Henry Ruggs is Much More Than Speed

[ThunderTung]

There’s a stark difference between the community being able to look at NFL draft order and consistently identify a bad reach every other year, and insinuating that we can do a better job than NFL front offices as a whole without any access to their data/interviews/etc.

Somebody (I think Jules/Brian Malone) ran this data a few years back and found that Mizelle ADP correlated better with fantasy success than NFL draft order, but it’s not a fair comparison because we get to look at draft order before doing mock drafts.

If anybody wanted to study it, you would just look at positional ADP in March and compare it to positional draft order and see which one correlates better with fantasy success.

that's more important than anything imo. I mean they take in scheme fit, personality, cultural fit, and probably a lot of other stuff we don't even think about. They have to evaluate more than just the talent side of it. we get to go "this player do good" they have way more to consider, and way more on the line if they misevaluate.

[Lumps]

There’s a stark difference between the community being able to look at NFL draft order and consistently identify a bad reach every other year, and insinuating that we can do a better job than NFL front offices as a whole without any access to their data/interviews/etc.

Somebody (I think Jules/Brian Malone) ran this data a few years back and found that Mizelle ADP correlated better with fantasy success than NFL draft order, but it’s not a fair comparison because we get to look at draft order before doing mock drafts.

If anybody wanted to study it, you would just look at positional ADP in March and compare it to positional draft order and see which one correlates better with fantasy success.

NFL teams aren't filling out a fantasy lineup or making selections on who is going to score the most points. They are concerned about team success. They are drastically different goals. Now if you want to bash the Raiders for DHB over Crabtree (same position and Crabby was available) then sure.

Pretty sure Ruggs running straight downfield and wearing defenders like a t shirt catching one pass a game did not correspond more to team success than Justin Jefferson, Ceedee Lamb or even Jerry Jeudy

Well, that comes down to usage and a poor one at that. Gruden has even said so after the season. Look back at my posts about Gruden's history and I'm now more pessimistic about Ruggs success based on situation.

1) I wasn't disagreeing with you
2) My point still stands

Yes, other WRs had more successful years. Jefferson and Lamb were in far better situations than Ruggs. As bad as Cousins is as a real QB (and he's better than we give him credit for), he's still better than Carr. Or perhaps better than Carr with Gruden coaching? BUT, put Lamb on the Raiders and would he have had the same stats? Jefferson? I don't think so, I think they'd be lesser.

My point is teams are drafting for their team's success, not an individual's stat line. WE play for an individual's stat line and give bleep all about a team's actual success. Thus, when it comes to drafting in fantasy versus the real world, it is drastically different.

[Nanananananana]

No doubt the NFL GMs have a different job than we do as far as what they are looking for. When I say that the fantasy community tends to be more sharp than the NFL, in this case the people who I follow and my league mates were off Ruggs. He was the 1st position player taken in the NFL draft but was on average the 8-10th taken in any draft I was in. Similarly I remember taking Marquis Brown in the mid-2nd the year he came out because people weren’t buying his profile.

It seems like the most consistent miss the NFL has with WRs is chasing speed in the early 1st. For a team with Nelson Agholar as WR1 to forgot all the prototypical target magnet types to take Henry Ruggs was such a laughable mistake, at the time and now.

What other than 40 time, dunking videos and draft capital would lead you to draft Ruggs over Jefferson????

Jefferson had 111/1540/18 playing with Chase, Marshall and CEH. Ruggs couldn’t equal that in his best 2 years combined. I could see if you looked at Ruggs situation and thought well he’s going into such a empty depth chart maybe he’ll get off to the better start but still.

Ruggs was going to need to be an outlier.

[Bronco Billy]

NFL teams aren't filling out a fantasy lineup or making selections on who is going to score the most points. They are concerned about team success. They are drastically different goals. Now if you want to bash the Raiders for DHB over Crabtree (same position and Crabby was available) then sure.

Pretty sure Ruggs running straight downfield and wearing defenders like a t shirt catching one pass a game did not correspond more to team success than Justin Jefferson, Ceedee Lamb or even Jerry Jeudy

Well, that comes down to usage and a poor one at that. Gruden has even said so after the season. Look back at my posts about Gruden's history and I'm now more pessimistic about Ruggs success based on situation.

