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By Bill Barnwell

FBO: Week 5 Quick Reads

http://insider.espn.go.com/nfl/insi...espn.go.com/nfl/insider/news/story?id=4553001

 

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[h2]FBO: Week 5 Quick Reads[/h2] [h3]He doesn't get mentioned with the best WRs, but Roddy White is in that class[/h3]

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By Bill Barnwell
Football Outsiders
Archive

Quarterbacking is the ultimate pass/fail class. Sure, you might get a good grade for completing 85 percent of your passes, but most fans judge quarterbacks by their wins and losses.

And that's not fair. Sometimes, a quarterback has everything to do with a team winning a game. Sometimes, he makes only a limited contribution. But because he plays the most important position on the field, he gets as much credit for the win in the record books as someone who throws six touchdowns. You'll never hear someone talk about Ray Lewis' win-loss record, even though he's contributed more to Ravens wins than any QB has. Popular analysis just doesn't work that way.

At the extremes, though, everyone can understand that a quarterback doesn't deserve a whole lot of credit. We submit for your consideration, then, one Derek Anderson of the Cleveland Browns.

In Sunday's 6-3 win over the Bills, Anderson took apart an injury-riddled Bills defense -- twice. His 18 drop backs yielded two completions, 14 incompletions, an interception and a sack. He picked up 23 passing yards in the process.

How could the Browns win with such poor play from their quarterback? Well, obviously, they held the other team to a single field goal. They got great special teams play, especially from punter Dave Zastudil; his final punt, a mi****, was muffed by Bills returner Roscoe Parrish and recovered by the Browns, who then enjoyed a game-winning field goal from venture capitalist and part-time kicker Billy Cundiff before the ex-Cowboys kicker booted the ensuing kickoff out of bounds. It wasn't a pretty victory.

[h4]Quick Reads Explained[/h4]
For a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean and how they are computed, click here.

Was it the worst performance a quarterback has put up in a recent victory, though? That's another question altogether. Because he turned the ball over only once, Anderson's dismal performance didn't even rank as the worst overall performance of the week; that belonged to a more familiar target, whom we'll get to later. But Anderson finished 26th in our Quick Reads on the day, with minus-94 passing DYAR, and no other winning quarterback fell lower than 16th and 9 DYAR (Jake Delhomme). Anderson's QB rating -- which is a flawed statistic -- was 15.1.

The king of winning ugly, though? Donovan McNabb. In a 2007 game against the Dolphins, McNabb made it through two quarters before spraining his ankle and missing the remainder of the game, which later was won by A.J. Feeley, who fortunately was up against the eventual 1-15 Dolphins in the debut game of then-rookie John Beck. McNabb's totals: 3-of-11 for 34 yards and two interceptions. His quarterback rating: a microscopic 0.4.

Of course, there's no skill in winning these games; quarterbacks who put up a rating of less than 20 with 10 passes or more have a record of 10-68. The only thing they led their teams to was the brink of disaster. Fortunately for Anderson, the rest of his team was up for a challenge, and the opposing team didn't offer much more.

On to skill-position analysis:
For the detailed skill-position breakdown by FBO -- with comments -- you must be an ESPN Insider.

