Why do people think Bryant Johnson played poorly last year?

[schel]

Were we never ahead by more than 7 last year?

Wow, I quickly skimmed through the games last year and it looks like we never had a lead greater than 7. Someone might want to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure I got it right. That depresses me just thinking about it... it's very sad

 

[Ryanwb]

Wow, I quickly skimmed through the games last year and it looks like we never had a lead greater than 7. Someone might want to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure I got it right. That depresses me just thinking about it... it's very sad

hmmm...you know what, I think you are right...I didn't see a lead of more than 7 points...could have missed it though

 

[joeshmo]

Wow, I quickly skimmed through the games last year and it looks like we never had a lead greater than 7. Someone might want to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure I got it right. That depresses me just thinking about it... it's very sad

It is really scary isnt it.

 

[jstadvl]

He had

a good year and can only get better. He's a good receiver that probably didn't adsjust to the NFL at phenomenal speed.

 

[cardsunsfan]

Some of the top picks each year bust. I sure hope he doesn't. You can't get that number 1 pick back.

If he had great rookie year. The Cards would not be talking about drafting a WR.
If you had drafted Suggs or Pace had a great rookie year the money spent on Berry could have gone elsewhere.

The key to winning in the NFL is minimizing errors. Hopefully some of these guys will come around if not - rebuilding is going to take much much longer.

I don't know about that..I still don't think Johnson played unlike he was supposed...He was supposed to be developmental and I wouldn't be surprised if many experts thought that Boldin would have a better first year but they though Johnson would be better over all (which will obviously never happen ) He was ranked third in yards and if that is true he actually did better than one person picked ahead of him too right? I think that's really good.

Yeah he's supposed to have a better chance of doing better then the people drafted after him but would you think every receiver would do worse then him? I wouldn't think so. My odds would be one of the many receivers drafted after him would be better.

I think Fitz probably has the best chance to the best next year but if I were a betting man would I bet for it? No, I would be against it happening because there are a lot of good receivers out there...

 

[Harry]

I like Johnson's chances to be a solid receiver. Most speed receivers come out of college with little understanding of the Pro game. Slower receivers, like Boldin, had to use more guile and technique and are often better prepared to make the transition. As Johnson's route-running improves, you will see more separation. You are actually likely to see fewer drops and fumbles, as the routes become routine and he can concentrate fully on that aspect of his game.

He will also have to come to grips with the physicality of the Pro game. However, he seemed to be picking that up and through proper conditioning he will add strength.

The transition has so many aspects that it often takes three years to know what you have drafted. The critical thing to look for is year-to-year improvement on the points I have mentioned. He had a decent year and if he can go forward, he could well be a significant weapon in the near future.

 

[Crimson Warrior]

I like Johnson's chances to be a solid receiver. Most speed receivers come out of college with little understanding of the Pro game. Slower receivers, like Boldin, had to use more guile and technique and are often better prepared to make the transition. As Johnson's route-running improves, you will see more separation. You are actually likely to see fewer drops and fumbles, as the routes become routine and he can concentrate fully on that aspect of his game.

He will also have to come to grips with the physicality of the Pro game. However, he seemed to be picking that up and through proper conditioning he will add strength.

The transition has so many aspects that it often takes three years to know what you have drafted. The critical thing to look for is year-to-year improvement on the points I have mentioned. He had a decent year and if he can go forward, he could well be a significant weapon in the near future.

Excellent analysis Harry. I especially agree with the idea of steady progress. Thats all that you can reasonably expect from your draft choices.

One more thing about the Johnsons performance; I know its SO unfair to compare him to Quan, but, one thing that Johnson REALLY seemed to lack (and you stat guys can back me up or shred me on this one) was YAC. Quan was terrific at this, but I rarely remember Johnson running free down the field. Every time Johnson caught a ball, it seemed like he was tackled immediately.

If you want to be a big time WR, you need YAC. Johnson needs to improve on this significantly in 04' if he wants to remain a starter in the <voice of Chris Berman> National Football League.

 

[Pariah]

I hate it when people try to discount stats to help thier position. Why would you not give Johnson credit for scoring a 50 yard TD reception? He caught it, right? It's his stat.

It's like when people say about running backs--"well, if you take away his 5 longest runs..." What? Why the heck would you taint a player's statistics by taking stuff away from him that he earned?


End rant.

Now, back on topic: Brynt Johnson had okay stats for a rook, but he did drop some passes and seemed not able to get open at times last year. I expect more from him this year; reading Skkorp's notes on individual players in mini-camp, it seems like he expects more from himself, too. That's a good thing.

