Joe Mixon Thread: 4 Year extension in Cincy

[ericanadian]

While I agree Mixon is probably overrated at this point, I don't really get the questioning of his vision. He makes some poor decisions, but I didn't see him missing holes with any consistency. He's patient and sometimes borders on tentative, but even that improved as the season wore on. Do you have any specific games where you saw this?

[ArrylT]

Now you want hype that's out of control NATHAN PETERMAN!!!!

In SF / 2 QB leagues he is worth more than Hopkins or Odell.

[skip]

Mixon was a pretty consensus top 4/5 pick in last year's stud RB class.

Agreed that is where he was valued. The problem I'm seeing is that many people who really like him have him rated ahead of all of the other backs who came out last season. I think that's where the disconnect is taking place.

[thebeast]

Mixon was a pretty consensus top 4/5 pick in last year's stud RB class.

Agreed that is where he was valued. The problem I'm seeing is that many people who really like him have him rated ahead of all of the other backs who came out last season. I think that's where the disconnect is taking place.

I thought it was pretty much Fournette then Mixon/Davis as pick #2 and #3, so unless people are reacting to one season he should stay where he is relative to the other RBs last year, right?

[Johnny Canuck]

While I agree Mixon is probably overrated at this point, I don't really get the questioning of his vision. He makes some poor decisions, but I didn't see him missing holes with any consistency. He's patient and sometimes borders on tentative, but even that improved as the season wore on. Do you have any specific games where you saw this?

I can't remember the specific games, but I watch a lot of cincy games (Dalton apologist over here lol), and I just remember Mixon missing a lot of holes and trying to hard to make a big play, instead of just taking the 3 yard gain that was right in front of him.

Also I remember an article from PFF not too long ago that illustrated this point. Here's the Cole's notes.

PFF’s Scott Barrett released a study breaking down how each running back performed against their average box advantage, or disadvantage if you will. This took into account all carries outside of 10-yards from the opponents end zone and excluded any carry that occurred within four yards of a potential first down on third and fourth down. Essentially, these were rush attempts where the defense could expect a run or pass and didn’t sell-out to stop the run. The running backs who had 100 of these carries were charted.

The purpose of this study was to provide a better context to how many more box defenders a running back was going up against compared to the number of blockers he had to work with in non-obvious running plays. On the surface, it’s a great way to look at which running backs had it easier on average and what they produced with those average box differentials.

Looking specifically at Mixon, he faced the sixth-easiest average box advantage, and was tied for the fifth-worst yards per carry, which is not a good combination to have. Barrett had this to say about Mixon:

“While Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, and Dalvin Cook lit the world on fire in their rookie seasons, and Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette were at worst pedestrian in efficiency relative to their average advantage, Mixon was a massive disappointment. While I still believe in Mixon’s talent due to such impressive college production, I’m easily least optimistic about his prospects in year two. Lamar Miller, Jamaal Williams, and Ameer Abdullah were all similarly disappointing relative to blocking advantage.”

[flashgordon12]

I watched every Bengals game last year. Yes he did try too hard at times, but I think to say he has no vision is a tad overzealous. Mixon will be fine, but I hope people temper their expectations a little bit. Bengals line still isn't great

[Snake]

I hate making this kind of arguement, but Melvin Gordon also averaged 3.5 YPC his rookie season and he has never averaged 4 YPC for a season (3.9 the past two years).

Where’s Melvin Gordon’s ADP?! Looks like people are taking him just before Mixon (DLF June ADP) at RB 11.

1. Mixon’s value is insulated for a couple years even if he has bad YPC
2. He’s 3 years younger than Melvin and should probably be drafted before him
3. If you don’t like it, draft another position

[Ice]

I watched every Bengals game last year. Yes he did try too hard at times, but I think to say he has no vision is a tad overzealous. Mixon will be fine, but I hope people temper their expectations a little bit. Bengals line still isn't great

Vision is a scouting term. Mixon was dinged pretty hard in this area by scouts coming into the league. There is a coloration with seeing how a play develops and YPC.

Maybe they will run more out of the shotgun which could help. I watched him a lot and his YPC when the QB is under center has to be under 3 YPC.

Not saying he can't get better but if he doesn't he will have a short career at this level. I get the line can be blamed for some of this but the question has to be asked..... Why didn't Gio suffer in his YPC?

Not convinced Mixon's processing speed is very good.

[UATahoe]

Gio and Mixon were nearly identical backs in the last half of the season.

