11-28-2019, 01:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-28-2019, 01:58 AM by speculadora.)
It is late and I want to post this before I go to bed and forget all weekend, so I skipped Performance of the Year and Breakout Player. I don't disagree at all with the choices for either. Anyway, onto the soap box I go for 3,000 words of opinion.
Offensive Lineman of the Year
Winner: Edmond Beaver-Dantes
My Vote: Edmond Beaver-Dantes
I should have protested this fake award, only given out to appease the rowdy masses who believe that five eligible candidates constitutes a reasonable voting pool. Pathetic cave in by our Head Office, who continue to erode the already shaky foundation of my trust in them.
Anyway, only one of these guys had like 500+ TPE and predictably he was the best lineman by the two stats that we have to judge offensive linemen by. I guess Caden Bright was 2nd but Chicago gave up a bunch of sacks as a team and Austin didn’t. I feel like this is just going to become the most pancakes award. Luckily it seems like more TPE results in more pancakes so at least there will be a correlation in that and ability to win awards unlike cornerback.
Tight End of the Year
Winner: Johnny Blaze
My Vote: Johnny Blaze
When I saw on the stream that other tight ends had received awards for this, I was a little bit disappointed. I understand that a lot of voters don’t care for the whole tight end who plays some wide receiver thing, and that dings guys, but given the disparity in stats between Blaze and the rest of the field, I didn’t see another viable candidate. Thankfully my trust in voters was restored when I saw the other options only got a vote a piece.
This one was pretty cut and dry statistically. The other vote getters were Declan Harp and Verso L’Alto, I believe. If you took the best column from each of their respective stat lines, you’d wind up with 78/579/4 (Harp’s receptions and yardage, L’Alto’s touchdowns. Blaze, meanwhile, had 61/1030/6. His 16.9 yards per reception actually obliterated the best efficiency mark by a tight end, even including those who have played outside or slot receiver positions. I think Paul DiMirio (of course) held the best per-catch efficiency at around 12.0, so quite a season for Blaze.
Wide Receiver of the Year
Winner: Vinny Valentine
My Vote: Rod Tidwell
I believe I was one of just two people who voted for Tidwell, and that’s alright with me. I can’t even really debate those who voted for Swift or Valentine – I’m just a sucker for efficiency stats when it comes to this award while others lean toward volume. Let’s check out the comparisons, though.
Vinny Valentine: 72 REC, 1360 YDS, 18.9 YPR, 11 TD
Nate Swift: 74 REC, 1443 YDS, 19.5 YPR, 7 TD
Vinny Valentine – Nate Swift = -2 REC, -83 YDS, -0.6 YPR, +4 TD
If you care for volume stats, Valentine is the clear winner. He had a relatively small deficit in yards and receptions, but a solid advantage in touchdowns. Even if you look at efficiency alone, Valentine has a case. While Swift had about half a yard more per reception, Valentine caught a touchdown on 15.3% of his catches, compared to 9.5% for Swift. This was a tough vote. But I do think Valentine gets the nod between the two.
Vinny Valentine: 72 REC, 1360 YDS, 18.9 YPR, 11 TD
Rod Tidwell: 53 REC, 1060 YDS, 20 YPR, 12 TD
Vinny Valentine – Rod Tidwell = +19 REC, +300 YDS, -1.1 YPR, -1 TD
I think, looking at volume again, that you’d have to lean Valentine. Catching 19 extra passes for an additional 300 yards definitely beats an extra touchdown for Tidwell. But as I said, I’m all about the efficiency numbers. Tidwell was second only to Errol Maddox in yards per reception, eclipsing Valentine’s mark by more than a full yard per reception. Tidwell also caught a touchdown on a ridiculous 22.6% of his receptions. If we were to imagine a world where the two players had the same number of receptions – say we meet at the midpoint of ~63 receptions each – here would be their respective statlines.
