The TDs are a cherry-picking stat. Yay, you were on the 1 and scored, good work. Really, good work, that's nice. So maybe he should only get the ball inside the 5.
I bet Pete Carrol cherry-picked that stat before deciding on that rub route in SB 49.
SITUATIONAL FOOTBALL, not fantasy football. So what happens when you break down whether we could move the chains on 3rd down? Have you looked up that stat? How have we done in those situations previously? I'm not saying you break the bank to move the chains, and like I said, I'm not even making the pro-Blount argument. I'm just saying you need to look at whether he's a thing we don't have anymore if he's gone.
I'll add that with all the styles the Pats play, he'll be used for what he can do against each team... that's a uniquely Patriots thing and throws off a stat based analysis. If he stays, he doesn't break the bank. That's just economics. The questions are
1) what can he do here vs. what have we asked of him?
2) what's he worth elsewhere?
He averaged 3.9ypc for the season, 3.4 in the 2nd half of the season, and 3.1 in the playoffs. The league average for ypc is 4.0. That's "average" and "below average". The TDs help your fantasy team, but don't do much to tell you how good a RB is. As we saw in the Super Bowl, James White did it just as well.
I bolded that line because you've got it backwards. The TDs go on the scoreboard. You get points for them. If your team gets the most points in football you win. If you're unable to punch the ball in? That sorta hurts your team. If you're unable to rely on a runningback for a first down? That hurts your team.
I haven't even GOT the stat on whether he can get the 1, 2, 3 tough yards on 3rd down. Go look them up. You're characterizing Blount's 19 TDs as a non-factor. I'd say to the extent they're "vulture" back TDs from the 1, that would predict good performance at 3rd and short.
I know there have been many times when I was
really unhappy about having the best QB in football, and being in a position where we're forced to take a sack because everybody knows you're going to pass.
Last point, if you want numbers to crunch: Take our use of him and divide by quarter. Like anybody else his YPC will SUCK in the first quarter and be fantastic in the 4th. You saw half of that equation in the Atlanta game. I remember it was a long time, even well into the 2nd half, when we "abandoned the run."
Early in the game you make teams tired if you've got that big tough-to-tackle guy. Does BB value that? I dunno. It just is.
These are the sorts of things you think of when you answer the question "Why did the Titans ever hold onto a stiff like Eddie George?"
I don't think Blount had a good SB either, and obviously White did. But the question as to his particular player value does remain. Even a cheap and dirty stats-only analysis, given the questions above, is incomplete (I.e., value on 3rd and short, runs by quarter, etc.) You could pick 100 metrics before making the "statistics by themselves..." argument if you're trying to distill them to a model of Blount's value.
(And by the way... if Blount wants to break the bank, the offseason after the SB where you fumble & don't rumble isn't the time to do it... however, the offseason after 19 TDs might be).
But he doesn't pretend shoot rifles with the Minutemen, so.
Hey, I don't know what they talk about in the bowels of Foxborough. I'm lucky on days when I can
spell Foxborough. I will say that the Pats like to nail down those situational aspects, and that they'll see Blount as playing a role. If he sees himself as more than a role player, he'll likely get more elsewhere.
Another comparison: Antowain Smith. Total stiff. A "mudder" we called him. Well he looked like crap when Corey Dillon came here, then looked awful good when we were "transitioning" to Mr. 12-cuts-and-don't-go, Laurence Maroney. That little experiment, and some subsequent wandering in the 3rd-and-2 dessert, has made me value a move-the-chains-on-the-ground guy.
You can get a role-playing runningback cheap compared to a wideout or a cornerback. We CAN find that elsewhere (or the promise of it). And granted you have to keep buying that skillset, because buses are prone to breaking down.
So I'll leave it to the smart guys to figure out what value Blount represents, and I'll leave it to Blount to accept or reject what the smart guys say. But "ZOMG 3.9 YPC" isn't going to be the last word.
