How good is Randy Moss?

I've always been a big fan of Randy Moss - going all the way back to watching the highlights of him sprinting through D1-AA defenses with those green and white striped Marshall socks. Then I started thinking about all of the facts about Randy Moss and how good he has been throughout his career - except for that brief stint in Oakland.
(Sidebar - doesn't it almost seem like the stint in Oakland should be able to be edited out of his resume? I mean, if you can find a way to put Animal House on TBS, there has to be a way to not allow that period onto his profile. It's almost like he was blackout drunk at a frat party......he just wasn't himself.)

Here are some facts to chew on:

• Moss has 124 TDs in 10 years. That's more than halfway to Jerry Rice's record of 197. Moss probably won't play 20 years (and to be fair, Rice had 131 after 10 years. But....we're talking about Jerry Rice here)
• Moss has 12,193 yards. Hall of Famer Michael Irvin had 11,904 in his 12 year career. Oh...and Irvin had 65 TDs......just over half of Moss's total.
• Most WRs blossom in their 3rd year and look completely lost as rookies. In his rookie season, Moss had 1,300 yards and 17 TDs. Rice had 900 yards and 3 TDs. Irvin 650/5; Harrison 800/8; Chad Johnson 300/1.
  
• The only rookie who came close in recent years was, believe it or not, Terry Glenn with 1100 yards and 6 TDs.
• In 1999, after getting absolutely torched by Moss in 1998 (his rookie year) the Green Bay Packers selected defensive backs in the 1st 3 rounds and another in the 7th. Think about that, they went into the 1999 draft with the specific intention of finding a way to stop Randy Moss - who was a rookie the year before!!!!!

Probably the most impressive piece of his resume is how much better he made each of his quarterbacks. In hindsight, Brady's incredible season seemed almost inevitable when you combined one of the best QBs of all time with Moss' obscene talents. Here's a comparison of each of Moss' QBs throughout his career and their average stats with him and without him.
(Sidebar - I omitted the Raider years. It's my blog and, if The Sopranos can be on A & E, than I can edit the stats for my blog.)


Let's go in chronological order starting with Randall Cunningham.
(Sidebar - by the way, can anyone have lucked into a better situation than Randall did in 1998. He was out of the league in 1996 and the MIN backup in 1997. Then in 1998 Brad Johnson gets hurt and Randall comes in and, 10 times per game, he closes his eyes and throws the ball about a mile in the air - to nobody in particular - and Moss would casually sprint to where the ball was going, jump higher than anyone else, and Cunningham gets an All Pro year out of it. At the age of 35 and 6 years removed from his prime. I hope he bought Moss a nice Xmas gift that year.)

Randall Cunningham (1 season)
Average year:
w/out Moss
3,200 yards - 22 TDs
w/Moss
3,700 yards - 34 TDs (13th best single season total)

Jeff George (1 season)
Average year:
w/out Moss
220 yards per game - 17 TDs
w/Moss
282 yards per game - 23 TDs (and he only started 10 games - over 16 games this would project to 37 which would have been the 9th best ever)


Daunte Culpepper (4 full seasons)
Average year:
TOTAL w/out Moss
3,800 yards - 20 INTs, 13 TDs (again, that's his TOTALS for the 3 years since he played with Moss)
w/Moss
3,700 yards per season - 26 TDs (including 39 in 2004 - 6th best of all-time, 33 in 200 - 15th best)

And, of course,
Tom Brady (1 season)
Average year:
Average w/out Moss
3,600 yards - 25 TDs (obviously, Brady was already one of the best QBs ever before Moss came along. But, his career high in TDs was 28 - which he did in 2004 and 2002. That's the 55th best total of all time)
w/Moss
4,900 yards - 50 TDs (The 50 TDs is, obviously, a new record. The 4,896 passing yards is second only to Dan Marino's 5,084 in 1984. Brady's previous high was 4,110 - goo for 47th)


Again, Brady was an outstanding player before Moss and you can't attribute all of the jump in his numbers to Moss......but he sure helped.

Of the 4 qbs, only Jeff George did not break his career high in TD passes when he played with Moss. And that's because he only started 10 games - projected out over 16 games he would have crushed his career high.

Cunningham broke his career high by 4. Brady by 22 (22!!!). Culpepper had 26 more tds in 2004 than he has since he left Moss.

This may all be a coincidence - or maybe Moss is just so freaking good that everyone around him benefits (unless you're wearing black and gold)

Why are people picking the Giants?

OK....so I'm not saying the Giants can't win, because they certainly can. There have certainly been bigger upsets. Villanova over Georgetown. US over USSR. App State over Michigan. Boise State over Oklahoma. Zora Andrich coming from out of nowhere in Joe Millionaire. Heck, these (sort of) same Pats pulled a pretty big upset against the Rams in 2001.

There are many, many, many more examples of teams that have had much worse match-ups than the Giants and still pulled the game out. In fact, I would say they have an ok chance of winning.
(Side note, to New England fans these days, that last sentence is the equivalent of my saying that the Pats suck; Brady sucks; the defense sucks; Harrison took HGH.....uhhh...scratch that; and Brady is ugly and dresses bad and has bad grammar....but I digress.)

