Ridley

chasa said:

Your arguement is just as potent as Ridley's "potential" It's still hasn't shown up.

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Except when he got over 1200 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2012. That's more than Blount has ever gotten in a season, and more rushing yards and touchdowns than Vereen has gotten in his whole career.

I like Ridley but I don't think he will be a priority for the Patriots. Unless the market is low for him, I doubt the Patriots match any offers. Blount's contract is pretty low and I can't see them offering even that amount to him.
I think something similar can be said for Vereen. If someone offers him a 3 mil/per year contract, I think he's gone. Again, I like Vereen but I just don't see the Pats offering that and it was telling when they let Woodhead sign with the Chargers a few years back.

Plus I think Gaffney and White are going to surprise next year and at a much lower amount.

moosekill said:

A healthy Ridley may be an easy choice over Jonas Gray. An injured Ridley looking for a big contract would not. If you want to preface your remarks by saying, if healthy I would much rather have Ridley than Gray I would not disagree with you, although I would preface it by looking at the costs of each. Coming off a major knee injury I would simply not agree and say you are wrong.

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Ridley tore his ACL, its the same injury Adrian Petterson came back from even stronger. This is not a career ending injury like it used to be 30 years ago. Will it affect him? No doubt, there is a pretty long history of people taking a year and a half to look normal again Brady and Welker come to mind. However the difference between Ridley and Blount is not enough that I think Ridley being a tick slow is going to make Blount or Grey his equal. I believe you are majorly underestimating a healthy Ridley who was easily our best runner. Best Running Back? That was debatable as there is so much more to playing the position then just being good with the ball in your hand but as a pure runner Ridley passed my eye test with flying colors and I prefer him as the bell cow. I like Blount and was happy the Pats got him back because he can fill a role. He is more of a homerun hitter then Ridley, he is bigger then any other RB we have. He is a fantastic closer against a tired defense and I want him to get 10-15 carries a game. However at the start of games when yards are hardest to get I want Ridley toting the rock 20-25 times a game. Ridley's best season 1200 yards 12 TD's. Blounts 1000 yards 6 TD's as a rookie. Ridley when healthy is better then Blount and IMO its by a fair margin.

moosekill said:

Thank GOD you are not running the team then. A running back coming back from major knee surgery, with past fumbling issues and an inability to break big runs, who has averaged 4.3 yards per carry over his career with the Pats, while Blount has averaged 4.7 and 5.0 over his time here.

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If and when he back to 100%, yes Ridley is better than the rest. I don't believe I said "F the rest of them, give me Ridley on a busted knee". As I said Blount/Ridley is a good pairing but alone I don't think Blount is better. Blount dances at the line too much. I can almost tell a chunk of the way through the first Quarter if the running game is going to be abandoned. Inconsistent, better when Ridley is splitting carries with him.

Marinlik said:

Except when he got over 1200 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2012. That's more than Blount has ever gotten in a season, and more rushing yards and touchdowns than Vereen has gotten in his whole career.

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Then we should probably sign chris johnson right? dude broke 2k

JackBauer said:

Come again? Ridley is an easy choice over Jonas Gray.

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I don't think that's an easy choice at all. Gray costs virtually nothing. Almost as little as an NFL player can cost. And he's healthy, ready to go.

Ridley is going to cost at least league minimum for a 5th year vet and he's almost certainly looking for more than that. He's coming off ACL surgery.

I view Ridley as no better than an average NFL running back -- basically replacement value. Nice player, but no nicer than a couple dozen other players -- figuring 64 players at his position see game action.

When it comes to JAG value players, money counts. If Gray costs a third of Ridley, then that has to be figured into the equation in a salary cap league. At what point does a little incremental improvement in a platoon RB justify a million or two in additional cost?

Those are not "easy" choices.

This draft is loaded with starting caliber RB's. We need to draft one. Can't rely on your old QB to throw 50 times to win playoff games. I don't trust anyone on the roster right now to perform in the playoff against a non colts team. The running game was pretty much non existent against Baltimore and seattle

pazrul72 said:

He is a fantastic closer against a tired defense and I want him to get 10-15 carries a game. However at the start of games when yards are hardest to get I want Ridley toting the rock 20-25 times a game.

