Horse Tracks 6/8/09

I know it, boydy! The kid is something special and I can’t wait to see him at work in the new scheme! I really really wanted a Hillis jersey, but they don’t have orange ones yet (maybe after this year).

I don’t know if anyone is actually concerned about advertising on practice jerseys… I think the main concern is the Domino Theory: That eventually the ads will be on game jerseys and helmets. That’s like saying that having advertising on the scoreboard would lead to end zones painted with corporate logos instead of the home team’s colors.

There is the sacred space of the field and the players during the game… and then there is everything else.

To quote Jules from Pulp fiction: “…Ain’t the same f***in’ ballpark, it ain’t the same league, it ain’t even the same f***in’ sport. Look, [advertising on jerseys] don’t mean sh*t.”

I vow to not buy or use the products of anyone that slaps there logo on my football team.

Sadly though this is going to happen someday.

“Now that’s not to say they didn’t land some good football players who will contribute immediately as well as in the future but considering their extensive list of needs and ample compilation of draft picks they should have done much better.”

His biggest complaint seems to be with drafting Moreno, which strikes me as a poor understanding of draft strategy — strange, given his status. I won’t try to reiterate all of my previous comments on this particular subject but there’s a statistical fallacy evident in Wright’s thinking. Partly, he didn’t like Moreno as much as most draftniks, but he also uses an invalid form of logic.

To summarize what I’ve written on this — it makes prescriptive what’s elective. Wright says we should have taken another RB because there’s an extended value range at RB. And it’s true that there’s an extended value range, but this shouldn’t preclude us taking highly rated RB fairly early. The real question is how high? The twelfth pick isn’t that high, so taking a RB at that point shouldn’t be controversial. Normally we’re talking about the risk giving a lot of guaranteed money to a player who’s a non-impact player or playing at a non-impact position, which are valid arguments. The problem with this ‘impact’ criterion is that ignores risk even while appearing to address it. Wright would have us take Orakpo despite the poorness of the fit and boom/bust indications, both of which make him a far riskier pick.

The Fallacy of the Three Foot River + Any RB will Succeed in the Bronco System

Wright subscribes to the ‘RBs are a dime a dozen’ belief, which I’ve advocated in a modified form, but there are important differences in our beliefs. Wright says wait and pick a RB later, which I regard as stereotypical thinking. It’s like saying that since in the ideal draft there’s a RB taken in the 2nd round, because that’s where the greatest cost-effective return lies, so that’s when you must pick one. What’s true on average isn’t necessarily true in the particular, so even though what Wright advocates may be absolutely true in the general sense it can mean almost nothing when it comes to deciding an individual pick. Wright misses the logic when he says — in essence — that any RB will pretty much do in our system, a now well-known Bronco myth. The idea is that you can do OK with a lesser talent at RB, which is a form of marginal analysis. But by the same logic a better RB should do even better given our strength in the run game, so why not do even better?

The idea is that added talent only makes you ‘so’ much better for every added amount of talent. My problem with this analysis is that it’s all about becoming minimally competent rather than good. We know we can operate with scrubs but we’ll never become excellent that way.

 What’s wrong with turning our running game into a great strength? Especially now that Cutler is gone, and particularly because we need a ball control offense to take some weight off our defense, shouldn’t we want to be excellent rather than just OK?

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I’d like to discuss this article more, perhaps you could start a topic on it, McGeorge. What do you think?

to go around all of the rest of the writing as that is from Clayton’s column.