he doesn't know how to account for players that were playing injured. One example I can remember was Sammy Watkins year 1 vs. year 2 when Watkins had much better RP scores year 2. Parker probably falls into this category considering he wasn't practicing fully for most of last year.

RP of last season also wouldn't account for Parker's personal improvements this offseason, which has been a common theme from every group who has watched him practice this year.

The coaches and players comments I take with a huge grain of salt, but when the uber-critical Miami sports media starts echoing the same thing, it says a lot for me.

1. Cutler's top WR since his rookie season:
2006 - 5-time Pro Bowler Rod Smith (only 5 games played)
2007 - BMarsh
2008 - BMarsh
2009 - Nobody of note
2010 - Nobody of note
2011 - Nobody of note
2012 - BMarsh/Alshon
2013 - BMarsh/Alshon
2014 - BMarsh/Alshon
2015 - Alshon
2016 - Cam Meredith/Alshon (only 5 games played)

so 3/11 (or 3/9 if you want to ignore the season he only played 5 games) which isn't that bad considering what some QBs have to deal with, compared to Tannehill who as a rookie had Brian Hartline to throw too and the next year Hartline and Mike Wallace which is 2/5 years of mediocre-at-best receiver play

2. I don't recall ever mentioning either players deep ball accuracy, just adjusted yards/attempts

3. This is actually an area where Parker suffers, his contested catch % has been fairly poor and he's not good at generating separation due to poor route running (even in college against good competition he had issues, part of the reason his college production was not great)

4. You might be right, injury might have caused an issue here and RP is based on an 8 game sample size (which 8 games I have no idea) but with the way people are drafting him right now he's going to get started if he's playing, whether he practices or not, and despite a lack of practice for however long he wasn't practicing (only injuries I could find for last year were a hamstring pull late in August and a back strain in November so not sure how many practices he actually missed) he played 15 games, so I don't think it was bothering him terribly, but again, you could be right

5.You're right, they don't, and he could have improved, which is why I had originally projected him to have an all-time season of 70-930-6 but with the extra targets from Cutler, putting him at around 120, with his catch rate of 64% and 13.3 yards/reception last year would put him at around 77 catches, 1020 yards, and probably 6 TDs, which is good for a mid-low WR2, but I also think that's his ceiling and I'm skeptical of the target volume

TL;DR, yea maybe injuries were an issue for him the past couple years (although that's also a negative) and I could see him having 3-4 100+ yard games but you'll never know what weeks those will be and since people seem to be drafting him as an every week starter I think he'll burn you more weeks than not

[StableOfRBs]

Cutler is waaaay different. He loves throwing it up to big receivers ala Marshall and Alshon. And he's competent with the deep ball. These should fit perfectly with Parker. Tannehill was much more conservative, which explains the interceptions. Can't just look at the numbers when comparing QBs

No you can't just look at the numbers but they certainly tell a story. First off, Tannehill and Cutler have career adjusted yards/attempt of 6.68 and 6.69 respectively and in 2015 when they both played at least 15 games they had the same air yards/attempt of 3.8 (13th in the NFL that year) so Tannehill hasn't really been more conservative than Cutler at all, they both take shots down the field

Then there's this tweet by Scott Barrett about Cutler that he put out a few weeks ago: https://twitter.com/ScottBarrettDFB/sta ... 1624918016 which kinda torpedoes the argument that Cutler has a nice deep ball since he's not even average when throwing downfield anywhere but deep right

And since I know someone will ask Parker was targeted deep right 6 times last year as opposed to 11 times deep left and 5 times deep middle, he primarily lines up as the X-receiver which is on the left/weak side of the field so the odds of him benefiting from Cutler's strange acuity at throwing deep right aren't great either, that's typically where Stills will be in 3WR sets

YPA would leave you thinking Brady & Carr go deep a lot relative to the league average. They do not. Cutler hit 47.4% of his 20+ DoT throws compared to Tannehill at 37.2% Parsing the data down to left vs right is ridiculous when Cutler had not even 200 passes last season..

That was career data, not last season, also wasn't my stat, take it up with Scott Barrett

Also where did you get the DoT data? Genuinely curious, I looked all over for it and couldn't find anything

[StableOfRBs]

Im curious, other than the RZ stats I posted last month what do you think hasn't had context?