Vinny Valentine: 63 REC, 1190 YDS, 10 TD
Rod Tidwell: 63 REC, 1260 YDS, 14 TD
Of course, this is not the world we live in, and we can only judge by what actually happened. Still. To me, the best wide receiver is the one who combines solid volume with the ability to make the most of his catches. Tidwell did the former better than anyone in the league, and did combine that with solid volume, so that’s why I voted the way I did. If I had a second place vote, it would have been Valentine without a doubt, and as I’ve said a lot in discussing my votes, I wouldn’t really argue with anybody who voted differently here.
Running Back of the Year
Winner: Forrest Gump
My Vote: Forrest Gump
I think this one can probably be boiled down to two main candidates. Honorable mention to Mako Mendonca and Ashley Owens, who each had awesome seasons, but ultimately don’t really stack up well for the purpose of this award. I should note that I don’t really have any bias for/against voting flex types here, but the time share didn’t leave much room for either one to rocket up the list. Ultimately, though, this comes down to Forrest Gump and Sam Torenson.
Forrest Gump: 341 ATT, 1380 YDS, 4 YPC, 11 TD
Sam Torenson: 302 ATT, 1270 YDS, 4.2 YPC, 8 TD
Forrest Gump – Sam Torenson = +39 ATT, +110 YDS, -0.2 YPC, +3 TD
So I know I mentioned I’m big on efficiency numbers for receivers. I would be here, as well, but I don’t know that I can say the difference in rushing numbers is compensated for by 0.2 extra yards per carry. To get a complete look, though, let’s do scrimmage yards and touchdowns as well. Just to make sure we aren’t missing anything.
Forrest Gump: 387 ATT, 1667 YDS, 4.3 YPA, 12 TD
Sam Torenson: 340 ATT, 1543 YDS, 4.5 YPA, 9 TD
Forrest Gump – Sam Torenson = +37 ATT, + 134 YDS, -0.2 YPA, +3 TD
Basically get the same differences as the last try. Solid season for both, but Gumps volume gives him a decent edge here.
Quarterback of the Year
Winner: Corvo Havran & Andrew Reese
My Vote: Corvo Havran
A tie? Blech. This is why we desperately need to move to a balloting system that allows us to vote a first, second, and third place player. This is stupid. Anyway, this is probably the position I put the most research into voting. Andrew Reese was great this season, but I think the passer rating column carried him to a tie in this one. I could do an entirely separate article about how awful and stupid a stat passer rating is as a catch-all metric for quarterbacks, but I won’t do that here.
Anyway, let’s get into the nitty gritty of this one, because I thought it was kind of fun. Back in Season I-don’t-know-what, the legendary Kckolbe introduced us all to a passing metric called TANY/A, which I believe stands for Total Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. It’s basically just a minor revision to ANY/A that includes rushing yards. So let’s take a step further back to ANY/A.
That’s the formula. Essentially just a modified yards per passing attempt that accounts for everything. In fact, it is a perfectly good substitute for dumb, bad, no good passer rating. Thanks to the research of @Dylandeluxe, we can assume a sack results in about 7 yards lost, so we don’t have to and tally up numbers from pesky box scores. With all that in tow, I ran the numbers.
![[Image: cjWfOCQ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/cjWfOCQ.png)
Interesting. Solely as passers, Corvo Havran, Cooter Bigsby, and Franklin Armstrong were the top three most efficient on a per-attempt basis. Corvo, however, has more than a solid lead on the two quarterbacks trailing him. Let’s look at rushing numbers as well, now. Essentially all we’re going to do here is throw rush yards in with pass yards, rushing touchdowns in with passing touchdowns, and fumbles in with interceptions. Technically the formula calls for fumbles to be worth half (as fumble recoveries are basically a coin toss), but I’m using lost fumbles here in a sort of bWAR over fWAR mindset. Let’s check things out after this.
