FreeBaGeL said:
It's not just that Carolina paid DeAngelo, it's that DeAngelo (and others) have been every bit as good as Stewart during that time. For as talented as he's supposed to be he hasn't stood out amongst his peers, including the year he and Mike Goodson were the guys.
Stewart seems to get a pass on everything for some reason. I've seen several of Stewart's biggest supporters harp on not putting too much stock into someone that put up good numbers in a timeshare or on fresh legs at the end of the year. Yet Stewart not only does that, but he does that in an incredible situation where Shonn Green could have put up 5ypc, he does it without standing out amongst his peers (this isn't like Kevan Barlow or Steven Jackson out-performing the guy they were splitting time with by a full yard per carry), he does it with injury concerns, and he fails to take hold of the job when the coaches try to hand it to him and there's NO talk whatsoever that maybe the guy is just a running back who spent a few years on fresh legs in a great system.
I get it, he looks/measures the part. But with all that you'd think he would have stood out statistically compared to a now aging Williams this past year or Mike Goodson in 2010, or really anyone he's split time with throughout his career.
People are still keeping the attitude they had early on in Stewart's career where he was obviously some great back that would be an instant top 3 back who was being held back by dumb management. He's being held back by himself now (they tried to give it to him last year and HE failed to take it) and even if he does win the job he's not the instant top 3 guy we once thought he was as Carolina's system is no longer elite and he's yet to show he can play above that.
Since 2008-
Yards per carry:
5.0 DeAngelo
4.7 Stewart
4.0 Goodson
3.4 Tolbert
Also, moving beyond YPC (which is a pretty flawed metric heavily influenced by usage patterns), you've got the following stats:
2008 DVOA: Williams (24.9%, 1st overall), Stewart (4.6%, 13th overall)
2009 DVOA: Stewart (12.8%, 8th overall), Williams (11.3%, 10th overall)
2010 DVOA: Stewart (-12.2%, 37th overall), Goodson (-15.3%, 52nd overall), Williams (-17.2%, not enough carries to be ranked)
2011 DVOA: Stewart (23.4%, 2nd overall), Williams (18.0%, 3rd)
2012 DVOA: Williams (-6.6%, 26th overall), Stewart (-18.5%, not enough carries to be ranked)
Williams topped Stewart in Jon's rookie year, and again last year (when he was injured all season), and Stewart had the best DVOA on the Panthers the other three years.
2008 Success Rate: Stewart (49%, 11th), Williams (47%, 19th)
2009 Success Rate: Stewart (50%, 19th), Williams (45%, 30th)
2010 Success Rate: Goodson (38%, 42nd), Stewart (36%, 45th), Williams (not enough carries)
2011 Success Rate: Stewart (53%, 8th), Williams (46%, 28th)
2012 Success Rate: Williams (48%, 22nd), Stewart (not enough carries)
And of course, there's always
Pro Football Focus...
Point being, Stewart has not been outperformed by his teammates- even if you go purely by the statistics and ignore the "eyeball test". He's performed comparably (and even slightly better) to Williams (who also benefits from not having his own rookie season thrown into the comparison...), and he's dramatically outperformed everyone else. And, again, since DeAngelo Williams is one of the best backs of the last decade, performing comparably (and even slightly better) to him reinforces that Stewart is a fantastic talent who has been very productive to this point in his career.
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Okay, but now you are talking value, and getting great value out of someone doesn't mean they single-handledly carried your team to a title. Two of my championship teams in 2012 had Alfred Morris, and I got him for around $5-$7 in both auctions, which was HUGE, but that doesn't mean he single-handledly carried my teams to those championships. That was my beef here, the use of the "single-handledly carried my team to a title" phrase.
Also, was being the number 5 RB over the last half of the season really that impressive given those putrid games I pointed out that he had. Consistency is the key to a great player, not putting up 200 yards one game and 29 in another (especially for RBs, who tend to be way more consistent than WRs). What if Stewart had put up those 35 and 29 yard games in weeks 15 and 16? That second half RB5 wouldn't look nearly as impressive.