1) I wasn't disagreeing with you
2) My point still stands

Yes, other WRs had more successful years. Jefferson and Lamb were in far better situations than Ruggs. As bad as Cousins is as a real QB (and he's better than we give him credit for), he's still better than Carr. Or perhaps better than Carr with Gruden coaching? BUT, put Lamb on the Raiders and would he have had the same stats? Jefferson? I don't think so, I think they'd be lesser.

My point is teams are drafting for their team's success, not an individual's stat line. WE play for an individual's stat line and give bleep all about a team's actual success. Thus, when it comes to drafting in fantasy versus the real world, it is drastically different.

Going to have to respectfully disagree at the risk of you busting out 10s to 100s of emojis in rebuttal.

If a guy can play, coaches will use them and put them in situations where they can win. If a guy has only one or two superior traits and is lacking in others, then coaches will use them as best they can to improve winning other matchups.

We get to see these guys on Sundays and in extremely short bursts in news clips from practice, or even worse in getting information from sports reporters who for the most part are journalists who don’t know a lot about the sports they are covering but will pretend they are experts. Coaches see these guys day in and day out for hours at a time and can see who has the ability and capacity to work hard, do whatever it takes to improve, and expand their opportunities and which players don’t or won’t.

I swear, I do not understand FFers who think coaches won’t put their best players on the field and then won’t give opportunities to those players on the field for situations where they’ll help the team win. If drawing a CB and FS deep is all Ruggs can do to improve OAK’s chances of winning, then that’s what OAK is going to use him to do. If he could win regularly in other scenarios or situations, do you seriously think OAK wouldn’t put him in those situations?

[Cameron Giles]

No doubt the NFL GMs have a different job than we do as far as what they are looking for. When I say that the fantasy community tends to be more sharp than the NFL, in this case the people who I follow and my league mates were off Ruggs. He was the 1st position player taken in the NFL draft but was on average the 8-10th taken in any draft I was in.

But again...a significant amount of draft opinion is made because of draft pedigree and landing spot...which the NFL decides for you. There's no practical argument that the fantasy community is sharper than the NFL.

Not taking the 1st skill player selected in a rookie draft has nothing to do with knowledge. Ruggs went 12, Jeudy 15, Lamb 17, Reagor 21, Jefferson 22...the difference in capital is not so significant to draft Ruggs 1st of even any WR.

It seems like the most consistent miss the NFL has with WRs is chasing speed in the early 1st. For a team with Nelson Agholar as WR1 to forgot all the prototypical target magnet types to take Henry Ruggs was such a laughable mistake, at the time and now.

What other than 40 time, dunking videos and draft capital would lead you to draft Ruggs over Jefferson????

Jefferson had 111/1540/18 playing with Chase, Marshall and CEH. Ruggs couldn’t equal that in his best 2 years combined. I could see if you looked at Ruggs situation and thought well he’s going into such a empty depth chart maybe he’ll get off to the better start but still.

Ruggs was going to need to be an outlier.

I think it's pretty funny that after Jefferson has an unexpected all-time great rookie season, people are coming out of the woodwork and acting like it was common knowledge that Jefferson was a vastly better WR than Ruggs, let alone any of the WRs who consistently went above him.

Here's Jefferson's Mizelle ADP by month:

March - 1.10 (Ruggs - 1.11)
April - 1.08 (Ruggs - 1.09)
May - 1.09 (Ruggs - 1.11)
June - 1.08 (Ruggs - 1.10)
July - 1.09 (Ruggs - 1.11)

Ruggs slightly lagged behind Jefferson throughout the draft process. So, while he may have been favored a little more, it wasn't some overwhelming difference.

Ruggs spent three years in college playing with a combination of Calvin Ridley, Jerry Jeudy, DeVonta Smith, Jaylen Waddle, and Irv Smith, not to mention Najee Harris and Josh Jacobs at RB. The opportunity for gaudy individual stats as the 3rd WR on those teams just wasn't possible. Jefferson played with Chase, Edwards-Helaire, and Marshall.

Ruggs doesn't need to be an outlier to succeed.