Johnson will be okay for us, I think.

 

[Russ Smith]

If he had great rookie year. The Cards would not be talking about drafting a WR.
If you had drafted Suggs or Pace had a great rookie year the money spent on Berry could have gone elsewhere.

The key to winning in the NFL is minimizing errors. Hopefully some of these guys will come around if not - rebuilding is going to take much much longer.

Well I disagree, in THIS draft no matter how well Johnson played we'd at least be considering WR's because there are so many good ones in the draft.

I do agree about the minimizing errors part, turnover margin is the single best predictor of wins and losses. Johnson had a real problem both with the drops, and some critical fumbles(Seattle as Skorp mentioned). Of course so did Quan, several fumbles, and several bobbles that became picks, but when you catch over 100 balls, you're going to put the ball on the ground some.

My whole concern with Johnson is the drops and lack of big plays, the YAC that someone else mentioned is a very good point. He's a great athlete, but he dropped way too many catchable balls last year so he's GOT to show that was lack of concentration and not just bad hands.

He is fast, he can jump and he is strong, but I'd agree with AJ he would definitely not be a first rounder THIS year because there's so many good WR's.

I would certainly have no objection to taking a MW or Fitz, not because I think BJ stinks, but because I think we need 3 good WR's to make this offense work and I'm not convinced we have them on the current roster.

 

[Russ Smith]

I hate it when people try to discount stats to help thier position. Why would you not give Johnson credit for scoring a 50 yard TD reception? He caught it, right? It's his stat.

It's like when people say about running backs--"well, if you take away his 5 longest runs..." What? Why the heck would you taint a player's statistics by taking stuff away from him that he earned?


End rant.

Now, back on topic: Brynt Johnson had okay stats for a rook, but he did drop some passes and seemed not able to get open at times last year. I expect more from him this year; reading Skkorp's notes on individual players in mini-camp, it seems like he expects more from himself, too. That's a good thing.

Johnson will be okay for us, I think.

TO some extent you do have to consider WHEN things happen though. For example Johnson's biggest games were Green Bay(6-86 very close game and a win), Pittsburgh (3-76 1td in a game we were way behind in) and Seattle (4-70 in a 18 point loss). THat's more than half his yards coming in 3 games. The Pittsburgh game Boldin was the only WR on the team to catch a ball the first 3 quarters, then they went soft zone and Blake aired it out, he had over 300 yards passing in that game but after the game everyone was saying how bad Blake had played in the first 3 quarters(I didn't see the game). 1/5 roughly of his yards came in that 4th quarter of that game.

Totally agree about RB's and long runs, most great RB's have long runs, so if you subtract those out it's highly unfair.

And yes it's fair to consider when Quan's numbers came too. THe thing with QUan is by quarter his catches are not all that dissimilar, most catches in 4th makes total sense for a team always behind. But he caught 22 balls in the first quarter last year, he was doing it the whole game.

2/3 of Johnson's stats came in the 2nd and 4th combined, caught only 11 balls all year in the first and third quarters. That says to me a guy who has to "adjust" the game before he can make an impact, and a guy catching balls at the end of games that are over. But as a rookie anything helps you improve and I certainly expect he WILL improve this year. I'm looking for 50-70 catches from him depending on playing time and who we draft.

 

[Duckjake]

What a pain in the a**. The #1 and #3 rookies last season on the same team. Doesn't that suck.

What did suck was that the Cards had rookie WR's as their #1 and #2 receivers. That seldom if ever happens in the NFL so their stats really can't be compared to what most other rookie wideouts have accomplished.

You really have to look at how not how many and Q passed the "eyeball" test with flying colors. BJ still has some work to do, especially if Fitz or a Williams is residing in PHX in May, but he is far from being a Thomas Jones or Tommy Knight.

 

[JeffGollin]

It's not so much Johnson as the context in which he was selected. The Cards had lost Boston and were about to lose Sanders and Jenkins. They badly needed a dominant receiver to make up for the loss of D-Bo. So much so that they traded out of the opportunity to draft Suggs (or Trufant) in order to pick up Johnson (and Pace).

The assumption in drafting Johnson had to be - "Fill the huge void left by the departure of Boston."

He couldn't come in and do that.

Granted - he was a rookie and didn't play all that badly for one. But our expectations were higher.

Contrast last year with this year - where a WR drafted at #18 is likely to be a 6-3 beast with great hands and acceptable speed.

