emoney_33
Experienced Starter w/First Big Contract
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Moss deserves some credit for the yardage and TDs, but not sure what you mean by INT frequency or completion %. In terms of INT frequency, 2009 was at 2.3%, which also happens to be Brady's career frequency as well.
Attempts / INTs. In 2007 it was absurdly low, in 2009 it was only bested by 2003 something like every 43.6 attempts in 09 and every 43.9 attempts in 03. My point being against those saying that Moss caused Brady to throw bad passes/INTs. But being fair, I can understand an argument that Welker has more to do with the increase in completion %. How much help Moss gave with taking the top off the defense in that regard I guess we will soon find out.
(Interesting side note: in 2003 Brady attempted 63 passes that traveled 21+ yards in the air, in 2009... 60).
Also, Moss is a deep threat and that's not a high-percentage pass. Moss caught around 60% of his passes compared to targets. By comparison, Pats WRs as a whole caught 65% of targets. I don't expect this to be high, and it's unfair to expect it to be high, just not sure why you mentioned it. It has more to do with all the short passes to Welker/Edelman/Faulk.
You are most likely correct and I have no idea just how much Moss' attention impacted the short game.
Not necessarily. As an example, Tony Romo tried to keep T.O. happy, and eventually there were clashes with Jason Garrett, and the Cowboys eventually booting T.O. At the time, he was an elite WR, but he wasn't content to play within the flow of the game. It's no different with Moss when he's not focused. And lets not forget at one time the Vikings actually had a "Randy Ratio" and tried to force 40% of the passes to him, which culminated in a 6-10 season.
Well Moss was in the Patriots system for his 4th year, that's not how the Patriots operate, Moss is not TO and Brady is definitely not Romo. I just can't buy into the idea they threw to Moss to please him rather than because they felt it was best for the team. For example this season so far it seems they were shifting their strategy even with Moss here.
You seem to think I'm bashing Moss, but just so we're clear, I like him a lot. I just feel this year was not going to be a good year for him here for a variety of reasons, and it seemed to show in his play. He seemed very distracted by the contract uncertainty, and he was not going to be able to put up the numbers he wanted to get the contract he wanted with our new offensive focus on running the ball and integrating the tight ends in the passing game.
I fully expect him to light it up in Minnesota, he's got the perfect QB to feed him the ball and give him chances to make plays, he's heavily-motivated to prove us wrong, and he'll probably destroy us when he returns to New England in a few weeks.
But he wasn't going to be able to do it for us for a lot of different reasons. It is what it is.
Fair enough, with the 4 games of data we have I can't really argue against any of that. We'll never know how his stats would have ended up but it's definitely reasonable if not likely that they would have trended downward as you felt all along. Hopefully BB keeps true to form and doesn't allow the team's best player to beat us when the Vikes are in town.
Good points overall and I know I come off strong in Moss' defense at times but it's more to do with the irrational "Moss ruined the offense" crowd than reasonable discussions like what you have brought up. And I can definitely agree that "it is what it is"
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