![[Image: qXOwJz9.png]](https://i.imgur.com/qXOwJz9.png)
Crazy stuff. Franklin Armstrong actually drops below Reese when factoring in rushing yardage. Basically every single quarterback dropped, but because of Armstrong’s rushing volume and 6.0 per carry average, he basically added a heaping bucket of 6 yard passes to his data. Meanwhile Reese was never able to ascend to the level of Bigsby and Havran in this calculation because of his gaudy sack total. More importantly, however, is the top of our leaderboard. Corvo Havran and Cooter Bigsby have now basically separated themselves from the field, with Havran still holding a solid advantage. Let’s compare Corvo and Cooter in a more straightforward sense now. This is going to be done in terms of net yards, touchdowns, turnovers, etc.
Corvo Havran: 594 ATT, 4365 YDS, 30 TD, 12 TO
Cooter Bigsby: 585 ATT, 4221 YDS, 31 TD, 13 TO
This actually makes things pretty straight forward in a lot of ways. Essentially to choose Bigsby over Havran here you’d need to value a single touchdown over 144 yards and one fewer turnover. It’s pretty damn close in the end, though.
Offensive Rookie of the Year
Winner: Marcella Toriki
My Vote: Marcella Toriki
This one was between Toriki and Saba Donut all the way. I think a couple of things worked in Toriki’s favor here. The biggest one, though, was probably the tendency for a lot of voters to gatekeep rookie eligibility and only consider “true” rookies. Still, I think Toriki deserved it, clearly, so I don’t want to slam voting practices too much. I guess the comparison boils down to how you compare a running back and a wide receiver. The former will always have more volume, the latter better efficiency.
I’m not going to do the whole stat comparison because it’s pretty meaningless without any way to put things in like terms. Looking at Saba’s case, it rests pretty heavily on touchdowns, as that’s his main advantage over Toriki. He had a pretty impressive 15.6% touchdown rate, but paired it with a pretty pedestrian 14.5 yards per reception. So I can’t get too excited or down about the efficiency either way. Toriki also had pretty middling efficiency, and scored fewer touchdowns. Touchdowns were always going to be harder to come by for Toriki, however, because San Jose’s offense was a struggle bus. She did have a yardage advantage, though. So I guess how do we get to a Toriki vote from here? I think it’s worth looking at what they meant to their respective teams, I guess.
Toriki: 218 ATT, 889 YDS, 4.1 YPC, 4 TD / 8 REC, 47 YDS, 5.9 YPR, 1 TD
San Jose: 439 ATT, 1806 YDS, 4.1 YPC, 9 TD / 188 CMP, 1996 YDS, 10.6 YPR, 9 TD
Toriki / San Jose = 49.7% ATT, 49.2% YDS, 44.4% TD / 4% REC, 2.4% YDS, 11.1% TD
Donut: 51 REC, 742 YDS, 14.5 YPC, 8 TD
Arizona: 314 CMP, 3987 YDS, 12.7 YPR, 30 TD
Donut / Arizona = 16.2% REC, 18.6% YDS, 26.7% TD
Admittedly, I’m not even sure this is the best way to do things, but when you adjust for how successfully each player’s team did things and how they contributed to that, Toriki has a clear advantage. Very solid rookie season for Saba, though.
Offensive Player of the Year
Winner: Forrest Gump
My Vote: Franklin Armstrong
Uh, ok. I have no idea how to do this comparison. Much less do so and factor in guys who played receiver and quarterbacks who purely passed the ball. I guess I’ll start by bringing up the players I considered and maybe I can find a way into comparing things by the end. Among quarterbacks I considered Havran, Bigsby, and Armstrong. I didn’t consider any running backs, so I was pretty shocked to see Gump win. I think your WRotY vote of choice could be thrown in this discussion as well, but it’s hard for me to see Swift or Valentine or Tidwell or whomever winning this award instead of that player’s quarterback.