The thing that gets me is that there's really no logical reason to pick the Giants to win. From a purely empirical/statistical standpoint, I don't think that anyone would argue with the statement that if the Pats and Giants played 10 times, the Pats would (conservatively) win 7. That being the case, then, you can't logically pick the Giants.....it's a mathematical thing. If someone gave you a jar with 70 red marbles and 30 white marbles and told you that they would give you $1000 if you predict the color marble they will randomly pull out.....you'd be kind of silly to say white. Well, the same applies here. You may choose white and be right, but it doesn't mean you were smart to do so. If a roulette wheel had twice as many black spaces as white with the same pay-out, you would lose your shirt pretty quickly betting on white.
(Sidebar - this is kind of in-line with the theory that you should fly on an airline that just had a plane crash because the recent crash affects the odds of an imminent crash.....uh uh. The odds are reset. Sorry. You may still die. But, on the other side of the token, if your fear is flying, the odds of dying on a 10 mile drive to the airport are several times higher than dying on the flight. That's why I always hire one of those bicycle rickshaws to take me to the airport.....much safer)




There are a couple of reasons that someone would pick the Giants:

1) They are a writer who was told by their employer....say, CNNSI.....that they needed to "handicap" the game. Being a writer (let's call him Dr. Y) who wants to write something interesting, while still incorporating some wisdom, he finds 10 or 12 reasons why the Giants MAY win the game (the aforementioned 30% chance) and writes about it. The 10 or 12 reasons may be valid, but, they may also ignore other factors. Dr. Z, I mean Y, doesn't really care if he's right (and he doesn't hate New England - as I'm sure many NE fans have already put pen to paper to accuse him of), he just wants to write an interesting, informational article that doesn't stick to the status quo. I love Dr. Z and he may be serious, but I think he picked the Giants because you don't become a successful sports writer by always picking the favorites.

2) You actually enjoy telling a large group of people that the underdog is going to win. You do it all the time.......7 out of 10 times you're wrong. But, what can people say. You picked the underdog and they're supposed to lose. You just go about your business until you can get into the next sports discussion and inform people of why the underdog will win. Statistical probability (on which this blog is based) says that, at some point, this person will be correct and they will SING TO THE HEAVENS. Not that I know anyone like that.

3) You have inside knowledge that Tom Brady has contracted malaria from Giselle - which she, of course, got while doing a Maxim cover shoot in Namibia entitled "Really Expensive Lingerie and How it Will Help Eradicate Abject Poverty?" And even then, I'm not so sure the Pats would lose. Unless Giselle has some other friends on the Pats......why did I just go there?

4) You really, really, really know football and you have some type of knowledge that a certain match-up or weakness can really affect the outcome of the game.
(Two sidebars about this one. 1. The comment I made above about Dr. Z may fall into this category since he is an unquestioned - or should be - authority of the game. 2. In New England, this is not viewed as an acceptable excuse because picking against or saying anything negative about the Pats shows that you don't know what you're talking about.)

Honestly, if Ron Jaworski gets on TV and show me the x's and o's and concludes that the Giants are going to win the game, I will honestly believe he is onto something. Because (gasp) he knows more about football than I or most of us - even if what he says does not appeal to you. He's not paid to handicap games - just break them down.





And hey, I've picked underdogs before - but usually b/c I actually believe the underdog is better than they're given credit for or I thought there was a match-up that did not favor the favorite.

A few examples:
When I was in 7th grade, I bet half of my class that Spinks would beat Tyson. I was 12 and I had watched Spinks beat Larry Holmes. I thought I had the inside track since everyone else was just picking the favorite. I was a paperboy at the time and I still remember running to the stack of Sunday papers in my garage and seeing the headline that Spinks went down in 91 seconds.
I never paid up.

The one time this year (besides the Colts) that I thought the Pats might lose was when they played the Bills. It had all the ingredients for the upset. Division rival. Second best team in the division. At Buffalo. But I forgot the one simple thing that really should drive any selection. Probability. If the Pats and Buffalo play 10 times in Buffalo, the Pats win at least 6-8. That means that if you're picking against the Pats your picking against math and logic and why would you do that? In my defense, I thought they MIGHT beat the Pats. I didn't sing it to the world or bet on it. By the way, the score was 56-10.....I think.

And, mind you, I'm not talking about games where there are odds involved. If you honestly believe the Giants win 3 out of 10 games and you're getting 7:1 odds, then, by all means. The benefit outweighs the risk.

So....that's my blog for the day. I am perfectly aware that
1. nobody is reading this,
2. any prediction/comment I made in the September blogs I posted were so far off that if anyone did read them they puked in their mouths. Mostly, I stuck with the facts and analysis. But I did say that: the Browns had a horrible QB situation and should pick up Leftwich; Del Rio was in over his head and should not have released Leftwich....I'll have to look back to see the other horrible observations I made.

And, before I sign off, what I'm saying here about why you can't reasonably pick the Giants is not based on opinion. It's simple probability and statistics. If you flip a coin, you have a 50:50 chance of picking correctly. I guess it's an opinion that the Pats would win at least 7 out of 10 against the Giants.....but, I don't know, I think it's a reasonable estimate.

One more thing. I don't begrudge anyone picking the Giants, I just think it doesn't follow logic - unless someone honestly believes the Giants are better. This is not meant to be an opinions......I'm just pointing out that it doesn't make mathematical sense. Also, articles talking about HOW the Giants could win make perfect sense to me.