Ranking Edelman among top receivers

jsull87 said:

Love Edelman. Best Slot WR is Antonio Brown and that is no knock on Edelman.

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I don't consider Brown a slot WR he is a Y-WR.

Gronk: People said the same things about Wes. The league decided he was worth about 2 mil per year. Theres a reason outside guys get paid more. The skill set is rarer and the potential for big plays is greater. No knock on jules, hes one of the best slot receivers in the game.

rochrist said:

A lot of it is /when/ the production is made. A 40 yard TD when you're losing 31-6 and you're 3 games under .500 is worth a LOT less than an 8 yard catch when it's 3 and 7 and you're fighting for the number one seed. And last I checked, JE was on pace for his second straight 100 catch, 1000 yard season.

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I think people take the 100 catch achievement for granted on this board because we've been fortunate enough to have Welker and now Edelman. Having a 100 catches is a huge accomplishment for a WR that only 4-5 WRs achieve on a given season. When a player does it in back to back years when those years also happen to be his first 2 years seeing more than 25% or the offensive snaps it speaks volumes to how good the player is.

Brady6 said:

I don't consider Brown a slot WR he is a Y-WR.

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Edelman isn't really a slot receiver either, by the same reasoning. They both take a lot of snaps out of the slot, but not a majority of them. I've long believed that Edelman's best comparable is 'a poor man's Antonio Brown'. Edelman has a lot more in common with Brown than he does with Welker, but the Welker comparison holds up because they're both white and both play/played for the Pats.

rochrist said:

A lot of it is /when/ the production is made. A 40 yard TD when you're losing 31-6 and you're 3 games under .500 is worth a LOT less than an 8 yard catch when it's 3 and 7 and you're fighting for the number one seed. And last I checked, JE was on pace for his second straight 100 catch, 1000 yard season.

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And most of these teams are losing 31-6 and 3 games under .500 because they're the kind of teams that pay market value for elite WRs. Investing $15M per year on a top-tier WR is one of the worse investment you can make when building your roster, which means that the teams that do that are typically worse. Bottom line: WR talent doesnt' correlate very strongly with wins. That's why smart teams like the Pats don't pay a lot of money for them, and also why it makes very, very little sense to credit the WR for the fact that his team is good (which is what you're doing here for Edelman).

BradyFTW! said:

And most of these teams are losing 31-6 and 3 games under .500 because they're the kind of teams that pay market value for elite WRs. WR talent doesnt' correlate very strongly with wins. That's why smart teams like the Pats don't pay a lot of money for them, and also why it makes very, very little sense to credit the WR for the fact that his team is good (which is what you're doing here for Edelman).

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Not exactly. I'm saying that JE is more valuable to a team than the typical diva WR.

rochrist said:

Not exactly. I'm saying that JE is more valuable to a team than the typical diva WR.

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Sure, I agree with that. That's why I consider him a fringe top-25 guy, because he's more valuable than all the divas who I would put below him. But not-being-a-diva doesn't make him an elite WR. There are a ton of WRs who aren't divas, and even some of the ones who are divas are so good that they're still better.

I do think that there are 1 or 2 guys who are consensus better than Edelman who you can make a case for Edelman based on the whole diva thing. The most interesting is probably Dez Bryant. If you're looking just at talent, skills, and production, Dez is clearly better. But they're such polar opposites in terms of attitude, intelligence, locker room culture, etc., that I could definitely understand making a case that Edelman is more valuable. I don't necessarily agree, but it's worth a discussion and I'm definitely open to the strong possibility that I'm wrong there. You could also probably make a case against DeSean in the same way, but again, I think that derails from the actual premise that this thread was based on, and I still think that DeSean might be better in part because he does make big, important plays.

BradyFTW! said:

Edelman isn't really a slot receiver either, by the same reasoning. They both take a lot of snaps out of the slot, but not a majority of them. I've long believed that Edelman's best comparable is 'a poor man's Antonio Brown'. Edelman has a lot more in common with Brown than he does with Welker, but the Welker comparison holds up because they're both white and both play/played for the Pats.

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That makes sense, very good analysis, I certainly cannot disagree with it after giving it some thought.