So it's not so much that we're down on Johnson. It's that - after the fact - we're down on the decision to draft him under the circumstances we drafted him

Incidently, the color thingy is broken on the site.

 

[Bobcat]

I think Bryant Johnson showed a lot last year and his numbers were very respectable for a first round receiver. He's right on track to being a good one. Receivers don't normally have seasons like the Q their first year. If what we hear about Johnson's improvement transfers over to the playing field....watch out!

I agree!!! We were just blinded by Q play as a rookie. If Q is going to be our "chris carter, and Johnson will be our jake reed, then larry fitz or mike williams will be our randy moss." With jones at te; ww will have a very dangerous receiving core the year and for years to come!!!

Allan

 

[jstadvl]

With

boldin,Johnson and Poole, why wouldn't you take who you believe will have an immediate impact? Just makes sense. How good Johnson was or wasn't is irrelevant, in anyone's opinion, his numbers speak well for him Fitz on top of those guys will give dfenses fits. And, nobody,Imean nobody on this board,has any idea what the brain trust is thinking or why.

 

[spanky1]

boldin,Johnson and Poole, why wouldn't you take who you believe will have an immediate impact? Just makes sense. How good Johnson was or wasn't is irrelevant, in anyone's opinion, his numbers speak well for him Fitz on top of those guys will give dfenses fits. And, nobody,Imean nobody on this board,has any idea what the brain trust is thinking or why.

I would disagree with this comment.........I think there have been quite a number of statements that have telegraphed Green's intentions come draft time.

 

[Shane]

Like I said before, he got a lot of those yards in junk time or when the other team was far ahead and their defense let up a bit. I watched every second of every game last year....when the offense was driving and the game was still in reach, the ball was not in the hands of Bryant Johnson.

This is why the statistics are misleading

Ryan you cant discount those. Even star WRs have stat padding. Thats the wrong thoery on trying to evaluate his stats.

By the way that "meaningless 50 yard TD" was pretty spectacular!

 

[Skkorpion]

Good discussion. joschmo, the next time you do in-depth research in stats, give it to me for the front page. That was interesting stuff.

All I can contribute is this - Bryant Johnson impressed me this last week for the first time ever. We'll soon see if that was an abberation.

 

[SECTION 11]

Good discussion. joschmo, the next time you do in-depth research in stats, give it to me for the front page. That was interesting stuff.

All I can contribute is this - Bryant Johnson impressed me this last week for the first time ever. We'll soon see if that was an abberation.

skorp, not to dengrate schmo's work here, but all these situational stats are available on NFL.com for every player.

 

[jstadvl]

Spanky

believe half of what you see and none of what you hear, 1st,2nd,or3rd party.
Granted some bone have been fed to the dogs, but they're not T-bones, just chicken.

 

[jerryp]

This comes from a fan in NY that can't watch most of the games so I'll try and contribute with some stats you guys can use to argue for or against these guys. Ever since the Cards were moved to the West I don't get to see as many games. Personally, I consider myself a member of the Cult of Quan but I think Johnson will be a good reciever too and would rather not draft a WR.

A few stats comparing Johnson and Boldin:

Boldin was targeted 165 times and dropped the ball 10 times. Roughly 6.1% of passes thrown at Boldin were dropped. Theses 10 drops account for 15.6% of the total incompletions where Boldin was the target.

Johnson was targeted 77 times and had 4 drops. That's 5.2% of passes thrown at him. The 4 drops are 9.5% of the total incompeletions on passes where Johnson was the target.

Interesting to note though Quan's catch percentage was 61.2% while Johnsons was 45.5%

<speculation>Quan is better at hauling in bad passes than Bryant but drops more easy catches.</speculation>

Boldin fumbled twice and lost both, Johnson fumbled once and lost it. Boldins fumble percentage is 1.9% of receptions are fumbled, Johnson is at 2.8%. These are small samples of data though.

Now the good stuff. How much of it came in games we got thrashed. Forget down by whatever. Just games we got spanked. I looked at box scores to choose games before looking at stats. If a game was still close after three quarters I didn't call it a thrashing even if we got wrecked in the 4th quarter. However, some games were included because we got down by like 3 TD's early and scored at the end so the score looked good but wasn't. Since everyones definition of a spanking is different but at least 4 of theses games are universal spankings cough at San Fran cough.

Games are in order;

vs Seahawks
at Rams
at Browns
at Bears
at Niners
at Seahawks (see a trend?)

These are 37.5% of the games the Cards played. If you count them playing at SF as "playing".