I'm strongly in the camp of JTD on this one.

There seems to be a trend lately not just here, but even in actual football journalism of presenting a statistic that sounds impressive on its own, but that when taken in context is completely worthless.

We saw it recently with Melvin Gordon where some podcaster presented how much higher Gordon's YPC was with his short yardage carries removed and it caught on. "WOW THAT'S A BIG NUMBER!!!". Great shock value, but what they failed to do was see how that compared to the rest of the league, and it terms of that when you looked at it in the context of all RBs, it wasn't actually a big number. It was really average. Most RB's saw their YPC increase by an equally big number, if not bigger.

So here we have Parker vs. Landry's red zone catch rate. "LANDRY CATCHES A HIGHER PERCENTAGE IN THE RED ZONE THAN PARKER!!!". Shock value. But in context, worthless.

You see, in context, virtually every lead outside WR has an inside receiver on his team (either slot receiver or TE) that catches a higher percentage of passes in the redzone, including most of the elite WRs. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Teams generally guard the goaline when defending in the red zone. So slot WRs and TEs running underneath are allowed to catch and be tackled short of the endzone, whereas balls thrown in the endzone or closer to the goaline (where the outside receivers are likely to be) are much more heavily guarded.

So let's look at the context via the actual numbers. Here are the red zone catch percentages of some teammates last year...

Parker: 62.5%
Landry: 77.7%

Beckham: 42.8%
Shepard: 75%

Dez: 50%
Beasely: 75%

A Brown: 60%
E Rogers: 66%

Julio: 44%
Gabriel: 100%

Hilton: 61%
Doyle: 75%

M Thomas: 68%
Snead: 66%

Nelson: 65%
Adams: 60%
Cobb: 70%

Evans: 47%
Brate: 63%

Context.

This is a good point and obviously true, but the only reason I pointed out RZ numbers was because JTD said Parker should see more RZ looks than Landry because Landry is "terrible" in the red zone, which is completely untrue and also the context in which they were brought up, both Landry and Parker were targeted in the RZ on average from the ~12.4 yard line and both had 2 TDs on those targets but Landry averaged 5.3 yards/target compared to Parker's 4.4 and was tackled on the 1-yard line twice and in my opinion that makes him a better RZ target than Parker

[ColdZealDonkeyStrike]

I should have been more clear. I think Landry is terrible at scoring TDs in the redzone, which was the reason you brought up redzone targets. That's why he averages 4 TDs a year on 148 targets a year. The only reason he gets so many red zone targets is because Tannehill doesn't play aggressive near the endzone (although he started to at the end of games they were down last year). I don't know any stats that measure that, but it's my opinion from watching every game Tannehill and Landry have played in a fins uniform.

[ColdZealDonkeyStrike]

Im curious, other than the RZ stats I posted last month what do you think hasn't had context?

I'm strongly in the camp of JTD on this one.

There seems to be a trend lately not just here, but even in actual football journalism of presenting a statistic that sounds impressive on its own, but that when taken in context is completely worthless.

We saw it recently with Melvin Gordon where some podcaster presented how much higher Gordon's YPC was with his short yardage carries removed and it caught on. "WOW THAT'S A BIG NUMBER!!!". Great shock value, but what they failed to do was see how that compared to the rest of the league, and it terms of that when you looked at it in the context of all RBs, it wasn't actually a big number. It was really average. Most RB's saw their YPC increase by an equally big number, if not bigger.

So here we have Parker vs. Landry's red zone catch rate. "LANDRY CATCHES A HIGHER PERCENTAGE IN THE RED ZONE THAN PARKER!!!". Shock value. But in context, worthless.

You see, in context, virtually every lead outside WR has an inside receiver on his team (either slot receiver or TE) that catches a higher percentage of passes in the redzone, including most of the elite WRs. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Teams generally guard the goaline when defending in the red zone. So slot WRs and TEs running underneath are allowed to catch and be tackled short of the endzone, whereas balls thrown in the endzone or closer to the goaline (where the outside receivers are likely to be) are much more heavily guarded.

