Comparing the Birds and 'Boys

I hope you plan on posting this on BGN too.

although I disagree with a few conclusions (TE, DE/OLB and T-New is certainly not young) although I dont have time to argue the points.

But one thing you are way off on is Ogletree. FREE THE TREE!!!

Although their numbers are pretty close to each other, you have to take into account more then just numbers. Witten is a far superior blocker then Celek. As a matter of fact, Witten is the best blocking Tight End in the league. Celek models his game after Witten (spending umptine hours watching video of him) and maybe someday he will be better then Witten (doubtful, but always a possibilty). As of right now though, Witten is the best Tight End in the League hands down.

Great post rec’d.

If you expand the stats even more, you will see that Ware drops into coverage a lot more then Cole does. It’s not real fair to compare these 2 seeing how Cole is an DE and Ware is an OLB. Ware though is better in coverage and has been playing on a fractured foot. Ware also has 5 FF to Cole’s 2. I would take Ware in this senerio over Cole. Actually I can not understand why anyone wouldn’t take Ware over any DE / OLB in the league.

I can actually agree with most of the matchups. Good write up!

You will get a riot over the comparison between DeSean and Miles. Ha.

This is one of the most overused misconceptions, that you can compare units to determine the “better” team or worse yet, who will win.

Last time I looked, McNuggett and Romo have never faced each other.

Akers vs Suisham = push…LOL!

and not much to get all hot and bothered about. In fact, my only complaint would be that you have too many pushes. Perhaps you should have come up with some tie-breakers for those positions. That would certainly have gotten the debate going!

There is one point a clearly disagree with, and that is your evaluation of the secondary. I think you’re going too much of reputation, and not enough off actual performance, particularly recent performance. I’ve posted this in a previous thread somewhere, but I’ve updated the numbers to include all 15 games so far this season.

I looked at the CB numbers and split them by season halves (i.e. games 1-7 and games 8-15) for defensive YPA and success rate (% of passes thrown in their direction successfully defended from becoming a reception)

YPA
Games: ……1-7……8-15
Jenkins: ……7.4……..5.8
Newman: …..8.4……..6.8

Brown:………4.3……..8.2
Samuel:…….6.5……..9.3

Success Rate in %
Games: ……1-7……8-15
Jenkins: ……45……..50
Newman: .….38……..49

Brown:………67……..37
Samuel:…….42……..30

Brown and Samuel had an extremely strong start to the season, both playing very close to a shutdown level. But something just hasn’t been clicking recently. To call their numbers pedestrian would be a compliment at this point.

The Dallas Corners are a virtual mirror image, starting into the season lethargically, only to explode in the second half.

What makes these numbers all the more remarkable is that during the 8 game stretch in games 8-15, Dallas played 5 of the top six offenses by ppg (NO: 1st, SD: 2nd, NYG: 3rd, GB: 5th, PHI: 6th, WAS 28th, OAK: 29th)

On the other hand, in games 8-15 the Eagles played only 2 top ranked offenses (SD: 2nd, NYG: 3rd, ATL: 10th, CHI: 15th, DEN: 16th, DAL: 18th, SF: 22nd, WAS: 28th) but their CB’s numbers still imploded.

So, based on recent performance, the Dallas CBs have a clear advantage.

To bad a Cowboy fan couldn’t post something like this on bgn. If one did they would dog cuss him and tell him to get his bandwagon butt off their post . Oh well, big difference in the way Cowboy fans and Eagle fans act.

run toward Samuel and watch him ole.

I remember a NFC East roster analysis prior to the beginning of the season, wonder how the comparison stands now? Now so much love for NY And WAS, I’m sure.

Believe Iggles fans have been ambivalent by Donovan for some years now, even to the point he looked like a goner last season, before they came back to play in the NFC Championship. Isn’t his contract up after this year? Lot of speculation he was going to wind up in CHI, wonder if that’s still the case. I have never been a DMcN fan, because his personality rubs me the wrong way, but he has tormented DAL for the better part of this decade. His ability to avoid the sack is maddening, but he is a very hot & cold passer. I’ve seen him put the ball in very tight spots, but also thrown perfect balls to our original RW to seal a loss.