Quarterbacks
Rk	Player	Team	CP/AT	Yds	TD	INT	Total DYAR	Pass DYAR	Rush DYAR
1.	Matt Ryan	ATL	22/32	333	2	1	166	156	10
The news is flying beneath the radar, but Ryan is having an even better season than his first. He's second in the league in DVOA -- behind only Peyton Manning -- and tied for fourth with Eli Manning in the DYAR charts. He was helped by some poor tackling in the 49ers' secondary Sunday, but he turned more than 50 percent (5-of-9) of his third-down attempts into first downs or touchdowns.
2.	Eli Manning	NYG	8/10	173	2	0	157	157	0
Watching Manning drop back and read the Raiders' defense Sunday was pretty comical. Find Nnamdi Asomugha. Look other way. Find wide-open receiver. Wonder when Archie will start using complete sentences in his texts. Give self foot massage. Deliver pass. Film commercial.
3.	Kyle Orton	DEN	35/48	330	2	1	156	156	0
Denver's style of offense is a perfect match for what remains of New England's once-feared defense. Because the Patriots are weak at corner, they like to play those corners well off the line of scrimmage, giving the Broncos' receivers a free release. Denver, meanwhile, loves throwing quick hitches and timing patterns to those receivers. The result was an excellent day for Orton.
4.	Kurt Warner	ARI	26/38	302	2	0	149	156	-7
Warner's Sunday was a tale of two halves. First half: 20-of-23 with one defensive pass interference penalty, 262 passing yards, two touchdowns, 13 first downs. Second half: 6-of-15, 40 yards, one sack, one first down. You can't say many nice things about the Houston defense so far this season, but that's quite the halftime adjustment.
5.	Tony Romo	DAL	20/34	351	2	0	140	142	-1
The trials and tribulations of the league's most-scrutinized quarterback continue. We'll provide talking points for both sides. Romo's detractors can note that he needed overtime to beat the Chiefs, that his fumble set up the Chiefs' first touchdown, and that his gaudy numbers came thanks to the Chiefs' poor tackling and a lot of running after catches by Miles Austin. His supporters can point out that Romo had the game won before the defense allowed a late drive, that Patrick Crayton fumbled twice and that Romo averaged more than 10 yards per attempt without his best receiver in the lineup. All this arguing will produce enough hot air to expand Cowboys Stadium by several feet, allowing Jerry Jones to quietly raise his mammoth television and placate the league.
6.	Matt Schaub	HOU	35/50	371	2	1	130	121	10
All anyone will remember about Schaub's game are the interception that was returned by Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie for a touchdown, and the pass Schaub rushed and overthrew to a wide-open Joel Dreessen in the end zone during the team's final series. Truthfully, the interception was the worse throw.
7.	Matt Hasselbeck	SEA	18/30	241	4	0	126	120	6
Hasselbeck got better as the day went along (or the Jaguars' defense got worse). He was 7-of-7 on first down, but his final three throws on first downs went for touchdowns of 34, 44 and 13 yards. And although he converted only one of his first six third downs, his next four all ended in either a first down or a touchdown.
8.	Donovan McNabb	PHI	16/21	264	3	0	123	110	13
An overmatched defense gave a still-recuperating McNabb little difficulty. That completion percentage was impressively high for a player who tends to bounce a few in the dirt or sail a few each game, even when he's been playing well and in a steady rhythm. McNabb continues his rehab against the Raiders next week.
9.	Peyton Manning	IND	36/44	309	3	1	113	113	0
This seems a little low for Manning, who absolutely dominated a Titans pass defense that continued to look awful. His one interception came when he was hit in the motion of throwing. While he looked great all game, he was in another world during the second quarter: 14-of-14, 148 yards and a touchdown.
10.	Tom Brady	NE	19/33	215	2	0	103	103	0
Brady has a reputation as an unflappable, clutch quarterback because of his two famous Super Bowl drives, but he has fallen short on a fair number of late drives, too. This game featured another one -- but it might not have had much to do with Brady. Left tackle Matt Light left the game in the fourth quarter with what looked like a serious knee injury, and he was replaced by rookie Sebastian Vollmer. Brady threw only five more passes the rest of the way; on the final drive, the Pats used Sammy Morris on the ground more often than usual. Of course, Brady was sacked and stripped of the ball on what ended up being the team's final offensive snap.
11.	Ben Roethlisberger	PIT	23/30	277	3	1	93	93	0
It looked like Big Ben would make it through a rare sackless game until the fourth quarter, at which point he was sacked on three of his final seven dropbacks. Of course, if you give Roethlisberger time, he'll tear you apart; those 30 passes yielded 11 first downs.
12.	Brett Favre	MIN	18/24	232	1	1	63	63	0
A strange split for Favre this week saw him go 7-for-8 for 123 yards on second down, including a 2-yard loss on a pass to himself. Although Bernard Berrian is the league's avowed leader at drawing pass interference penalties downfield, it was instead Sidney Rice who picked up 34 yards on a DPI call this week.
13.	Carson Palmer	CIN	18/31	271	1	1	54	47	8