[AussieMate]

I thought this thread was started as a genuine quiery with some fun hyperbole but it's turned to rediculous in itself.
I actually liked mixons vision and thought he showed enough in the last 5-6 games to be given another chance. He tried to make every run a homerun early in the year but he seemed to correct that at the end of the year. Obviously it's wrong to have him ahead of Kamara or Kareem but I still have Mixon above dalvin and McCaffrey at this point.
We'll see this year I guess, another bad year and I'll probably call him a bust but not yet

[Orenthal Shames]

We go through this every year with different players. This community puts far too great a premium on youth and perceived upside.

This is the same community who had OBJ & Evans as the only two assets above Cooper.

DLF is very groupthink based and always will be, so when an opinion becomes popular others mindlessly hop on board.

Mixon could be good, but I sold him because I just didn't get the excitement after watching him play.

Oh man. Do you not remember last year everyone was saying Cooper should have been drafted ahead of Gurley? My point isn't that that was wrong, it's that it's too early to write off Cooper. He has two 1,000 yard seasons. Gurley had a flop year and is now in the discussion for 1.01. By definition, consensus values have to be groupthink, and actually, pretty much every community is going to succumb to groupthink. The truth is that the groupthink you refer to is more often right than wrong, while rankings and adp aren't perfect they are pretty darn good.

Not sure if it was intentional but you basically pointed out the main reason why groupthink is awful. It is based far too much on "what did a player do last year" - if a groupthink ranking was truly efficient players would not constantly fluctuate dozens of spots yet it continually happens. There is too much focus on trying to overcorrect based on what just happened in a year rather than ranking players based on how good we think they are. There is no tangible way to measure they are "more often right than wrong" but I will just leave it at I completely disagree and all you need to do is look at year to year rankings to see why.

One of my main points remains that many of the rankings in this community seem to default to what the "best case scenario" is for a player rather than a realistic scenario. Associating a cost into a player who has not proven anything close to his ranking because he is young and has upside is how there are so many errors in this mindset.

Savvy owners take advantage of this.

For a perfect example, take a look at the Saquan Peak Value thread. People are already giving him a Marshall Faulk circa 1999 ceiling. Absurdity.

[skip]

Mixon was a pretty consensus top 4/5 pick in last year's stud RB class.

Agreed that is where he was valued. The problem I'm seeing is that many people who really like him have him rated ahead of all of the other backs who came out last season. I think that's where the disconnect is taking place.

I thought it was pretty much Fournette then Mixon/Davis as pick #2 and #3, so unless people are reacting to one season he should stay where he is relative to the other RBs last year, right?

I guess if you don't want to factor a player's rookie season in at all to how you value them, then I guess do what you want. But I'm not planning to ignore that at a minimum Hunt and Kamara were both significantly better than Mixon. In the handful of games that Cook played, he looked considerably better. Fournette was obviously better.

[Pullo Vision]

We go through this every year with different players. This community puts far too great a premium on youth. DLF is very groupthink based and always will be, so when an opinion becomes popular others mindlessly hop on board.

This surprises me. I stepped away from here for a few years. Any examples of this in this offseason?

[hankmurphy]

He’s ~230 lbs with good speed, great lateral agility, he has the skill set to be an effective 3-down back, and hasn’t turned 22 yet.

It’s perfectly OK if you don’t think he passes the eye test, but I thought he was very impressive when his coaches gave him opportunities last season. I don’t lose points if his YPC is less than Gio’s, so I couldn’t care less about that. He won’t play any better or any worse because some people overpaid for him. Making long-winded, whiny posts about how upset his ADP is making you won’t actually make him any less valuable.

It is actually possible for a player to have a poor season, especially in their rookie year, and still go on to have a good career.

There he is, I was wondering when a hardcore truther would show up lol. So Hankmurphy, what say you, would you prefer to have Mixon over OBJ? what other players do you rank above Mixon? Just Gurley? or do Bell, Dhop, and DJ get that privilege as well...

I would rank 8 RBs and 6-7 WRs above Mixon, but that doesn’t change the fact that he showed a lot of promise last season. He’s in line for bellcow volume, and there are only a handful of other RBs that fit that profile.

[jeffster]

For a perfect example, take a look at the Saquan Peak Value thread. People are already giving him a Marshall Faulk circa 1999 ceiling. Absurdity.

To be fair though, thus sort of comparison is as reliable as the sunrise in a thread about young RBs. In a thread I started about Cohen a while back, Barry Sanders, Darren Sproles and Adrian Peterson all came out as comps in one way or another. :laugh:

Someone is always looking at peak upside.