Quan had 37% of his yards and 41.6% of his catches in these games. Johnson was at 45% and 54% respectively. Just about all recieving TD's were garbage time products this year. Boldin had 7/8 of his TD's in the second half of games and had one TD in our wins.

Again I will mention I did not get to see these games so I may have included some that were not true spankings while omiting games that were worse than the score showed but I think we get a good idea production in terms of yards and catches was not overly affected by games we were down but SCORING definately was. In other words, our pathetic passing attack might have actually been overated by garbage time scoring.

I hope this helps.

Ultimately I think the only way to truly evaluate either is to watch them this year in camp and during the season. I leave that to you guys who can actually watch them.

Edit: I forgot to include that Quan was 5th in the league in YAC, and was the number 1 reciever on that list that was predominately running backs. So yeah, Quan racks the YAC.

 

[CardLogic]

Boldin was targeted 165 times and dropped the ball 10 times.
Roughly 6.1% of passes thrown at Boldin were dropped. Theses 10 drops account for 15.6% of the total incompletions where Boldin was the target.

Johnson was targeted 77 times and had 4 drops. That's 5.2% of passes thrown at him. The 4 drops are 9.5% of the total incompeletions on passes where Johnson was the target.

Great info, Jerryp and welcome to the board.

I wanted to highlight this particular stat segment because by far the loudest criticism against BJ has been "he drops too many balls".

Look at those numbers again! Every time I have heard the "he drops too many" line I have wanted to argue against that thought, but I never had the ammo (stats). I kept thinking I haven't seen that many drops by Johnson, what are they talking about.

If Jerryp's numbers are right; I will assume they are; that should end the bull**** comments that Johnson "drops too many". Use some other argument to criticize him if you wish.... But this one just isn't accurate!

 

[cardsunsfan]

I don't know, no offense but those don't seem accurate. Who did these stats? I remember Johnson dropping quite a few balls during games I went to.

 

[jerryp]

No offense taken, always question numbers, especially when a source was not cited.

My source for stats is http://snap.stats.com/stats/nflinfo/index.asp

STATS Inc. does the stats for ESPN by the way.

According to their "Glossary of Statistics" a dropped pass is:

"Any incomplete pass which was catchable with normal effort. STATS compares and reviews the judgement of multiple reporters to determine if a pass was dropped."

So I guess a pass that was three feet too high that had the reciever stretch out and just barely have it go off his finger tips is considered a poor throw since normal effort would not have been able to catch the ball. It's not to say the ball is totally uncatchable.

By viewing an individual receivers stats you can scroll to the bottom of the page where there are incompletion statistics. All I did was subtract receptions from "thrown to" and now we have the number of incomplete passes thrown at that person weather they were INTS, just plain incomplete, or dropped.

I admit I may have made mathamatical error so check it if you want. In fact, I'd recommend checking them.

Also, you can look at a QB's stats for incompletion statistics too.

40.9% of Blake's incomplete passes were attributed to "poor throw", these poor throws make up a whopping 17% of his total thrown passes, or a little greater than one in six.

18.9% of total incompletions were passes defensed, 9.4% were picked, 3.1% hit at the line, another 18% were "other" whatever that is, I am guessing "getting rid of it" and spiking the ball, and 8.8% of the time a pass is incomplete it was because the receiver dropped it.

McCown isn't much different percentage wise but he had far fewer tosses of the rock. One thing that does stick out is 18.3% of his incompletes were dropped.

Interesting to see how much of a problem drops are this year.

Finally for anyone interested I also visit a site called footballoutsiders.com that has a unique system for evaluating statistics. The basic idea is that a play is either successful or unsuccessful depending on the situation (down and distance). Lots of other stuff is included and to really understand it you'd have to go to the site and read the explanations. Some people there are expecting us to make a playoff run in the next 2-3 years, so we are turning a few heads.

Looking at the recievers, you see that despite the "pretty" stats Quan accumulated they really didn't do much in regards to actually making our offense efficient. I know. Heresy you say, but please don't revoke my membership from the Cult until you go to the site.

Looking at the list you see Quan was just about average (slightly below) but Johnson was third worst amongst recievers thrown to 50 or more times.

Again I may have made a mathamatical error when I was doing this stuff so check it. I am certain that I did them correctly though.

 

[joeshmo]

skorp, not to dengrate schmo's work here, but all these situational stats are available on NFL.com for every player.

I like getting the praises but you are correct those stats are had for anyone if they go to nfl.com or espn.com.

 

[Skkorpion]

Welcome, Jerryp.