It was only a decent day for Palmer, but you can't argue with how the guy has played late in games this season. For the second week in a row, he converted a crucial fourth down by scrambling for a first down. And while he was the lucky recipient of a Ravens penalty on the play before his touchdown pass, Palmer is making the most of his opportunities. He'll take that over gaudy numbers.
14.	Matt Cassel	KC	23/41	253	2	0	53	48	5
We had a typo in our piece about Cassel last week, as he has only two interceptions on the season (our apologies). He's a strange mix of skills so far, and the closest player we can compare him to at this point is sort of a poor man's Ben Roethlisberger -- he's taking a lot of sacks, but unlike the early edition Cassel, he's not turning the ball over. That's useful.
15.	David Carr	NYG	9/13	90	0	0	35	19	16
Carr went unsacked in 14 dropbacks, with only an aborted snap against his record. It is more difficult to not sack Carr in 13 tries than it is to sack any other quarterback in the league. We almost feel like the Raiders deserve some sort of bizarre credit for this.
16.	Jake Delhomme	CAR	16/24	181	1	1	9	3	6
With little doing on the ground -- the Panthers were held to 2.7 yards per carry -- it was on Delhomme to make things happen offensively, and he did just enough to win. It's been four weeks since the Philadelphia game now, and it's pretty clear that there's no lasting effect. He's going to be the same quarterback he always was moving forward.
17.	Jason Campbell	WAS	17/23	149	1	0	3	10	-8
His stat line for the day was reasonable, considering the porous offensive line that plays in front of him. Looking back at the offseason debate, would the ******** really have benefited from replacing Campbell with Jay Cutler or Mark Sanchez? You can make the "energy" argument about bringing in a new QB, but the Skins spent a ton of money bringing "energy" to the organization by signing Albert Haynesworth. The problem here isn't Campbell; it's the talent and depth in front of him.
18.	Kerry Collins	TEN	19/32	164	0	1	0	0	0
The final numbers are ugly, but they were driven by streaks of wild inconsistency. In one stretch, Collins completed three consecutive passes, threw three incomplete passes and then a pick, completed five more in a row, and then alternated streaks of three completions and incompletions. Keep in mind that the Colts were missing Bob Sanders and both their starting corners, Marlin Jackson and Kelvin Hayden. The Titans are 0-5. What does Collins need to do to give Vince Young his job back?
19.	Joe Flacco	BAL	22/31	186	1	2	-1	-6	5
20.	Kyle Boller	STL	20/31	209	0	1	-4	-6	2
This is what your average backup quarterback looks like. Boller has a stronger arm than most backups, but he can be careless with the ball and is inaccurate. The bigger problem for the Rams is that Boller is probably better than the man he's backing up, Marc Bulger. One bright spot is the play of slot receiver Danny Amendola, who caught all five passes thrown to him and picked up three first downs.
21.	Trent Edwards	BUF	16/31	156	0	1	-23	-25	2
You know it's been a weird day when you put up a quarterback rating of 52.1 and it's more than triple the score of your opponent -- and you lose. The difference between Edwards' day and Derek Anderson's wasn't as dramatic in DYAR because of volume; Edwards threw nearly twice as many passes as Anderson, and while he completed far more, he didn't do much more to move his team toward first downs. He also took one more sack than Anderson did and threw the same number of picks.
22.	Daunte Culpepper	DET	24/37	282	1	1	-47	-66	20
23.	David Garrard	JAC	18/31	188	0	0	-51	-48	-4
Most of Garrard's positive numbers came during a streak of seven consecutive completions at the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth; unfortunately, the Jaguars were already down by 34 points. The streak ended when a Garrard fumble was returned for a touchdown.
24.	Josh Johnson	TB	26/50	240	2	3	-58	-72	15
Baptism by fire for Johnson, who clearly is not ready to diagnose the complicated blitz packages employed by the Eagles. As a result, Johnson often was left with an unblocked rusher careening toward him at high speeds. He also was victimized by several drops by the "hot" receivers designated as outlets on those blitzes, which depressed his numbers some. All in all, he could have done a lot worse.
25.	Shaun Hill	SF	15/38	198	0	1	-88	-106	19
An ugly day on second down for our game manager. Hill didn't pick up a single first down on any of his 13 tries there and completed only three passes for 21 yards.
26.	Derek Anderson	CLE	2/17	23	0	1	-92	-94	2
You can do only so much damage in 17 pass attempts when you turn the ball over only once, but what's there to say? He was terrible on first down (1-of-5 for 7 yards). He was worse on second down (an incompletion and an interception). On third down, he was 1-of-10 with a sack, but the sack was for a loss of only 1 yard. Anderson was terrible, but not as bad as ...
27.	JaMarcus Russell	OAK	8/13	100	0	0	-99	-99	0
Yep, no surprise. Did the Raiders stop having Russell throw the ball once he got to that 8-of-13 level just so he could leave with a positive completion percentage on the day? Then again, the problem might have been Russell's inability to stay upright. In the second half, the Raiders called eight pass plays and nine run plays; Russell threw only five passes, though, since he was sacked three times. He was unlucky to lose all three of his fumbles, but the bigger concern is that he fumbled three times in the first place.

