When Steve Hutchinson put his pen to a $49 million offer sheet in March of 2006, the agent of every elite offensive lineman in the NFL whose free agency status was imminent did a little happy dance. And as we have seen, the 2007 salary cap bump from $102 million to $109 million has teams spending Yankees-style on every position. But can a guard really be worth this much? Until recently, guard was a position seen as low-cost and fungible.

The attempt to answer that question leads us to the Football Outsiders stats for the offensive line: Adjusted Line Yards (which takes all running back carries and assigns o-line responsibilities based on yardage) and Adjusted Sack Rate (sacks per pass attempt adjusted for opponent, down and distance). In addition, we have the “blown blocks” numbers from the FO game-charting project. These are “whiffs” that led directly to quarterback sacks.

One caveat: Offensive line stats as they relate to individuals aren’t perfectly conclusive, because the efforts of one are related so closely to the efforts of many. We measure five directions – left end, left tackle, mid/guard, right tackle, and right end – but responsibility is more fluid than a one-on-one correspondence. (Left tackles should not be measured only by "left tackle" runs, etc.) The "blown blocks" numbers are still incomplete, as the game-charting data only includes Weeks 1-16 with about 20 missing game-halves.

Still, we can get a better insight into the value of each of the five linemen who have signed combined contracts in the last fiscal year worth almost a quarter of a billion dollars on their face.

Steve Hutchinson, Minnesota Vikings

Contract: Seven years, $49 million, $16 million guaranteed. The Vikings signed Hutchinson to a now-legendary “poison pill” offer sheet which would have made the entire contract guaranteed for the Seahawks if they had matched the offer after Seattle gave Hutchinson the transition tag instead of the franchise designation. This was the Shot Heard ‘Round the World for offensive linemen – between this and the increasing salary cap, things would never be the same.
Games Started (Position) 16 of 16 (16 LG, Minnesota Vikings)
Positional Adjusted Line Yards: Left Tackle, 4.85 (Rank: 6, League Average 4.37) Mid/Guard 4.33 (Rank: 19 League Average 4.32)
Blown Blocks: 3
Penalties: 0 (the second straight season Hutchinson hasn’t been penalized)
Comments: You’ll get arguments, but most would agree that the first big-money guard is still the best. Spent some time adjusting in Minnesota, but this is a technician with a brawler’s soul … the complete package. And if you want to know how good he really is, don’t look at the Minnesota line – check out at the Seattle line he left behind. Quite possibly the league’s best in 2005, the Seahawks’ front five dropped from sixth to 30th in Adjusted Line Yards, from ninth to 28th in Adjusted Sack Rate, and from second to 31st in Mid/Guard ALY.

Kris Dielman, San Diego Chargers

Contract: Six years, $39 million, $17 million guaranteed in the first two years alone. Dielman and his agent had been negotiating with Seattle, but left as much as $10 million on the table – of course, the guaranteed money offered would have been a lot closer.
Games Started (Position) 15 of 16 (15 LG, San Diego Chargers)
Positional Adjusted Line Yards: Left Tackle, 5.04 (Rank: 4, League Average 4.37) Mid/Guard 4.38 (Rank: 16, League Average 4.32)
Blown Blocks: 0
Penalties: 5 (2 False Start, 1 Clipping, 1 Chop Block, 1 Holding)
Comments: Perhaps the most coveted pure guard in free agency (at the Combine, all the talk about Dielman and Steinbach was about how the former would prove to be the better player over time), Dielman got to the altar with the Seahawks on Paul Allen’s private jet only to balk and fly coach back to sunny San Diego, and the best offensive line in the NFL. He’ll continue to shore up the Chargers’ left side with Marcus McNeill, who had such a great rookie season in 2006.

(For people who don't know the specifics on Adjusted Line Yards, one aspect of the stat is that it cuts off the extended yardage on long runs, when a running back is mostly gaining yardage with his own talents rather than his blocking. That explains how an offense with LaDainian Tomlinson could possibly rank 16th in anything rushing-related.)

