The Full Monty Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Stephen Bowen is more underrated than Fletcher is. Bowen has been a force. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smackdown 46 Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Fletcher has been better than Ray or all the others when you look st his supporting cast. Mans been carrying team on his back for years and never missing a game. Come on man ,please! Give him his props, they give it all to the showboats for years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Willis is a more dynamic player in terms of making plays all over the field. Willis has more defended passes, more forced fumbles, more recovered fumbles, more tackles for a loss, and more sacks despite having played in fewer games.The end result is that Willis has more positive expected points added per a game. http://wp.advancednflstats.com/defenderstats.php?pos=LB Fletcher, of course, has been more durable. I'm not sure I totally buy into that advanced metric as a good wholistic measure of value, but it's interesting nonetheless. But according to the website you posted, Fletcher ranks significantly higher than Willis in both +WPA and +EPA, making him the more valuable defender on the whole for the year IMO, if you use that metric. Willis has one more fumble forced, but Fletcher has one more interception so the number of turnovers they've created is the same. I think the difference in tackles between the two is so large that it becomes a significant factor in the case for Fletcher. Fletcher has half again more tackles than Willis. He's gotten to the ball more times than any other defensive player in the league this season. That's a tremendous individual feat. One that Willis has achieved himself in the past and been lauded for--he won All Pro honors as a rookie for leading the league in tackles. That more than makes up for the differences in their passes defensed and the half sack difference. The core job of any ILB in any scheme is to find the football and stop it. London has done that better and more frequently than anyone else this season. You're right about durability being a point in Fletcher's favor but I think you're underselling it's importance. Fletcher has been hurt with a serious injury too and his play is actually better this season. Willis missing games and looking slowed with injury hurts his case. Durability is an extremely valuable quality in football in and of itself. And London being the active consecutive start streak holder as an ILB is simply amazing--unprecedented really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterMP Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 I'm not sure I totally buy into that advanced metric as a good wholistic measure of value, but it's interesting nonetheless. But according to the website you posted, Fletcher ranks significantly higher than Willis in both +WPA and +EPA, making him the more valuable defender on the whole for the year IMO, if you use that metric.Willis has one more fumble forced, but Fletcher has one more interception so the number of turnovers they've created is the same. I think the difference in tackles between the two is so large that it becomes a significant factor in the case for Fletcher. Fletcher has half again more tackles than Willis. He's gotten to the ball more times than any other defensive player in the league this season. That's a tremendous individual feat. One that Willis has achieved himself in the past and been lauded for. That more than makes up for the differences in their passes defensed and the half sack difference. The core job of any ILB in any scheme is to find the football and stop it. London has done that better and more frequently than anyone else this season. You're right about durability being a point in Fletcher's favor but I think you're underselling it's importance. Fletcher has been hurt with a serious injury too and his play is actually better this season. Willis missing games and looking slowed with injury hurts his case. Durability is an extremely valuable quality in football in and of itself. And London being the active consecutive start streak holder as an ILB is simply amazing--unprecedented really. Fletcher leads in WPA and EPA because he's played in more games. That also relates to your "analysis" of things like sacks (which I think should be pretty much ignored for a ILB (it isn't like they get to control how much the blitz) and turnovers. You'd expect Fletcher to have more because he's played in more games, but he doesn't. I am ABSOLUTELY not understating Fletcher's durability. If you can't get on the field, it doesn't matter what kind of player you are. I'm simply saying that the argument that Willis is a better player is based on the idea that he's more dynamic, and the stats actually support that. If Fletcher is a better player, it is because he is more durable. Though I also think those other stats are better because tackles is such a fake stat in the NFL. If the NFL actually found somebody impartial to go through all of the game tape and REALLY count how got the tackles, it would be different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Going Commando Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 Stephen Bowen is more underrated than Fletcher is. Bowen has been a force. I won't disagree with that. Bowen has no name recognition whatsoever outside of Dallas, Hofstra, and the DMV. He's been excellent the past few weeks and I love having a DL like him in the fold. He's gigantic, powerful, explosive, opportunistic, disruptive, capitalizes on his favorable matchups, and can crash down the line and make really nice individual plays like the best DLs do. But interior DL types almost always get overlooked except for a very few like Ngata and Albert Haynesworth. That's the norm for the position. You need some sort of gimmick or strange story or possess some legit freakish athletic talent like Ngata and Haynesworth do. I also think that the level of national recognition for both Bowen and Fletcher has suffered because of their college careers. Look at Orakpo and Kerrigan--they each got instant, day one national recognition. A large part of that is because people heard of them in college and they came in as highly decorated first round draft picks. Kerrigan was a unanimous first team All American and he won the Bill Willis Trophy last year. Orakpo's career was even more storied, having also been a unanimous first team All American (at one of the most storied and successful CFB programs no less) and winner of the Bill Willis Trophy, but also having won the Hendricks, Lombardi, and the Nagurski award that year. Each also won defensive player of the year for their prestigious conferences their senior year. That's a ton of hardware to bring home. Meanwhile London and Bowen both toiled in obscurity for tiny programs and came into the league with 0 fanfare, neither were even drafted. ---------- Post added December-21st-2011 at 11:34 PM ---------- Fletcher leads in WPA and EPA because he's played in more games. That also relates to your "analysis" of things like sacks (which I think should be pretty much ignored for a ILB (it isn't like they get to control how much the blitz) and turnovers. You'd expect Fletcher to have more because he's played in more games, but he doesn't.I am ABSOLUTELY not understating Fletcher's durability. If you can't get on the field, it doesn't matter what kind of player you are. I'm simply saying that the argument that Willis is a better player is based on the idea that he's more dynamic, and the stats actually support that. If Fletcher is a better player, it is because he is more durable. Though I also think those other stats are better because tackles is such a fake stat in the NFL. If the NFL actually found somebody impartial to go through all of the game tape and REALLY count how got the tackles, it would be different. Their turnovers created is the same number (FFs + INTs), and there is no telling whether or not Willis would have more TOs than Fletcher if he played in the same number of games. I feel like you're writing off the tackles stat because you don't like the way it is collected, but I just can't accept that. I think it is, by far, the single most important stat for measuring an ILBs productivity because I think the ILBs most basic job in all schemes is to find the ball carrier and stop him. There is no other way to measure that except with the tackles stat unless you sat down and watched all of their snaps. And I don't buy that the process of collecting that stat is so flawed that it can account for a 50 some odd difference in their official tackle totals. I'd buy that one scorer might score a player's tackle total higher than another's tackle total by maybe one or two a game. It's a pretty easy stat to score in all but a very few cases. I've scored it myself watching college linebackers and had my totals match up with the official scorekeeper's most of the time, and never been off by more than one or two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KDawg Posted December 22, 2011 Share Posted December 22, 2011 So, you're saying he (London) is Art Monk? :halo: Essentially, yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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