Five most valuable running backs
Rk	Player	Team	Rush Yds	Rush TD	Rec Yds	Rec TD	Total DYAR	Rush DYAR	Rec DYAR
1.	Ahmad Bradshaw	NYG	110	2	55	0	54	28	26
The runaway man. The Raiders struggled with a similar back, Steve Slaton, in Week 4, so it was little surprise that they had no answer for the undersized-yet-powerful Bradshaw. The Raiders have awful fundamentals defensively, failing to wrap up on tackles and alternately overpursuing to the ball or loafing when it's not coming in their direction. If anyone on the offense gets to the second level, it's very easy to either get a helmet on them for a quick block or simply let the Raiders beat themselves with poor angles to the ball carrier, blown assignments or those missed tackles. Not to take anything away from Bradshaw, who deserves some praise, but he got a lot of help.
2.	Cedric Benson	CIN	120	1	16	0	40	37	3
And the Ravens' 100-yard streak hath been slayed. Sure, the only reason the Giants didn't break it last season was because they split carries among their backs (they had 207 team yards in that game), but there was little reason to believe that Benson would be the player to make the Ravens' defense seem human. Both Benson and his new offensive line deserve credit; his success wasn't the result of one fluke run, but rather consistent gains throughout the game. On 14 first-down carries, Benson picked up 5 yards or more five times, averaging 5.2 yards a pop. He converted his only third-down carry as well.
3.	Tashard Choice	DAL	92	1	0	0	39	42	-4
Felix Jones has all the speed and the nagging injuries. Marion Barber has the money and the crazy running style. What does Choice have? Well, just what everyone in Dallas wants right about now: the ability to consistently push the ball forward and make plays without getting hurt. All of his carries came on first down except for one, a 12-yard gain on second-and-13. He had only one carry of less than 4 yards. Granted, he had only eight attempts, but he did a lot with them.
4.	Ray Rice	BAL	69	0	74	1	35	9	26
We were concerned about Rice's speed -- or lack thereof -- coming out of Rutgers, but his agility and ability as a multifaceted player are making him a very viable option at the pro level. His combination of vision, agility, strength and acceleration led to one of the prettiest plays of the season, a 48-yard touchdown catch that required Rice to pick up all 48 of the yards after he caught the ball.
5.	R. Mendenhall	PIT	77	1	16	0	31	19	12
Just because the Steelers won two Super Bowls with Willie Parker doesn't mean Parker is the best running back on the Pittsburgh roster. Mendenhall has benefited from back-to-back weak rush defenses, but there's no reason he should be placed on the bench when Parker comes back. A timeshare will work best, but it should be weighted in Mendenhall's direction.