Eric Steinbach, Cleveland Browns

Contract: Seven years, $49.5 million, $17 million guaranteed. Some reports have indicated that he’ll move to the right side (guard or tackle) for Cleveland, though nothing is set in stone for the versatile Steinbach.
Games Started (Position) 16 of 16 (14 LG, 1 LT, 1 C, Cincinnati Bengals)
Positional Adjusted Line Yards: Left End, 4.19 (Rank: 16, League Average 4.12) Left Tackle, 4.45 (Rank: 13, League Average 4.37) Mid/Guard 4.34 (Rank: 16, League Average 4.32)
Blown Blocks: 3
Penalties: 5 (5 False Start)
Comments: Interesting note: While the Bengals’ injury-depleted line finished around the league average at four of the five directions, the Right Tackle direction was the NFL’s best with an Adjusted Line Yards rating of 5.29, more than a yard over the league average. RG Bobbie Williams and RT Willie Anderson would be primarily responsible for that.

Derrick Dockery, Buffalo Bills

Contract: Seven years, $49 million, (sensing a trend here?), $18 million guaranteed.
Games Started (Position) 16 of 16 (16 LG, Washington Redskins)
Positional Adjusted Line Yards: Left Tackle, 4.95 (Rank: 5, League Average 4.37) Mid/Guard, 4.58 (Rank: 7, League Average 4.32)
Blown Blocks: 0
Penalties: 7 (6 False Start, 1 Offensive Holding)
Comments: The Redskins were below the league average in Adjusted Line Yards for Left End, Right Tackle and Right End – basically, each of the five directions we measure in which Dockery didn’t play a fairly major part. Think they’ll miss him?

Leonard Davis, Dallas Cowboys

Contract: Seven years, $49.6 million, $18.5 million guaranteed. Yeah, this one had a lot of people wondering. And the numbers below put Davis in the vicinity of the dreaded Alex Barron Statistical Cluster, which is the rough equivalent of the Mendoza Line.
Games Started (Position) 16 of 16 (16 LT, Arizona Cardinals)
Positional Adjusted Line Yards: Left End, 4.08 (Rank: 17, League Average 4.12) Left Tackle, 3.96 (Rank: 26, League Average 4.37)
Blown Blocks: 7
Penalties: 10 (8 False Starts, 2 Offensive Holding)
Comments: It’s quite simple, really. If Leonard Davis is worth $18 million guaranteed, especially since initial reports indicate that the Cowboys will move him to the right side, I’m the President of the Skip Bayless Fan Club. In an offseason of big-money signings (some more ridiculous than others), this is the goofiest. If Hutch’s deal was the equivalent of the attack on Fort Sumter, Davis’s signing was the rubber chicken upside the head.

Post by Doug Farrar

Ron: OK, many of the Cowboys fans and I are a tad bitter about Terrance Newman not making the Pro Bowl - especially with DeAngelo Hall getting in. We feel that Newman does an excellent job of shutting down whatever side of the field he's on, or whatever receiver he's been assigned to. He doesn't get the picks or huge plays because QB's just don't throw at him and he doesn't give up big plays.

Are we correct? Is Newman better statistically?

Aaron Schatz: DeAngelo Hall is not the worst Pro Bowl selection this year. That would probably be Mack Strong -- Strong would have been a great pick in any of the last few years, but this year his ability to block just disintegrated. Hall is probably the second-worst selection. Hall is an example of a phenomenon that we may be writing more about in the coming months, and in next year's book: people wrongly assume that great athletes are effective football players. This is a huge problem with boom-and-bust running backs of the DeShaun Foster type, for example, but it also goes for Hall, who is super insanely fast but still learning effective cornerback technique. He's not a bad cornerback, he's just average. His reputation is helped by the fact that the other cornerbacks on his team are god awful. Compared to them, average and fast looks Pro Bowl-caliber.

Anyway, spurred on by your question I recompiled the data from this year's game charting project with all the games that are finished so far. We've got partial data through Week 13, although the later in the season you go, the more games that are unfinished. So take this stuff with a grain of salt. Also note that this stuff doesn't include pass interference penalties yet.