Let’s start off with my case against Gump, which is going to be kind of long. First off, the award is offensive player of the year. Gump played on the league’s 8th best scoring offense and 6th best offense in terms of yards per game. They ranked a respectable 4th in rushing yards per game. Basically for me to consider a player to be the best offensive player in the league, there should be some observable impact from their presence. I’m not saying that didn’t exist beneath the surface level, but statistically? No way. Moving on, Gump was totally pedestrian in terms of efficiency and was carried largely by volume to this award. His 4.0 yards per carry average ranked below ten other running backs with at least 100 carries. He scored a touchdown on 3.1% of his touches. I’m not going to bother calculating the numbers, but I can tell you outright that that number would also rank beneath loads of other running backs. To say nothing of other positions. In summation, I don’t know what in tarnation this vote was. Sorry voters (and Tom), but this was totally, completely, and utterly bungled. This award is not the “best non-QB award”. Not that Gump even earned that title, but it feels like ever since we’ve stopped the MVP from winning this as well that’s what it’s become.
Ok, let’s have a gander at receivers. Pretty much the same candidates as the Wide Receiver of the Year award, obviously. I think I’d favor volume here a touch more than I do in the positional award because this is about offensive impact. So to me you’d be looking at Nate Swift and Vinny Valentine if you wanted to vote receiver. I think Valentine had the better raw stat line, but Swift played on the superior offense. I don’t want to overweight the team aspect, but I think there were only three or four receivers last season capable of putting up the season Swift did. If we break it down similarly to the ORotY numbers, Swift accounted for 33% of Yellowknife’s passing yardage, 23% of passing touchdowns, and 22% of receptions. Valentine, comparatively, accounted for 34% of Arizona’s passing yardage, 37% of passing touchdowns, and 23% of receptions. Since I believe Valentine is one of the group of receivers you could have plugged in for Swift and seen similar results, I’d give him the edge here given his relative advantages in terms of output as a function of his team’s passing attack. In the end, though, I don’t think either guy really competes with the quarterback options (although I would have voted either over any non-Quarterback).
As for the quarterbacks. I don’t really know how you start to separate them apart at this point. I knew I was voting Cooter Bigsby for MVP, so I had the luxury of not dealing with that decision in this process. Which left me with Havran and Armstrong. Obviously I felt Havran was most efficient quarterback on a per attempt basis in the QBotY discussion, but as I mentioned before this is a little bit different to me. For starters, Orange County ranked fourth in scoring, trailing second place (Austin) by just four total points, and third place (Baltimore) by just three. So the two offenses these guys led were pretty similar in terms of points. Baltimore had a solid edge in yardage, primarily because their run/pass split skewed significantly toward passing. Orange County was much the opposite and consequently ranked 7th in yardage per game. So how can I vote for Armstrong over Havran here? In the end, it’s basically because he was the Orange County offense. The difference in TPE between Baltimore’s offensive options and Orange County’s was pretty vast. Armstrong powered OCO to the league’s number one rushing offense, a scoring offense amongst the best in the league, and was the engine for a game plan that stifled opposing offenses largely by not letting them on the field. In the end, this is sort of a homer vote in the sense that I have a first-hand knowledge of how our offense worked, so I understand what Armstrong meant to it. I don’t think we could have done what we did with any other offensive player in the league, and that’s why I voted Armstrong here. But this is another one where there are tons of valid choices and, particularly in this case, I wouldn’t expect most people to see eye-to-eye with me.
Most Valuable Player
Winner: Cooter Bigsby
My Vote: Cooter Bigsby
I wrote so much about the stupid offensive player of the year award that I really don’t want to do the whole song and dance for this one. All the quarterback stats I calculated say Cooter was second only to Corvo in passing efficiency. The real difference maker here was that one quarterback led his offense to the highest scoring average, the highest yards per game, the most passing yards per game, and the best record in the league. The other one was great but his team won six games and didn’t do any of those other things. MVP is and always will be very much influenced by team success, which is why I felt like Cooter was a pretty easy call here.