[Buckhill Bombers]

Ruggs is my biggest regret in last year's rookie drafts. Taking him over Aiyuk, Gibson, and Higgins in multiple leagues...i just want to punch myself in the nuts.

[Lumps]

Going to have to respectfully disagree at the risk of you busting out 10s to 100s of emojis in rebuttal.

If a guy can play, coaches will use them and put them in situations where they can win. If a guy has only one or two superior traits and is lacking in others, then coaches will use them as best they can to improve winning other matchups.

We get to see these guys on Sundays and in extremely short bursts in news clips from practice, or even worse in getting information from sports reporters who for the most part are journalists who don’t know a lot about the sports they are covering but will pretend they are experts. Coaches see these guys day in and day out for hours at a time and can see who has the ability and capacity to work hard, do whatever it takes to improve, and expand their opportunities and which players don’t or won’t.

I swear, I do not understand FFers who think coaches won’t put their best players on the field and then won’t give opportunities to those players on the field for situations where they’ll help the team win. If drawing a CB and FS deep is all Ruggs can do to improve OAK’s chances of winning, then that’s what OAK is going to use him to do. If he could win regularly in other scenarios or situations, do you seriously think OAK wouldn’t put him in those situations?

Agree on the perspective of the bolded part.

The underlined parts, however, we have seen countless times how inept certain staffs, management, and ownership has been. In some regards laughably so. Al Davis Raiders, WFT, Browns forever, hiring a 3-4 D coordinator when you have 4-3 personnel, and endless other situations. For a business that brings in as much money as they do, there are times where it is utterly absurd the problems they find themselves in. Then, you realize, it is made up of the VERY same issues many of us find in our own workplaces.

[Bronco Billy]

Ruggs is my biggest regret in last year's rookie drafts. Taking him over Aiyuk, Gibson, and Higgins in multiple leagues...i just want to punch myself in the nuts.

Pro evaluators miss and they do it as their profession. There’s no reason to beat one’s self up for missing also.

I think GM/HCs and scouts are like men and women. Men marry their wife for who they are. Women marry their husband for who they imagine they can be (or more accurately probably is seeing them as who they think they can make them). Some management teams go into the draft seeing players as who they are right now and how they fit on the current roster, and others see players as how they could morph into a future better version of themselves when they become pros.

What I believe the difficult part is comes in interpreting intangibles. All these guys are great athletes, some more gifted than others. Those traits can be measured. The hard part comes in reading character - how do they shake out in: discipline, self sacrifice, mental acuity, mental toughness, pain tolerance, and self awareness. We as FFers get a very little insight into this as we see them play college ball - putting the “eye test” on as it were. The management teams get an overload of information to sift through during the predraft process and have to figure out which is real and which is BS. Sometimes too much information (the amalgam the NFL teams get) can be worse than too little - what we get. They can believe in character traits that really aren’t there and sell themselves on guys - they get too close to the situation and lose perspective.

That could be why FFers can be more accurate - they’re further removed and have less of a tendency to buy into some of the BS. Look at some of the prolific tape grinders like Waldmann. They start to sell themselves that guys have or don’t have some of those very important intangibles because they swamp themselves in film study and it gets to a personal level to where they see things that they really can’t judge until the guys get on the field in the bigs.

I think the management teams that are most successful are the ones who see what is tangibly there - the man part of the marriage equation - and then are very good judges of reading character to decipher the real from the BS, and then coach up the guys with all the desirable character traits into players who are vastly improved as they grow at the pro level. The ones that fail most often see the college players as who they think they can make them into and miss some character flaws that make player improvement at the NFL level almost or completely impossible.

And I think some of the most competent FFers do their homework but ultimately rely on their “eye test” as to whether a guy can translate or not. But either way, we’re dealing with humans - we’re going to miss enough no matter how many formulas we think to dream up and apply in an effort to beat the odds.

[Pullo Vision]

What other than 40 time, dunking videos and draft capital would lead you to draft Ruggs over Jefferson????

Easy.

1- Role
Jefferson was seen as a slot-only prospect, which often means not a full complement of snaps, which means a limit on targets/catches/stats. Ruggs, meanwhile, was an outside WR, which wouldn't limit his production potential.