But... I was surprised to see that Newman's metrics don't come out much better than Hall's metrics. With 56 charted passes, Hall has given up 8.8 yards per pass with a Stop Rate of 55%. Newman, on 39 charted passes, has given up 8.2 yards per pass with a Stop Rate of 56% -- slightly better, but not much. The difference does come out in the last thing you noted, that quarterbacks avoid Newman. We've charted more passes thrown at Hall than at the inferior Jason Webster (52) but far fewer at Newman than at his partner, Anthony Henry (61). Remember not to compare those numbers between teams, since we have different amounts of games charted for each team.

Of course, if you open your Pro Football Prospectus 2006 you'll see that Newman was in the top five in both stats last year, and Hall was emphatically not.

Here's a look at the players who are best in the metrics, based on the data collected so far. We're listing players with a minimum of 30 passes. First, the top 10 in Stop Rate. (Stop Rate measures percentage of plays that do not achieve offensive success by Football Outsiders standards: 45% of yards on first down, 60% on second down, 100% on third down.)

• 32-A.Jones TEN 52 65%
• 28-L.Bodden CLE 31 65%
• 31-R.Marshall CAR 35 63%
• 33-C.Tillman CHI 75 63%
• 21-C.McAlister BAL 53 62%
• 20-C.Gamble CAR 38 61%
• 29-D.Florence SD 55 60%
• 26-L.Sheppard PHI 35 60%
• 22-F.Thomas NO 49 59%
• 36-D.Barrett NYJ 34 59%

The other number listed is number of charted passes. First of all, I should point out one player who ISN'T listed here, because I made the cut-off 30 passes. Antonio Cromartie has a Stop Rate of 69% with 28 charted passes. Wow, was I wrong when I thought the Chargers made a mistake because Cromartie would require years to learn to play corner in the NFL. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Then we've got Pac-Man, who probably should have made the AFC Pro Bowl team over Rashean Mathis, and our boy Leigh Bodden -- remember, this doesn't include the recent games where Bodden played hurt and not up to his previous level. Fred Thomas is still on this list for the same reason, because he played so well early in the year, and this doesn't include those recent games where he got torched like Johnny Storm. I'm a little surprised to see two Panthers on the list, since I thought the secondary was one of the big reasons they didn't live up to their Super Bowl potential this year. And I read some San Diego blog where some guy was talking about Quentin Jammer having a huge year this year. Actually, by our numbers he's the only one of the three San Diego cornerbacks who still qualifies as a weakness.

The top 10 in yards per play:

• 36-D.Barrett NYJ 34 4.5
• 28-L.Bodden CLE 31 4.6
• 22-A.Samuel NE 53 4.7
• 27-W.Harris SF 48 5.0
• 25-R.McQuarters NYG 35 5.0
• 31-N.Vasher CHI 44 5.4
• 31-C.Finnegan TEN 30 5.4
• 32-A.Jones TEN 52 5.5
• 26-L.Sheppard PHI 35 5.5
• 31-R.Marshall CAR 35 5.5

These numbers are a little kooky. David Barrett? R.W. McQuarters has looked horrible recently. Let's see where those guys stand at the end of the year.

I have no problem with Ronde Barber (we all know about his amazing run support) or Sheppard. Based on these numbers, Richard Marshall, the Carolina rookie, should be going to the Pro Bowl, but I don't trust that, not with this incomplete data. Combining this data with what we know from past seasons, I would have given the third NFC spot to Nathan Vasher. Vasher has a lower Stop Rate (57%) than Charles Tillman, but allows fewer yards per pass and opponents throw at Vasher roughly half as often compared to Tillman. Newman would have been a better choice than Hall, certainly, based on what we know from last year. Look, Jason Webster and Allen Rossum are so bad that if DeAngelo Hall was as good as people think, teams would treat those guys the way they treat Darrant Williams when Champ Bailey is on the other side of the field.