Most Dedicated Member
Winner: Eco
My Vote: Rradrum
Not posting this to debate the decision, only to show both Eco and Rradrum extra love because they’re both fantastic people who do a ton for the league. They’re the real MVPs.
Offensive Lineman of the Year
Winner: Edmond Beaver-Dantes
My Vote: Edmond Beaver-Dantes
I should have protested this fake award, only given out to appease the rowdy masses who believe that five eligible candidates constitutes a reasonable voting pool. Pathetic cave in by our Head Office, who continue to erode the already shaky foundation of my trust in them.
Anyway, only one of these guys had like 500+ TPE and predictably he was the best lineman by the two stats that we have to judge offensive linemen by. I guess Caden Bright was 2nd but Chicago gave up a bunch of sacks as a team and Austin didn’t. I feel like this is just going to become the most pancakes award. Luckily it seems like more TPE results in more pancakes so at least there will be a correlation in that and ability to win awards unlike cornerback.
Tight End of the Year
Winner: Johnny Blaze
My Vote: Johnny Blaze
When I saw on the stream that other tight ends had received awards for this, I was a little bit disappointed. I understand that a lot of voters don’t care for the whole tight end who plays some wide receiver thing, and that dings guys, but given the disparity in stats between Blaze and the rest of the field, I didn’t see another viable candidate. Thankfully my trust in voters was restored when I saw the other options only got a vote a piece.
This one was pretty cut and dry statistically. The other vote getters were Declan Harp and Verso L’Alto, I believe. If you took the best column from each of their respective stat lines, you’d wind up with 78/579/4 (Harp’s receptions and yardage, L’Alto’s touchdowns. Blaze, meanwhile, had 61/1030/6. His 16.9 yards per reception actually obliterated the best efficiency mark by a tight end, even including those who have played outside or slot receiver positions. I think Paul DiMirio (of course) held the best per-catch efficiency at around 12.0, so quite a season for Blaze.
Wide Receiver of the Year
Winner: Vinny Valentine
My Vote: Rod Tidwell
I believe I was one of just two people who voted for Tidwell, and that’s alright with me. I can’t even really debate those who voted for Swift or Valentine – I’m just a sucker for efficiency stats when it comes to this award while others lean toward volume. Let’s check out the comparisons, though.
Vinny Valentine: 72 REC, 1360 YDS, 18.9 YPR, 11 TD
Nate Swift: 74 REC, 1443 YDS, 19.5 YPR, 7 TD
Vinny Valentine – Nate Swift = -2 REC, -83 YDS, -0.6 YPR, +4 TD
If you care for volume stats, Valentine is the clear winner. He had a relatively small deficit in yards and receptions, but a solid advantage in touchdowns. Even if you look at efficiency alone, Valentine has a case. While Swift had about half a yard more per reception, Valentine caught a touchdown on 15.3% of his catches, compared to 9.5% for Swift. This was a tough vote. But I do think Valentine gets the nod between the two.
Vinny Valentine: 72 REC, 1360 YDS, 18.9 YPR, 11 TD
Rod Tidwell: 53 REC, 1060 YDS, 20 YPR, 12 TD
Vinny Valentine – Rod Tidwell = +19 REC, +300 YDS, -1.1 YPR, -1 TD
I think, looking at volume again, that you’d have to lean Valentine. Catching 19 extra passes for an additional 300 yards definitely beats an extra touchdown for Tidwell. But as I said, I’m all about the efficiency numbers. Tidwell was second only to Errol Maddox in yards per reception, eclipsing Valentine’s mark by more than a full yard per reception. Tidwell also caught a touchdown on a ridiculous 22.6% of his receptions. If we were to imagine a world where the two players had the same number of receptions – say we meet at the midpoint of ~63 receptions each – here would be their respective statlines.
