Catching Ducks

Before the 2012 draft, Football Outsiders analyzed the prospects of the quarterbacks eligible of the 2012 NFL draft. They used some fancy statistic programs to figure out which players had the best prospects.

Here they are, ranked from highest to lowest:

Robert Griffin, Baylor: 2,530 DYAR
Andrew Luck, Stanford: 1,749 DYAR
Nick Foles, Arizona: 1,391 DYAR
Kirk Cousins, Michigan State: 1,362 DYAR
Brandon Weeden, Oklahoma State: 1,011 DYAR
Ryan Tannehill, Texas A&M: 730 DYAR
Brock Osweiler, Arizona State: 248 DYAR

You might notice that there's a name missing from that list: Russell Wilson. Tucked at the end of the article you'll find this section:


The Asterisk
Russell Wilson, Wisconsin: 2,650 DYAR

Important stats: 48 games started, 60.7% completion rate, senior passer rating rose 64.1 points.

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the ridiculous projection that the Lewin Career Forecast spits out for Russell Wilson. Yes, that projection is even higher than the one for Robert Griffin. No, it doesn't particularly mean that Wilson is a sleeper prospect. There are a few things going on here that the LCF is just not designed to account for.

First and foremost, the change in Wilson's passer rating between his junior and senior years is insane. Remember that earlier I noted that Griffin had a larger senior year passer rating increase than any quarterback in our data set? Well, Wilson's senior year passer rating increase is 40 percent larger than Griffin's. But does it matter when the quarterback is playing in a completely different offense for a completely different school in his last year of college eligibility? At Wisconsin, Wilson got to pick apart defenses that were concentrating on stopping Montee Ball. At North Carolina State, I doubt opponents were quaking in their boots at the thought of Mustafa Greene and Dean Haynes. It goes without saying that there isn't another quarterback in the LCF data set who transferred between his junior and senior years.

There's also the issue of height, another data point where there's nobody in our data set that can be compared to Wilson. At first, it seems strange that LCF doesn't include a variable to discount short quarterbacks, but when you look at the data set that went into creating LCF the reasons are pretty clear. There's no penalty for being 5-foot-11, like Wilson is, because there are no quarterbacks in the data set who are shorter than 6-foot-0. There's no penalty for being only 6-foot-0 because the two quarterbacks who are 6-foot-0 are Drew Brees and Michael Vick.

Quarterbacks who are Wilson's height simply don't get drafted in the first three rounds of the draft, period. The FO master database only includes three quarterbacks who are below six feet tall: Seneca Wallace, Joe Hamilton, and Flutie. That's a fourth-round pick, a seventh-round pick, and an 11th round pick from 25 years ago. Even if we go all the way back to 1991, the only quarterbacks taken in the first six rounds at 6-foot-0 or shorter were Vick, Brees, Wallace, Joe Germaine (fourth round, 1999), and Troy Smith (fifth round, 2007).

Wilson too will probably be drafted on the third day of the draft, round four or later, which would render his absurdly high LCF moot.



Hahahhahahhahahaha!!!!!

To be fair, someone at FO had the foresight to do a little more work on Russell Wilson. The article is called Studying "The Asterisk": "I’m going to show you why Wilson has NFL starter potential and why the 6-foot-0 Drew Brees is a good template for how an NFL team can win with Wilson."

Labels: Seattle Seahawks