I think people overrate Edelman. Look at a guy like Eric Decker and how incredible he looked with Manning. Put him on a bad offense and he's completely irrelevant. If you put Edelman on Jacksonville or the Jets he'd be nothing. He's simply great in his role in New England.

hieroglyphics said:

I think people overrate Edelman. Look at a guy like Eric Decker and how incredible he looked with Manning. Put him on a bad offense and he's completely irrelevant. If you put Edelman on Jacksonville or the Jets he'd be nothing. He's simply great in his role in New England.

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Decker is the polar opposite of JE in most ways.

rochrist said:

Decker is the polar opposite of JE in most ways.

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I believe in the theory that the QB makes the receivers look better than they actually are.

If you research the number of times top receivers switch teams though you notice a trend that VERY few receivers are difference makers, guys like Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Brandon Marshall, Vincent Jackson, etc., those are the true elite types of receivers who can step in anywhere and just be dominant. Today, the same type of receivers are those like Dez Bryant, Calvin Johnson, Julio Jones, AJ Green....Edelman doesn't hold a candle to those receivers. They're just in a different class. To say that Edelman doesn't benefit tremendously playing alongside a HOF QB/coach/TE is not giving enough credit to how good Brady and the coaching staff really are.

I would not put Minitron in the upper echelon of receivers. Take away the players around him and he is easily negated. Hell, give him some mid tier quarterback and he doesn't produce half of what he does.

That said, he is one of, if not the best slot receiver in the game today. Where that puts him in the top receiver list I don't know. But I do know that I would prefer a number of other true outside receivers, disregarding Minitron's special teams prowess.

Don't get me wrong, I think Edelman is way to valuable to this team to be replaced or exchanged for another "receiver." Plus, the dude is a gamer. He's one of those whisky drinkers Lombardi preferred on fourth down...

letekro said:

Gronk: People said the same things about Wes. The league decided he was worth about 2 mil per year. Theres a reason outside guys get paid more. The skill set is rarer and the potential for big plays is greater. No knock on jules, hes one of the best slot receivers in the game.

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I understand your position. I'm, in part, arguing that the conventional wisdom is wrong.

The reason the outside guys get paid more is because they're sexier - not because they're necessarily more rare. And every WR that we're talking about is helped by their system and their QB. This is true often even when that system/QB is Matt Stafford or Jay Cutler who just throws the ball up to their best player because that's all their best course of action with the lack of any high-level gameplan around them.

I don't care what the league valued Wes at - that would have been a far different number 2 or 3 years earlier and you know it. And piggybacking on other comments, what JE does vs. what Wes does is not apples to apples. Some of where JE lines up is what "Wes' position" would have been. Some is not.

I don't think it's taking credit away from BB/TB to say that JE has put himself amongst the NFL elite. The "you're ****ting on BB and Tom to say everything the last 15 years is not their doing!" argument is boring. They are the cornerstone, of course, but a lot of people have given a lot to achieve what the Pats have over that time and this guy is one of them.

I see referenced above Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Brandon Marshall, Vincent Jackson, Dez Bryant, Calvin Johnson, etc. - as "true" elite receivers than can step in anywhere and be dominant. These are the same guys I see imploding their teams, routinely getting injured despite their dominant physical stature, pouting when they don't get the ball, and unable to direct their vastly superior skill sets towards winning games. What is dominant? Tallying 1500 yds when you're always losing by 2 TDs? Being a "beast" on a 7-9 team? I should be impressed because they're tall and strong? Come on.

I'm not trying to say that Jules is the next coming of Jerry Rice (who, by the by, was thrown to by a HOF QB for like the first 13 years of his career). Nor am I saying that he would be what he is on any other team - I do get the argument that the players above basically do the same thing elsewhere/anywhere, or whatever. In all likelihood JE would be out of the league had he landed anywhere else out of college. I get it. All that said, what he's done since he's been a starter at least puts him in the mix of current best-of-the-best at WR, all things considered. I don't believe that's overly lofty praise. If you disagree, that's cool.

God I sound like such a fanboy LOL. MY BRO JULES JUST GETS ME JACKED