Vinny Valentine: 63 REC, 1190 YDS, 10 TD
Rod Tidwell: 63 REC, 1260 YDS, 14 TD
Of course, this is not the world we live in, and we can only judge by what actually happened. Still. To me, the best wide receiver is the one who combines solid volume with the ability to make the most of his catches. Tidwell did the former better than anyone in the league, and did combine that with solid volume, so that’s why I voted the way I did. If I had a second place vote, it would have been Valentine without a doubt, and as I’ve said a lot in discussing my votes, I wouldn’t really argue with anybody who voted differently here.
Running Back of the Year
Winner: Forrest Gump
My Vote: Forrest Gump
I think this one can probably be boiled down to two main candidates. Honorable mention to Mako Mendonca and Ashley Owens, who each had awesome seasons, but ultimately don’t really stack up well for the purpose of this award. I should note that I don’t really have any bias for/against voting flex types here, but the time share didn’t leave much room for either one to rocket up the list. Ultimately, though, this comes down to Forrest Gump and Sam Torenson.
Forrest Gump: 341 ATT, 1380 YDS, 4 YPC, 11 TD
Sam Torenson: 302 ATT, 1270 YDS, 4.2 YPC, 8 TD
Forrest Gump – Sam Torenson = +39 ATT, +110 YDS, -0.2 YPC, +3 TD
So I know I mentioned I’m big on efficiency numbers for receivers. I would be here, as well, but I don’t know that I can say the difference in rushing numbers is compensated for by 0.2 extra yards per carry. To get a complete look, though, let’s do scrimmage yards and touchdowns as well. Just to make sure we aren’t missing anything.
Forrest Gump: 387 ATT, 1667 YDS, 4.3 YPA, 12 TD
Sam Torenson: 340 ATT, 1543 YDS, 4.5 YPA, 9 TD
Forrest Gump – Sam Torenson = +37 ATT, + 134 YDS, -0.2 YPA, +3 TD
Basically get the same differences as the last try. Solid season for both, but Gumps volume gives him a decent edge here.
Quarterback of the Year
Winner: Corvo Havran & Andrew Reese
My Vote: Corvo Havran
A tie? Blech. This is why we desperately need to move to a balloting system that allows us to vote a first, second, and third place player. This is stupid. Anyway, this is probably the position I put the most research into voting. Andrew Reese was great this season, but I think the passer rating column carried him to a tie in this one. I could do an entirely separate article about how awful and stupid a stat passer rating is as a catch-all metric for quarterbacks, but I won’t do that here.
Anyway, let’s get into the nitty gritty of this one, because I thought it was kind of fun. Back in Season I-don’t-know-what, the legendary Kckolbe introduced us all to a passing metric called TANY/A, which I believe stands for Total Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. It’s basically just a minor revision to ANY/A that includes rushing yards. So let’s take a step further back to ANY/A.
Code:
(pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown) - sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks)That’s the formula. Essentially just a modified yards per passing attempt that accounts for everything. In fact, it is a perfectly good substitute for dumb, bad, no good passer rating. Thanks to the research of @
Interesting. Solely as passers, Corvo Havran, Cooter Bigsby, and Franklin Armstrong were the top three most efficient on a per-attempt basis. Corvo, however, has more than a solid lead on the two quarterbacks trailing him. Let’s look at rushing numbers as well, now. Essentially all we’re going to do here is throw rush yards in with pass yards, rushing touchdowns in with passing touchdowns, and fumbles in with interceptions. Technically the formula calls for fumbles to be worth half (as fumble recoveries are basically a coin toss), but I’m using lost fumbles here in a sort of bWAR over fWAR mindset. Let’s check things out after this.