Romo has been similarly maddening, but at this stage of both of their career’s, I see our #9 with a lot more upside.

which comprise 1/3 of the teams. Whats your analysis regarding ST?

I disagree on the CBs also. But I think you did a better job of taking out your bias than I would have. Should be a helluva game.

After DAL lost 2x to NY when I made my world-famous Cowboy chili, I decided to try reverse mojo – make the specialty of the opponent’s region. It’s worked well. So the question for Philly cheesesteak sandwiches:

Peppers – yes or no? Appears to be considerable disagreement

Cole and Celek are very nice players, who any team should be excited to have, but the fact that their stats are reasonably close to the Dallas guys this year isn’t nearly enough to call it a push.

The Barber/Westbrook comparison struck me as odd as well. MB3 hasn’t exactly been lighting the world on fire this year, but he has cobbled together a seven touchdown season, with over a thousand yards from scrimmage. Westbrook, who will likely go down as the better player when both of their careers are done, has played less than half the year, and aside from the Oakland game, which they lost, has been a non-factor when he did suit up.

Austin/Jackson should be fun to watch for years. Those two, plus Steve Smith in New York, give the NFC East three of the best up and coming wideouts in the NFL right now.

I get tired of people wetting themselves over the Eagles.

If anyone has a big chunk of coal I could put it up my rectum and I could have you a flawless diamond by halftime. My ass will be pucker for 3 hours tomorrow.

I hope we kill your team but you come back and share some more analysis

I agree with the vast majority of the board here on Witten. Witten is the best all-around tight end in football. Celek is good, but needs significant improvement in his run blocking. According to www.profootballfocus.com, Celek is the 14th best tight end in football. If you are looking strictly at receiving statistics, Celek is certainly having a better year (#5 in the league, vs Witten @ #12). However, a critical component of a tight end’s job is blocking, and this is where Witten destroys him.

Trent Cole is having a spectacular season, but not as good as Ware’s. Ware is arguably the best, most versatile player in all of the NFL. He is probably the 3rd best pass rusher in the league (behind Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis) and is top 5 in pass and run coverage among all 4-3 DEs and 3-4 OLBs in the NFL.

Miles Austin is a more effective and better receiver in the league than is Desean Jackson. He catches a higher number of passes thrown to him (66% to 58%), is a better blocker, runs better routes, has more receptions, more receiving yards, more yards after the catch (532 vs. 381), more touchdowns, fewer passes thrown to him which have been intercepted (3 vs 5) and fewer fumbles (0 vs 2). The are approximately equivalent in dropped passes (each have 3) and Jackson has a higher YPC.

Agreed on the DB. Sheldon Brown is better than Mike Jenkins this year and Assante Samuel is just barely better than TNew (in that order).

Re: Safties, I would actually say that Mikell is easily better than Sensabaugh, Hamlin and Harris are roughly equivalent and Macho is a QB’s nice dream (i.e. not in the same class). Also, you shouldn’t forget Alan Ball, who has played about 1/4 of the team’s plays at safety and is pretty serviceable.

Having said all of this, we aren’t talking about whipping it out and seeing whose is bigger. We are talking matchups here and the latter part of your post addresses this. In all frankness, if we have to worry about depth at wide receiver (either the Cowboys or Eagles) my guess is the respective quarterback is going to have to run for his life by the time he has made that checkdown.

Great review mate. I hope you have a horrible day tomorrow, but otherwise a happy new year unless and until we meet again.

in my opinion McNabb is probably the 4th best QB at the game.

1) Romo by a huge margin.
2) Kolb, glad to see the Eagles keep him on the bench.
3) Vick better arm better legs than McNabb.
4) McNabb vastly over rated gets the edge over Kitna.

for the most part I agreed ….Good post man :)

…if the teams are so evenly matched right now, how come we just dominated in every phase?

I know it’s just one game, and we’ll see what happens Saturday… but damn, if you grade the positions based on that game, Cowboys win in every category. QB, RBs, WRs, OTs, Oline, Dline, OLB/DE, CB, S… the only one you might call a push in that game is TE, Celek had more yards but Witten had the TD (plus we have better depth at TE).