Value is pretty relevant when discussing Stewart. If you buy him as rb22 in a startup and he gives you three top-5 seasons, that's worth a lot more than if you buy Peterson as rb1 and he does the same. That's what I was saying about reaching a point in the draft where upside begins to far outweigh downside.As for consistency... It's not the key to a great player. Great players are often consistent, but that gets the causal arrow backward- players that score a lot of point tend to have fewer games where they don't score many points, sure, but that's because they score so many points. Players who are consistent don't become great, players who are great become consistent. Add to this the fact that consistency is not consistent (knowing how consistent a player was in year N tells you very little about how consistent he'll be in year N+1), and that consistency really isn't that valuable (someone- maybe ZWK?- ran a study that found that a super-consistent WR that scored 180 points would be expected to net as many wins for his owner as a super-inconsistent WR that scored 182 points). To finish this off, consider that Jonathan Stewart has actually historically been a pretty consistent guy. Come up with any definition of consistency you want (games above 8 points, percentage of games within one std dev of his scoring average, percentage of points scored in his four best games) and compare Stewart to the two guys immediately above and below him in the year-end rankings and you'll see that Stewart is no more inconsistent than we would expect an RB with that many points to be. In short, consistency isn't worth much of anything, IMO- give me the guy who scores more points, regardless of how consistently he does so.
If Stewart had laid eggs in week 15 and 16 of 2009, I wouldn't be talking about how he carried teams to titles, and I wouldn't be saying I got a pretty good return on him already. He didn't, though, and the championship trophy he put on my mantle disagrees with anyone who says he's been a disappointment so far and has underperformed what his owners had to pay to get him.
Okay, again, you are focusing mostly on value, which was not part of the equation I originally had a problem with. I don't know you can still he put a championship trophy on your mantle all by himself. Did the rest of your team suck ### down the stretch and in the playoffs and all of your opponents' lineups also lay eggs? Cause otherwise it is foolish to ever suggest that one guy gave you a championship (although I get the hyperbole of saying it when players have all-time great seasons, like ADP this past year, Moss in '07, Peyton in '04, etc.).
And if all it takes is one good stretch for a player to not be a disappointment, does his solid play this past season prove that Knowshon Moreno is not a disappointment? I mean, his solid numbers for excellent value (since most probably picked him up for nothing since he went undrafted or not auctioned off in most leagues) likely helped some fantasy teams win titles, so he is now not a disappointment as well?
It seems that there's a problem with the language that I used, and I apologize for that. No, Jonathan Stewart did not literally carry me to a championship. I did not submit a starting lineup that consisted of Stewart and 7 empty spots. You're right that I was being hyperbolic, and that seems to have distracted from my larger points, so I would be very happy to replace "he single-handedly carried me to a title" with "he was by far the most important player on a team that won the championship". That particular team was 8th in points scored, had a losing regular season record, snuck into the last playoff spot on tiebreakers (thanks to some big Stewart games down the stretch), and walked away with the championship largely because Stewart put up a couple of monster games (magnified by my league's yardage-heavy scoring).
Getting past the sticky particulars, though, what are your thoughts on my larger point? Jonathan Stewart is someone who I believe could explode and carry teams to championships (or, at the least, become the most important piece on championship-winning teams). As evidence for this assertion, I submit the fact that Jonathan Stewart has already done exactly that. And even if we want to ignore the timing (yes, it was lucky that Stewart's big games were week 15 and 16 instead of weeks 13 and 14), how many other RBs currently ranked in the late teens or later are both 26 or younger *AND* have a top 12 finish on their resume? What better proof that a player has huge upside than actually having a player demonstrate that huge upside in the NFL already?
There are a lot of important questions to ask about Stewart. Was last year a fluke resulting from his injury, or a meaningful sign of decline? What will his role be in Carolina going forward? These are very important questions, and it seems to me that there is a lot of room for genuine and legitimate disagreement. Was Jonathan Stewart ever any good? Obviously I'm biased, but I just don't see how there's room for significant disagreement on this one. Stewart has performed comparably to DeAngelo Williams, who is one of the best backs of this generation. He has a top 12 fantasy finish, averages 1000 yards a year for his career despite playing in a timeshare, has off-the-charts stats (both simple and advanced), is top 5 among active RBs in career YPC, holds an NFL record (most rushing yards in a player's first 3 starts), has a "small legion" of major fans who can't stop raving about how talented he is, and got a $38 million contract with $22 million guaranteed. It seems to me that Stewart has been every bit as good as his fans thought he was, and if last year's injury wasn't a harbinger of things to come, that talent will likely pay major dividends over the next 4 years. I'd much rather buy him as a low-end RB2 than a guy like Reggie Bush, Kendall Hunter, Mark Ingram, or Lamar Miller.