Crazy stuff. Franklin Armstrong actually drops below Reese when factoring in rushing yardage. Basically every single quarterback dropped, but because of Armstrong’s rushing volume and 6.0 per carry average, he basically added a heaping bucket of 6 yard passes to his data. Meanwhile Reese was never able to ascend to the level of Bigsby and Havran in this calculation because of his gaudy sack total. More importantly, however, is the top of our leaderboard. Corvo Havran and Cooter Bigsby have now basically separated themselves from the field, with Havran still holding a solid advantage. Let’s compare Corvo and Cooter in a more straightforward sense now. This is going to be done in terms of net yards, touchdowns, turnovers, etc.
Corvo Havran: 594 ATT, 4365 YDS, 30 TD, 12 TO
Cooter Bigsby: 585 ATT, 4221 YDS, 31 TD, 13 TO
This actually makes things pretty straight forward in a lot of ways. Essentially to choose Bigsby over Havran here you’d need to value a single touchdown over 144 yards and one fewer turnover. It’s pretty damn close in the end, though.
Offensive Rookie of the Year
Winner: Marcella Toriki
My Vote: Marcella Toriki
This one was between Toriki and Saba Donut all the way. I think a couple of things worked in Toriki’s favor here. The biggest one, though, was probably the tendency for a lot of voters to gatekeep rookie eligibility and only consider “true” rookies. Still, I think Toriki deserved it, clearly, so I don’t want to slam voting practices too much. I guess the comparison boils down to how you compare a running back and a wide receiver. The former will always have more volume, the latter better efficiency.
I’m not going to do the whole stat comparison because it’s pretty meaningless without any way to put things in like terms. Looking at Saba’s case, it rests pretty heavily on touchdowns, as that’s his main advantage over Toriki. He had a pretty impressive 15.6% touchdown rate, but paired it with a pretty pedestrian 14.5 yards per reception. So I can’t get too excited or down about the efficiency either way. Toriki also had pretty middling efficiency, and scored fewer touchdowns. Touchdowns were always going to be harder to come by for Toriki, however, because San Jose’s offense was a struggle bus. She did have a yardage advantage, though. So I guess how do we get to a Toriki vote from here? I think it’s worth looking at what they meant to their respective teams, I guess.
Toriki: 218 ATT, 889 YDS, 4.1 YPC, 4 TD / 8 REC, 47 YDS, 5.9 YPR, 1 TD
San Jose: 439 ATT, 1806 YDS, 4.1 YPC, 9 TD / 188 CMP, 1996 YDS, 10.6 YPR, 9 TD
Toriki / San Jose = 49.7% ATT, 49.2% YDS, 44.4% TD / 4% REC, 2.4% YDS, 11.1% TD
Donut: 51 REC, 742 YDS, 14.5 YPC, 8 TD
Arizona: 314 CMP, 3987 YDS, 12.7 YPR, 30 TD
Donut / Arizona = 16.2% REC, 18.6% YDS, 26.7% TD
Admittedly, I’m not even sure this is the best way to do things, but when you adjust for how successfully each player’s team did things and how they contributed to that, Toriki has a clear advantage. Very solid rookie season for Saba, though.
Offensive Player of the Year
Winner: Forrest Gump
My Vote: Franklin Armstrong
Uh, ok. I have no idea how to do this comparison. Much less do so and factor in guys who played receiver and quarterbacks who purely passed the ball. I guess I’ll start by bringing up the players I considered and maybe I can find a way into comparing things by the end. Among quarterbacks I considered Havran, Bigsby, and Armstrong. I didn’t consider any running backs, so I was pretty shocked to see Gump win. I think your WRotY vote of choice could be thrown in this discussion as well, but it’s hard for me to see Swift or Valentine or Tidwell or whomever winning this award instead of that player’s quarterback.