So let's look at the context via the actual numbers. Here are the red zone catch percentages of some teammates last year...

Parker: 62.5%
Landry: 77.7%

Beckham: 42.8%
Shepard: 75%

Dez: 50%
Beasely: 75%

A Brown: 60%
E Rogers: 66%

Julio: 44%
Gabriel: 100%

Hilton: 61%
Doyle: 75%

M Thomas: 68%
Snead: 66%

Nelson: 65%
Adams: 60%
Cobb: 70%

Evans: 47%
Brate: 63%

Context.

This is a good point and obviously true, but the only reason I pointed out RZ numbers was because JTD said Parker should see more RZ looks than Landry because Landry is "terrible" in the red zone, which is completely untrue and also the context in which they were brought up, both Landry and Parker were targeted in the RZ on average from the ~12.4 yard line and both had 2 TDs on those targets but Landry averaged 5.3 yards/target compared to Parker's 4.4 and was tackled on the 1-yard line twice and in my opinion that makes him a better RZ target than Parker

If they both got 9 targets, and Landry caught 2 more of his 9 targets, then yeah, he is going to have more yards per target.

You can't form an intelligent opinion solely off of the statistics from a sample size of 9 targets.

[StableOfRBs]

I'm strongly in the camp of JTD on this one.

There seems to be a trend lately not just here, but even in actual football journalism of presenting a statistic that sounds impressive on its own, but that when taken in context is completely worthless.

We saw it recently with Melvin Gordon where some podcaster presented how much higher Gordon's YPC was with his short yardage carries removed and it caught on. "WOW THAT'S A BIG NUMBER!!!". Great shock value, but what they failed to do was see how that compared to the rest of the league, and it terms of that when you looked at it in the context of all RBs, it wasn't actually a big number. It was really average. Most RB's saw their YPC increase by an equally big number, if not bigger.

So here we have Parker vs. Landry's red zone catch rate. "LANDRY CATCHES A HIGHER PERCENTAGE IN THE RED ZONE THAN PARKER!!!". Shock value. But in context, worthless.

You see, in context, virtually every lead outside WR has an inside receiver on his team (either slot receiver or TE) that catches a higher percentage of passes in the redzone, including most of the elite WRs. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Teams generally guard the goaline when defending in the red zone. So slot WRs and TEs running underneath are allowed to catch and be tackled short of the endzone, whereas balls thrown in the endzone or closer to the goaline (where the outside receivers are likely to be) are much more heavily guarded.

So let's look at the context via the actual numbers. Here are the red zone catch percentages of some teammates last year...

Parker: 62.5%
Landry: 77.7%

Beckham: 42.8%
Shepard: 75%

Dez: 50%
Beasely: 75%

A Brown: 60%
E Rogers: 66%

Julio: 44%
Gabriel: 100%

Hilton: 61%
Doyle: 75%

M Thomas: 68%
Snead: 66%

Nelson: 65%
Adams: 60%
Cobb: 70%

Evans: 47%
Brate: 63%

Context.

This is a good point and obviously true, but the only reason I pointed out RZ numbers was because JTD said Parker should see more RZ looks than Landry because Landry is "terrible" in the red zone, which is completely untrue and also the context in which they were brought up, both Landry and Parker were targeted in the RZ on average from the ~12.4 yard line and both had 2 TDs on those targets but Landry averaged 5.3 yards/target compared to Parker's 4.4 and was tackled on the 1-yard line twice and in my opinion that makes him a better RZ target than Parker

If they both got 9 targets, and Landry caught 2 more of his 9 targets, then yeah, he is going to have more yards per target.

You can't form an intelligent opinion solely off of the statistics from a sample size of 9 targets.

Well this just isn't true no matter what part of the field you're on, especially given that one of the catches Landry got -1 yard on so had he dropped it his yards/target would've gone up

Then what are you basing him being terrible in the RZ on?

[ColdZealDonkeyStrike]

Then what are you basing him being terrible in the RZ on?