2- Competition
Jefferson was joining a run-based team with Thielen, Rudolph, Irv Smith and Bisi Johnson (he of the offseason talk to have secured the Diggs spot) along with Dalvin Cook. His (projected) talent/role limitations put him into that disadvantageous competition. Ruggs, meanwhile, was joining a team with a bunch of intermediate targets with no competition for the deep role. There was a definite need to pull defenses from the LOS for the run game and other receivers. Regardless of whether that role would lead to targets and production, you have more opportunities to produce than if you're a slot prospect standing on the sidelines.

3- Upside
Ruggs wasn't a perfect prospect, but the any-game and career-long upside was there for an every-snap outside WR with his speed. Certainly better than the prototypical slot-only prospect.

In short, snaps as a rookie means opportunity while his talents pointed to a higher long-term potential. However, a deep-threat decoy versus a guy being given opportunities to produce beyond merely slot-only is pretty much the worst case scenario when comparing these two.

[Nanananananana]

Jefferson was seen as a slot-only prospect

That was nonsense, just look at the first four highlights in this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pndtv8Xy4Wk
Looks pretty good on the outside to me.


That was the most echoed sentiment about Jefferson and it made no sense. I never saw any sort of a legitimate breakdown of his slot percentage because that info isn’t super readily available for college that I know of.

The guy was 6’1 203 and ran a 4.43, what about that makes him a slot only prospect I don’t get it.

Now I am not saying I had Jefferson as my number one receiver or anything, I just had him over Ruggs easily. I also don’t see Ruggs as some prototypical outside receiver. Stuff like that doesn’t really matter for fantasy anyway, it’s just who’s going to get targets.

[OhCruelestRanter]

Jefferson was seen as a slot-only prospect

That was nonsense, just look at the first four highlights in this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pndtv8Xy4Wk
Looks pretty good on the outside to me.


That was the most echoed sentiment about Jefferson and it made no sense. I never saw any sort of a legitimate breakdown of his slot percentage because that info isn’t super readily available for college that I know of.

The guy was 6’1 203 and ran a 4.43, what about that makes him a slot only prospect I don’t get it.

Now I am not saying I had Jefferson as my number one receiver or anything, I just had him over Ruggs easily. I also don’t see Ruggs as some prototypical outside receiver. Stuff like that doesn’t really matter for fantasy anyway, it’s just who’s going to get targets.

Yeah, I tried explaining to people last off-season that the Jefferson is a slot-only guy wasn’t based in reality, but, you know, TEH TAPE.

[cantguardjake]

To be fair he did run 575 out of 583 snaps that season from the slot, so there was at least some basis for an argument his best role in the NFL might be in the slot given his production there was other worldly.

His combine performance probably should have raised more questions about that assumption though.

[cantguardjake]

Jefferson was seen as a slot-only prospect

That was nonsense, just look at the first four highlights in this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pndtv8Xy4Wk
Looks pretty good on the outside to me.


That was the most echoed sentiment about Jefferson and it made no sense. I never saw any sort of a legitimate breakdown of his slot percentage because that info isn’t super readily available for college that I know of.

The guy was 6’1 203 and ran a 4.43, what about that makes him a slot only prospect I don’t get it.

Now I am not saying I had Jefferson as my number one receiver or anything, I just had him over Ruggs easily. I also don’t see Ruggs as some prototypical outside receiver. Stuff like that doesn’t really matter for fantasy anyway, it’s just who’s going to get targets.

I get what your saying but he actually lined up in the slot in 2 of those 4 videos

[Pullo Vision]

Now I am not saying I had Jefferson as my number one receiver or anything, I just had him over Ruggs easily. I also don’t see Ruggs as some prototypical outside receiver. Stuff like that doesn’t really matter for fantasy anyway, it’s just who’s going to get targets.

You can't get targets when you're not on the field. Snap count (and percentage of offensive snaps) is the first to look at. When teams go w 2 WRs, slots are usually the first to go.

There's been various articles on the difference between X, Y and Z receivers, and the impact of those roles on their fantasy prospects. Picked this one, but could probably find other maybe better ones-
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.number ... uction/amp

[snuffalupicus]

With the departure of Nelson Agholor, Henry Ruggs and Bryan Edwards should get a boost.

What are everyone's thoughts for Ruggs' opportunity now?