PASSER/RECEIVER ANALYSIS

[Tandy]

(10-23-2010 11:54 PM)poutlipper Wrote:  Very cool of you to post the shots. Looking at them like that, the only one I would fault him with would be the 2nd. Now if he makes the other 3, those are 3 pretty impressive catches, but in all 3 of them, you have just a few people in the league who bring those in.

Like I said - it's subjective.

I admit - I judge Roddy harsher than Jenkins or Douglas because Roddy is supposed to be (and is - in my opinion) a top 5 or 10 receiver in the league. I would expect him to make the catches that I truly believe guys like Fitzgerald, Boldin, Wayne, Driver, Johnson, Nicks, Royal and even Steve Smith will make.

I believe they make every one of those catches. When you go through the sequence of the catch on DVR frame by frame - including the replays - you see that in every case - the ball was in his hands at one point. In his hands. In no case did a defender actually cause the ball to leave his hands.

In the last one - which was the one hardest for me to call a drop - it wasn't the shots you see which determined it for me - I just can't seem to catch the screen shots I want - I'll try to get them for you - it's just going to take me getting a program on my computer where I can get a frame by frame freeze. I'll try to do that later this week. There are shots which clearly show - he had the ball - but he caught it against his body - then let it slip down below his hands - where the defender then knocked it away. You could argue it was defended - but if he had held the ball in his hands instead of with his body - that's a catch and he comes up with the ball. That's why I finally decided on a drop.

If I had some clearer criteria and we could all agree on it - I would be happy to change the way I record them.

We could say:

1. If there is a defender in contact - regardless of the impact the defender has - then it is not a drop. (I am pretty sure this is what they do on the stat sites - but to me - that's not holding the receiver accountable for their own actions)
2. If the ball is not a straight shot into the hands with no contortion of the body then it is not a drop, regardless of how many other receivers would catch it.
3. If the receiver has to jump, there is no call for a drop.
4. If the receiver goes to the ground after the catch - regardless of how long it was in his hands, it is not a drop.

Those are all reasonable rules, I guess - just not ones I've used to relieve the player of responsibility for the catch.

I'll let you guys decide though.