I should have been more clear. I think Landry is terrible at scoring TDs in the redzone, which was the reason you brought up redzone targets. That's why he averages 4 TDs a year on 148 targets a year. The only reason he gets so many red zone targets is because Tannehill doesn't play aggressive near the endzone (although he started to at the end of games they were down last year). I don't know any stats that measure that, but it's my opinion from watching every game Tannehill and Landry have played in a fins uniform.

[StableOfRBs]

Then what are you basing him being terrible in the RZ on?

I should have been more clear. I think Landry is terrible at scoring TDs in the redzone, which was the reason you brought up redzone targets. That's why he averages 4 TDs a year on 148 targets a year. The only reason he gets so many red zone targets is because Tannehill doesn't play aggressive near the endzone (although he started to at the end of games they were down last year). I don't know any stats that measure that, but it's my opinion from watching every game Tannehill and Landry have played in a fins uniform.

Career RZ #'s from some WRs:

Jordy - 119 targets, 70 catch, 31 TDs, 58.8% catch rate, 26.1% TD rate
OBJ - 64 targets, 36 catches, 15 TDs, 56.3% catch rate, 23.4% TD rate
Antonio Brown - 111 targets, 63 catches, 23 TDs, 56.7% catch rate, 20.7% TD rate
Mike Evans - 44 targets, 18 catches, 12 TDs, 40.9% catch rate, 27.3% TD rate
Kelvin Benjamin - 30 targets, 12 catches, 7 TDs, 40% catch rate, 23.3% TD rate
Julio Jones - 78 targets, 43 catches, 17 TDs, 55.1% catch rate, 21.7% TD rate
DeAndre Hopkins - 54 targets, 24 catches, 10 TDs, 44.4% catch rate, 18.5% TD rate
Jarvis Landry - 44 targets, 29 catches, 8 TDs, 65.9% catch rate, 18.2% TD rate

I tried to grab a variety of sizes/ages/receiving styles who also had similar target shares as Landry and yes Landry is the lowest of the group but not by much, just 1 more TD would have put him at just about the same TD rate as Brown and it's not crazy to think that he could have done it either considering he got tackled at the 1-yard line twice last year, so maybe he's not quite at the elite level for TD production in the red zone but he's certainly brushing up against it and most definitely not terrible at it

I could include Parker's if you'd like but I figured since he isn't the primary receiver on his team and has only started 12 games I didn't think it was a big enough sample size

[jimmychoi]

This is like a statistical dance-off. I don't have a research intern to verify the validity of the statistics, but I appreciate the effort. Interesting read. I drafted parker, kept Parker, and I'm hoping for continued progress. I've seen enough progress each year to be seduced into hope for him. I do t expect wr 1 numbers, but I'm hopeful he'll provide numbers sufficient to be productive. Is it the regular season yet?

[ericanadian]

No you can't just look at the numbers but they certainly tell a story. First off, Tannehill and Cutler have career adjusted yards/attempt of 6.68 and 6.69 respectively and in 2015 when they both played at least 15 games they had the same air yards/attempt of 3.8 (13th in the NFL that year) so Tannehill hasn't really been more conservative than Cutler at all, they both take shots down the field

Then there's this tweet by Scott Barrett about Cutler that he put out a few weeks ago: https://twitter.com/ScottBarrettDFB/sta ... 1624918016 which kinda torpedoes the argument that Cutler has a nice deep ball since he's not even average when throwing downfield anywhere but deep right

And since I know someone will ask Parker was targeted deep right 6 times last year as opposed to 11 times deep left and 5 times deep middle, he primarily lines up as the X-receiver which is on the left/weak side of the field so the odds of him benefiting from Cutler's strange acuity at throwing deep right aren't great either, that's typically where Stills will be in 3WR sets

YPA would leave you thinking Brady & Carr go deep a lot relative to the league average. They do not. Cutler hit 47.4% of his 20+ DoT throws compared to Tannehill at 37.2% Parsing the data down to left vs right is ridiculous when Cutler had not even 200 passes last season..

That was career data, not last season, also wasn't my stat, take it up with Scott Barrett

Also where did you get the DoT data? Genuinely curious, I looked all over for it and couldn't find anything

The details are a bit complicated, but in the play by play data on NFLGSIS they include the depth of each pass. I copied the play by play data into a spreadsheet which extracts the data I want and summarizes it.