Let’s start off with my case against Gump, which is going to be kind of long. First off, the award is offensive player of the year. Gump played on the league’s 8th best scoring offense and 6th best offense in terms of yards per game. They ranked a respectable 4th in rushing yards per game. Basically for me to consider a player to be the best offensive player in the league, there should be some observable impact from their presence. I’m not saying that didn’t exist beneath the surface level, but statistically? No way. Moving on, Gump was totally pedestrian in terms of efficiency and was carried largely by volume to this award. His 4.0 yards per carry average ranked below ten other running backs with at least 100 carries. He scored a touchdown on 3.1% of his touches. I’m not going to bother calculating the numbers, but I can tell you outright that that number would also rank beneath loads of other running backs. To say nothing of other positions. In summation, I don’t know what in tarnation this vote was. Sorry voters (and Tom), but this was totally, completely, and utterly bungled. This award is not the “best non-QB award”. Not that Gump even earned that title, but it feels like ever since we’ve stopped the MVP from winning this as well that’s what it’s become.
Ok, let’s have a gander at receivers. Pretty much the same candidates as the Wide Receiver of the Year award, obviously. I think I’d favor volume here a touch more than I do in the positional award because this is about offensive impact. So to me you’d be looking at Nate Swift and Vinny Valentine if you wanted to vote receiver. I think Valentine had the better raw stat line, but Swift played on the superior offense. I don’t want to overweight the team aspect, but I think there were only three or four receivers last season capable of putting up the season Swift did. If we break it down similarly to the ORotY numbers, Swift accounted for 33% of Yellowknife’s passing yardage, 23% of passing touchdowns, and 22% of receptions. Valentine, comparatively, accounted for 34% of Arizona’s passing yardage, 37% of passing touchdowns, and 23% of receptions. Since I believe Valentine is one of the group of receivers you could have plugged in for Swift and seen similar results, I’d give him the edge here given his relative advantages in terms of output as a function of his team’s passing attack. In the end, though, I don’t think either guy really competes with the quarterback options (although I would have voted either over any non-Quarterback).
As for the quarterbacks. I don’t really know how you start to separate them apart at this point. I knew I was voting Cooter Bigsby for MVP, so I had the luxury of not dealing with that decision in this process. Which left me with Havran and Armstrong. Obviously I felt Havran was most efficient quarterback on a per attempt basis in the QBotY discussion, but as I mentioned before this is a little bit different to me. For starters, Orange County ranked fourth in scoring, trailing second place (Austin) by just four total points, and third place (Baltimore) by just three. So the two offenses these guys led were pretty similar in terms of points. Baltimore had a solid edge in yardage, primarily because their run/pass split skewed significantly toward passing. Orange County was much the opposite and consequently ranked 7th in yardage per game. So how can I vote for Armstrong over Havran here? In the end, it’s basically because he was the Orange County offense. The difference in TPE between Baltimore’s offensive options and Orange County’s was pretty vast. Armstrong powered OCO to the league’s number one rushing offense, a scoring offense amongst the best in the league, and was the engine for a game plan that stifled opposing offenses largely by not letting them on the field. In the end, this is sort of a homer vote in the sense that I have a first-hand knowledge of how our offense worked, so I understand what Armstrong meant to it. I don’t think we could have done what we did with any other offensive player in the league, and that’s why I voted Armstrong here. But this is another one where there are tons of valid choices and, particularly in this case, I wouldn’t expect most people to see eye-to-eye with me.
Most Valuable Player
Winner: Cooter Bigsby
My Vote: Cooter Bigsby
I wrote so much about the stupid offensive player of the year award that I really don’t want to do the whole song and dance for this one. All the quarterback stats I calculated say Cooter was second only to Corvo in passing efficiency. The real difference maker here was that one quarterback led his offense to the highest scoring average, the highest yards per game, the most passing yards per game, and the best record in the league. The other one was great but his team won six games and didn’t do any of those other things. MVP is and always will be very much influenced by team success, which is why I felt like Cooter was a pretty easy call here.
Most Dedicated Member
Winner: Eco
My Vote: Rradrum
Not posting this to debate the decision, only to show both Eco and Rradrum extra love because they’re both fantastic people who do a ton for the league. They’re the real MVPs.
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