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The Pats are a passing team in a passing league. I don't know where you can find 30 to 40 carries a game for the running backs. Not counting QB and WR carries, the Pats averaged 24 rushes per game in the 2014 regular season. Back out Vereen's carries and the other running backs averaged 18 carries a game split among them.

So lets be clear. If you pay a back like Ridley more than Gray, your benefit is potential extra yardage on 10 to 12 carries a game. On average, that is an absolute max of 10 total yards per game for whatever extra you are paying. The difference between two average NFL running backs on 10 carries per game is a very, very small difference in the overall performance of the team -- a difference that would not justify much additional cap expense in a salary cap league.

BTW, on roughly the same number of carries last year, Ridley averaged 3. 6 ypc and Gray averaged 4.6 ypc.

A man named Brady said:

This draft is loaded with starting caliber RB's. We need to draft one. Can't rely on your old QB to throw 50 times to win playoff games. I don't trust anyone on the roster right now to perform in the playoff against a non colts team. The running game was pretty much non existent against Baltimore and seattle

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If you are going to run against Baltimore, you probably should invest in a smaller 3rd down type back who can get to the edges. It is nearly impossible to run up the gut against Baltimore's defense.

hwc said:

BTW, on roughly the same number of carries last year, Ridley averaged 3. 6 ypc and Gray averaged 4.6 ypc.

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While I on the whole agree with your sentiments, I think YPC is a stat easily influenced by context (nature of the carries) and I'm not sure the sample size of either back last year was enough to read too definitively into it. Ridley has been running well here since day one, and what I like most about him is that his performance isn't as affected by the line's performance. Our line can perform really well in run blocking, but at times bigger DLs will shuts it down completely - that's where Ridley shows his worth. Jonas Gray dominated when our OL dominated, as it has time after time against that Indy DL of late.

On Ridley no Room left in the Inn...we have Blount and Jonas Gray who can do what he does he gets a one year prove it somewhere else.

hwc said:

The Pats are passing team in a passing league. I don't know where you can find 30 to 40 carries a game for the running backs. Not counting QB and WR carries, the Pats averaged 24 rushes per game in the 2014 regular season. Back out Ridley's carries an the other running backs averaged 18 carries a game split among them.

So lets be clear. If you pay a back like Ridley more than Gray, your benefit is potential extra yardage on 10 to 12 carries a game. On average, that is an absolute max of 10 total yards per game for whatever extra you are paying. The difference between two average NFL running backs on 10 carries per game is a very, very small difference in the overall performance of the team -- a difference that would not justify much additional cap expense in a salary cap league.

BTW, on roughly the same number of carries last year, Ridley averaged 3. 6 ypc and Gray averaged 4.6 ypc.

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The average team runs 70-80 plays a game and yes last year once Ridley went down and the Pats had to resort to Gray and Blount they started putting it up 50 times a game cuz that was the strength of the offense. Brady is going to be 38 and as much as he wants to play til he is 50 that is just not going to happen, especially if they have him throwing that much week in and week out. Playoff games like the Ravens and Seahawks? Hell yes cuz winning is the only thing that matters and nobody does it better then Brady. The NFL season is a marathon and more about surviving it then winning. I want the pats to be more balanced as I feel its better to be unpredictable then dominant. That means with an actual bell cow caliber back (I feel Ridley is the only one who can answer to that discription) there will be 30-40 carries a game. Obviously when we play the Colts that number is closer to 50 while against the Ravens it might only be 25. The advantage and what makes paying Ridley more then Gray/Blount doesn't IMO opinion show up so much in YPC. When the defense is fresh they fire off the ball, they tackle better, and yards on the ground are hard to get. The difference between getting 0 yards and 2-3 yards is huge as it keeps drives going, gets you the lead which changes the way the whole game is played.

pazrul72 said:

...Brady is going to be 38 and as much as he wants to play til he is 50 that is just not going to happen...