To finish up, here's a look at the worst cornerbacks so far by these metrics (remember, though, incomplete data). First, Stop Rate:

• 22-S.Rolle BAL 46 30%
• 22-Tr.Fisher STL 42 33%
• 24-T.Law KC 35 37%
• 27-J.Webster ATL 52 38%
• 23-M.Trufant SEA 55 40%
• 25-K.Wright WAS 42 40%
• 21-J.Fletcher DET 32 41%
• 27-Da.Williams DEN 59 41%
• 23-Q.Jammer SD 64 42%
• 24-I.Taylor PIT 67 43%

And then yards per pass:

• 22-S.Rolle BAL 46 14.1
• 22-Tr.Fisher STL 42 10.7
• 26-T.Hill STL 40 10.7
• 21-J.Fletcher DET 32 10.4
• 20-T.James CIN 42 10.0
• 21-R.Hill TEN 45 10.0
• 27-J.Webster ATL 52 9.9
• 24-T.Law KC 35 9.7
• 29-B.Williams JAC 47 9.6
• 24-I.Taylor PIT 67 9.3

You can be very sure that Bill Belichick, Marty Schottenheimer, and Tony Dungy know who to pick on if/when they face the Ravens in January. Also, Ty Law is over the hill -- his metrics were awful in New York last year too -- and the Rams' defensive backfield is horrific.

Jason Ford: I'm an avid Browns fan (woe is me) and I've been listening to the critics about Charlie Frye for the better part of the season. In Ned Macey's Every Given Sunday article this week, he bashes Frye and says the Browns should look into a trade for someone like Leftwich next season. The guy has less than a full season worth of starts... Can you run some similarity scores for Frye?

Aaron Schatz: This is a bit of a follow-up to Ned Macey's post last week about Frye and the history of quarterbacks who played below replacement level in their first two seasons. I took Frye's numbers through 10 games, pro-rated them for a whole season, and then compared his first two years to those of other quarterbacks since 1978.

1. Quincy Carter, 2003 Cowboys
2. Brett Favre, 1993 Packers
3. Drew Brees, 2002 Chargers
4. Tim Couch, 2001 Browns
5. Jim Zorn, 1978 Seahawks
6. Jake Plummer, 1998 Cardinals
7. Brett Favre, 1992 Packers
8. Rick Mirer, 1993 Seahawks
9. David Carr, 2004 Texans
10. Joey Harrington, 2004 Lions

Yes, Brett Favre appears twice on this list, but as you'll see in a second, he's not really that comparable to Frye. Frye is having a weird season, with a good completion percentage (62.5%) but lousy average yards per attempt (6.2). The Browns are throwing a ton of short passes. Out of these 10 quarterbacks, the only one with a higher completion percentage is Favre (1992), and the only one with fewer yards per attempt is Mirer. I also don't know if people realize how much Frye runs. He's on pace for 275 yards and five touchdowns on the ground.

Here's the top ten after we consider two seasons:

1. Quincy Carter, 2002-3 Cowboys
2. Tim Couch, 2000-1 Browns
3. Shaun King, 1999-2000 Bucs
4. Drew Brees, 2001-2 Chargers
5. Jim Everett, 1986-7 Rams
6. Jon Kitna, 1998-9 Seahawks
7. Randy Wright, 1985-6 Packers
8. Josh McCown, 2003-4 Cardinals
9. Aaron Brooks, 2000-1 Saints
10. David Carr, 2003-4 Texans

That list isn't quite so good, although Everett had a useful career and of course Drew Brees is still Drew Brees. Why isn't Frye comparable to Favre anymore? Because Favre's 1992 was nothing like Frye's 2005 -- actually, even though it shows up as similar to Frye's current season, Favre was much, much better in 1992:

• Favre 1992: 64.1 Comp. Pct., 6.9 ypa, 18 TD, 13 INT
• Favre 1993: 60.9 Comp. Pct., 6.3 ypa, 19 TD, 24 INT
• Frye 2006: 62.5 Comp. Pct., 6.2 ypa, 14 TD, 19 INT (pro-rated)

Frye is a quarterback who was below average in his first two seasons as a starter. Favre is a quarterback who was good in his first season as a starter, despite throwing a lot of shorter passes, and then slumped a bit in his second season.

I think the similarity scores say the same thing as Ned's analysis from last week -- Frye isn't hopeless, but he certainly doesn't look as promising as he did three months ago.