Least valuable running back
Rk	Player	Team	Rush Yds	Rush TD	Rec Yds	Rec TD	Total DYAR	Rush DYAR	Rec DYAR
1.	Larry Johnson	KC	37	0	9	0	-33	-37	4
One first down on 21 carries. An average of a whopping 1.4 yards on his 14 first down attempts. We'll be beating this drum for 10 more years before it gets in everyone's head, but the impact of an offensive line on a running back is far more than teams realize. Look at Johnson's performance after replacing Priest Holmes (who also benefited from that offensive line) -- and then look at the numbers he puts up now. We don't track this, but if you recorded the number of defenders who were in the backfield by the time Johnson was handed the ball in games this season, it probably would be three or four times as many as there were during Johnson's glory days.

Five most valuable wide receivers and tight ends
Rk	Player	Team	Rec	Att	Yds	Avg	TD	Total DYAR
1.	Roddy White	ATL	8	10	210	26.2	2	96
White started off with an incomplete pass, but then he went to work. His next seven targets were all complete, for a total of 200 yards, five first downs and two scores. While 80 yards of his 90-yard touchdown came after the catch, everything else was downfield, as he had only 4 yards after the catch on the other six targets in that stretch. He doesn't get the hype that Larry Fitzgerald or even Andre Johnson does, but he's absolutely of their caliber. Sure, he gets to play with Matt Ryan -- but Matt Ryan gets to play with Roddy White.
2.	Miles Austin	DAL	10	15	250	25.0	2	86
We highlighted Austin as a potential star by naming him Football Outsiders' top professional prospect in our yearly Top 25 Prospects list (which includes players on their rookie contracts selected after the second round). A small-school prospect out of Monmouth, Austin has the ideal size and speed for a receiver, and has worked hard on his routes and his hands. He has momentary lapses of concentration, but as you can see from those numbers, he's capable of special things if given the opportunity. The difference between Austin and Roy Williams certainly isn't worth the difference in their paychecks.
3.	Jeremy Maclin	PHI	6	8	142	23.7	2	64
Maclin took over for an injured Kevin Curtis and showed Philly fans what they can look forward to for the next three years or so, as Maclin worked across from DeSean Jackson and made a mockery of Tampa's attempt to move away from the Cover 2 scheme that bears its name leaguewide. With a lone deep safety on most plays, Maclin abused whichever corner he was up against and made big plays downfield. It's scary to think what the Eagles will be able to do downfield by this time next year.
4.	Kellen Winslow	TB	9	12	102	11.3	2	63
If there's one potential weakness for the Eagles, though, it's defending against tight ends. After the injury to Stewart Bradley in the preseason, the team turned to the benched Omar Gaither in the middle before benching him again and giving a fair share of his playing time to Jeremiah Trotter. Neither Gaither nor Trotter can handle speedy tight ends like Winslow, though, and he took advantage of his opportunities Sunday.
5.	Larry Fitzgerald	ARI	5	6	79	15.8	2	57
Fitzgerald's normal role in the red zone is more to occupy defenders than actually make plays himself -- Anquan Boldin's red-zone DVOA far surpasses Fitzgerald's over the past few seasons -- but he picked up a touchdown from the 9-yard line Sunday and added another one from the 26. Teams will look to see what Houston did to neutralize him in the second half; as Warner's numbers dropped, so did Fitzgerald's. The star had only a lone incomplete pass thrown in his direction.

Least valuable wide receiver or tight end
Rk	Player	Team	Rec	Att	Yds	Avg	TD	Total DYAR
1.	Michael Clayton	TB	3	12	25	8.3	0	-49
It would be one thing if Clayton had been the target of a lot of deep incomplete passes, but he was the subject of five incomplete passes Sunday that traveled no more than 6 yards from the line of scrimmage. That's the Wes Welker zone, and you've gotta catch about 70 percent of those passes to keep up.