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pazrul72 said:

Ridley tore his ACL, its the same injury Adrian Petterson came back from even stronger. This is not a career ending injury like it used to be 30 years ago. Will it affect him? No doubt, there is a pretty long history of people taking a year and a half to look normal again Brady and Welker come to mind. However the difference between Ridley and Blount is not enough that I think Ridley being a tick slow is going to make Blount or Grey his equal. I believe you are majorly underestimating a healthy Ridley who was easily our best runner. Best Running Back? That was debatable as there is so much more to playing the position then just being good with the ball in your hand but as a pure runner Ridley passed my eye test with flying colors and I prefer him as the bell cow. I like Blount and was happy the Pats got him back because he can fill a role. He is more of a homerun hitter then Ridley, he is bigger then any other RB we have. He is a fantastic closer against a tired defense and I want him to get 10-15 carries a game. However at the start of games when yards are hardest to get I want Ridley toting the rock 20-25 times a game. Ridley's best season 1200 yards 12 TD's. Blounts 1000 yards 6 TD's as a rookie. Ridley when healthy is better then Blount and IMO its by a fair margin.

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Blount have something Ridley doesn't have and thats called Break-away speed! Also BB doesn't have to worry about Blount putting it on the ground. I think the Ridley N.E. Patriots ship has sailed. Hard to believe that both Ridley and Vereen might not be on a Team coming off a Super Bowl.

The highest number of carries by RBs the Pats have averaged at any time over the last 4 seasons was 30 carries per game in 2011. I don't think it's realistic to think that Belichick is suddenly going to increase that to the range of 30 - 40 carries per game.

It's a passing league. It's a passing offense.

Likewise, I don't see anything in Belichick's recent history that suggests he's a big fan of the "bell cow running back" approach. Everything, from roster building, to game day, suggests he favors splitting the load among multiple cost-effective backs. He's hardly on an island. The whole league has moved to this approach, mostly because the short shelf lives of running backs made big dollar bell cow contracts killer from a cap standpoint. It's not that teams are spending less on running backs, it's that they are paying three or four backs for the carries that used to go to one big ticket guy (until he came up lame and left the team holding the dead money bag).

PatsFan2 said:

Blount have something Ridley doesn't have and thats called Break-away speed! Also BB doesn't have to worry about Blount putting it on the ground. I think the Ridley N.E. Patriots ship has sailed. Hard to believe that both Ridley and Vereen might not be on a Team coming off a Super Bowl.

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Yes I mentioned he is more of a homerun hitter, with better top end speed. That size and speed when he turns into a runaway frieght train comes with a price though. He takes time to get up there and dances a bit too much for my taste for anything other then the 4th quarter against a tired defense that is a second slow and arm tackling. Actually over their careers Blount fumbles as much as Ridley does. I feel the fumbling issue was overblown as Ridley lost all of his at awful times so it got magnified. AP in his prime still fumbles he just makes up for it. Ridley has shown he has the potential to be a top 10 runner in this league. Lower on the RB list as pass blocking/catching is part of the job but that kind of talent is not as easy to replace as I think alot of people here feel.

Give me some Ridley. Blount is OK and can stay but he's nothing great. Jonas Gray = Mike Cloud.

PatsFan2 said:

On Ridley no Room left in the Inn...we have Blount and Jonas Gray who can do what he does he gets a one year prove it somewhere else.

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On the basis on one great game and being benched for the rest of the season, folks think that Gray should be guaranteed a roster spot, and be part of the Blount-Gray tandem in our RBBC. He would be paired with a player who we discarded the year before because he was unneeded because we had a much better Rb named Ridley. If Ridley weren't injured, it is not even clear that Blount would be on the team.
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Ridley is young and able. He is unlikely to be 100% this year. My lonely view is that we should being him back with incentives this year on a 3 year contract with a large bonus payment due before the 2016 season starts, much like Wilfork.
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The majority view seems to be that we are fine with Blount and Gray. Others think that since there are lots of draftees who will be starters, that we can reliably draft one in the late rounds.
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In my world, running backs being injured is not a reason to discard them. My nightmare is Blount being injured during the season. Counting on Gray and Gaffney is just not a good idea as our backups and as apart of a tandem with Blount is just not a good idea.

moosekill said:

Thank GOD you are not running the team then. A running back coming back from major knee surgery, with past fumbling issues and an inability to break big runs, who has averaged 4.3 yards per carry over his career with the Pats, while Blount has averaged 4.7 and 5.0 over his time here.

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he will have 2 games a year of 10 att and 120 yards in a blowout win vs a bad defense that make his averages look better but the guy really has done noting vs anyone but the colts the pats need a RB if that's a rookie a vet or Ridley someone has to at lest split touches with Blount

Blount getting injured...

Now THAT'S funny