Post by Aaron Schatz

If Frye does not improve the rest of this season, but nonetheless goes on to have a successful career, it would make him absolutely unique among quarterbacks drafted over the past decade.

Football Outsiders has a stat, DPAR, that measures performance compared to a replacement player. (You may know this stat from the Monday Quick Reads column.) A replacement player would contribute 0 points. Frye had a DPAR his rookie year of -9.3, and to date he is again below replacement level with -11.9 DPAR in 2006.

I went back and looked at every quarterback drafted between 1995 and 2004 to find those who threw 100 passes in a season in either his rookie or second season. 36 quarterbacks met that standard. Of those 36, 15 did not have a positive DPAR during one of those two seasons.

• Cade McNown
• Brock Huard
• Danny Kanell
• Ryan Leaf (originally, this said Dorsey twice -- I'm not sure how I could forget the worst draft pick ever)
  
• Akili Smith
• Spergeon Wynn
• J.P. Losman
• Danny Wuerffel
• Chris Weinke
• Joey Harrington
• Tim Couch
• Ken Dorsey
• Quincy Carter
• Josh McCown
• Mike McMahon

Not one of these players has had a successful career. When Joey Harrington and Quincy Carter are the best of the bunch, this is not a career path you really want. The important thing here is struggles in both the rookie and sophomore year. Struggles in your rookie year alone have no such predictive ability. Donovan McNabb had a DPAR of -41.6 his rookie season. Eli Manning had a DPAR of -13.3.

The converse of this phenomenon is definitely not true. One positive DPAR season does not guarantee success. Shaun King, Bobby Hoying, and A.J. Feeley did not exactly develop into elite quarterbacks. For those reasons, fans in San Francisco should not get too excited about Alex Smith.

What does this all mean for Frye? Just because nobody in the last ten years has developed into a quality quarterback after such a poor start does not make it impossible. After all, almost all the quarterbacks with horrible rookie DPARs were total busts, but Donovan McNabb developed into a star. Perhaps Frye is a similar exception.

Still, enthusiasm for Frye should be tempered. The upside appears to be Carter or maybe David Carr, who only had a DPAR of 2.3 in his second season. Cleveland fans who like Frye should hope he puts it together down the stretch because quarterbacks who cannot play at a replacement level in their first two years are quarterbacks who will not be in the league for long.

Post by Ned Macey

It's usually a bad idea to fire an offensive coordinator in mid-season. Many times, the coordinator is just a scapegoat, and the team's problems have more to do with personnel or overall management than with the specific scheme they run or the plays they call. A week ago, Keith Rowan and Jim Fassel took falls for offensive-minded head coaches who haven't been able to field productive offenses.

But Maurice Carthon is different. Carthon had a very specific problem that he never seemed capable of solving. Carthon had a case of the Third-and-Short Clevers, or TSC, a disease that prevents a coordinator from handing off to his best running back in short yardage situations.

Early in the season, Carthon made rookie fullback Lawrence Vickers the team's short-yardage specialist. Vickers only carried three times for six yards and caught four passes for 5 yards in the preseason. Apparently, those were 11 impressive yards. Vickers got two chances to convert third-and-short opportunities in the season opener and was stuffed twice. A few weeks later, the rookie attempted an option pass on third-and-short. That didn't work either.

On Sunday, after spending the bye week trying desperately to save his job by spackling the holes in the Browns offense, Carthon's case of TSC resurfaced. He called two Charlie Frye rollouts in short-yardage situations in the first half. On one play, Frye rolled toward the coverage side of the field (the side where all of his receivers were bunched) on fourth-and-short. The defenders converged, and Frye was stopped for a loss. In the second quarter, Frye rolled left on third-and-2, got flushed, and threw an off-target pass. The Browns finished the game 1-of-10 on third down conversions.

What's wrong with a little bit of third down creativity? Nothing, if it's a little bit of creativity. Football Outsiders has been researching short-yardage strategies for years, and we have confirmed the obvious: the best thing to do when you need one yard is give the ball to your top running back. Sure, a rollout here and a play-action bomb there is necessary to keep defenses honest, but those plays should be wrinkles, not the basis of a short-yardage strategy. The Browns average 4.6 yards per carry on ten rushes in 3rd-and-1 and 3rd-and-2 situations. Reuben Droughns carried the ball in most of those situations. He did get stuffed once against the Broncos, but the 220-pound Droughns is clearly Cleveland's best short-yardage weapon. Unfortunately, Carthon wanted to outsmart everyone, and the Browns paid the price.

Jeff Davidson, the Browns offensive line coach, is now running the whole show. He is in no position to make wholesale changes. But he can help the Browns offense by keeping things simple in short yardage situations. Hopefully, we've seen the last of Lawrence Vickers, wannabe quarterback.

The NFL has added a few things to the official play-by-play this season, and one of the new stats is quarterback hits. These are now counted by looking for the defender's name in brackets after a pass. For example:

2-15-BLT 20(15:00) 9-S.McNair pass short middle to 85-D.Mason to BLT 25 for 5 yards (59-D.Edwards) [56-S.Merriman].

...means that Edwards made the tackle on the complete pass, but Merriman knocked McNair to the ground after he threw it.

Now that four weeks are in the books, I decided to go back and look at which teams and players were leading the league in this category, now that the data is finally available to the public. Here are your 2006 HIT leaders so far:

NE 28
CLE 23
BAL 21
DEN 17
TB 15
NO 14
STL 13
JAC 12

At the bottom is Detroit, with 3.

That list makes some sense, but it's a little odd. Cleveland doesn't exactly scare anyone on defense this year, and could the Patriots be that far ahead of the rest of the league? Anyway, I went to look at how many HITS had been recorded in each stadium so far this year, and here are your leaders:

NE 43
CLE 33
TB 22

Every other team in the NFL is between 2 and 16. Methinks that the official scorers in New England and Cleveland may not have the same definition of HIT as everyone else. This isn't an issue of those defenses, specifically -- the Pats have 23 HITS, their opponents 20, so the HITS are being divied up equally. There are just a few too many of them.

Anyway, these numbers can still be interesting, as long as we except that they are going to be a little off for New England, Cleveland, and (to a smaller extent) Buffalo, Denver, Baltimore, and New Orleans (the four opponents in Foxboro and Cleveland this season). Here's your list of which players lead the league in HITS so far:

L.Little, STL 7
K.Lang, DEN 6
R.Colvin, NE 6
K.Wimbley, CLE 6
R.Seymour, NE 5
C.Kelsay, BUF 5
K.Vanden Bosch, TEN 5
D.Ware, DAL 5

Of course, a quarterback is not hit only when making a pass. Sometimes, he'#### before a pass. If we're truly going to count quarterback hits, we should be counting sacks as well. (We could count scrambles, but I'll save that for another day.) Counting HITS + sacks, with 1/2 sack counting as a whole hit -- it isn't like you only knock down half a quarterback -- here are your QB HITS leaders:

L.Little, STL 10
B.Scott, BAL 10
K.Wimbley, CLE 9
R.Seymour, NE 8
C.Kelsay, BUF 8
B.Young, NO 8
A.Kampman, GB 8
T.Harris, CHI 8

I should note that I'm counting here both plays that counted and plays that were cancelled by penalties -- the quarterback feels that hit whether the offense gets a free five yards for illegal contact or not.

Finally, here's a list of quarterbacks who lead the league in HITS and SACKS. Again, no scrambles here, although I can make a list including those later in the season.

S.McNair, BAL 37
C.Frye, CLE 36
K.Warner, ARI 32
D.Culpepper, MIA 28
T.Brady, NE 28
J.P.Losman, BUF 28
C.Palmer, CIN 24

And down at the bottom, for QBs who have started every game:

D.Bledsoe, DAL 11
R.Grossman, CHI 11
P.Rivers, SD 3

Yes, the San Diego offense is the only offense in single digits for HITS plus SACKS. Impressive.

Bonus points if you know who sings the song that provides the title for this post! 

Post by Aaron Schatz