Nate Burleson, Mike Holmgren and John Morgan Walk into an Interview
by John Morgan on Dec 15, 2009 4:01 PM PST
84 comments
Nate Burleson suffered a high ankle sprain during Sunday's game against the Houston Texans. Seattle initially signed Burleson to a poison pill contract comparable to Steve Hutchinson's. It was a sandbox moment for Tim Ruskell. A chance to kick down the kid's castle that had kicked down his. Seattle later restructured that contract and included a voidable year in 2010.
There's a lot to like about Burleson. If he recovers like many/most athletes post-ACL replacement, he should improve his agility into next year, and be 99% the player he was before the injury by 2010. That lost agility is conspicuous on returns, and, recently, during an end-around attempt against the Texans. Burleson lacks the ability to run angles and curves at a high speed like DeSean Jackson, Percy Harvin, Josh Morgan and, once upon a time, Nate Burleson. Burleson should recover some bendy-quicks, but not enough to be re-signed.
What he'll gain back through recovery will soon thereafter be lost because of age. Burleson turns 29 August of 2010. He's hardly old, be he is old enough to be mismatched with a rebuilding team. He also isn't very good.
Burleson rewards you with flash and kills you with details. He is notorious for quitting routes, deeking blocks and alternating good grabs with maddening drops. Before Greg Knapp, Burleson was an overpriced second receiver poorly fit to Mike Holmgren's system. Burleson appears better fit to Knapp's looser style, but he isn't producing at a much higher level. Despite an increase in targets and a resulting increase in yards, Burleson is still pretty close to a league average receiver.
The short-term impact of the injury is an opening for Deion Branch and Deon Butler. Branch has been phased out this season. It is difficult to be sure if Branch is worse or just less involved. He said before the season started that his knee would never be the same. As routine as ligament replacement is in the modern NFL, some players still do not respond well to the procedure, and it's possible Branch left something on the operating table.
Butler is more interesting, both because he is younger and faster, and because he is free of the controversial origin story. He also might not be much of a prospect. He's built like DeSean Jackson but plays like Darrell Jackson, and though he is quick into and out of his short cuts, it's difficult to see Butler making a career snatching passes in traffic; taking tackles like Bobby Engram.
The other news of the day involves retired head coach Mike Holmgren. Cleveland is hosting Holmgren and attempting to entice him into taking on a head of football operations position. It's a good fit for Holmgren. The team has a young, talented offensive line, a headcase quarterback with SnapOn tools, some young defensive talent and a lot of cap space and draft picks to invest towards a rebuild. Despite inferior leadership, the Browns are closer to contention than Seattle, and farther along in their rebuild. Brady Quinn is a presumptive bust, but a young 25. Hasselbeck did not make a regular season start until he was 26. Brett Favre was having his first great season as a pro at 25. He commemorated his age-24 season with a league worst 24 picks. The idea of a quarterback guru might be farcical, but Browns owner Randy Lerner didn't earn his fortune with smart business decisions. He inherited it from his father.
Holmgren has announced he wants to decide his destination before Christmas. That puts pressure on the Seahawks organization, or is intended to. It's entirely possible Seattle has no interest in Holmgren. I do not think that Holmgren was or will be a terrible GM, but that's a pretty low standard for expectations. I still hold out hope that the Seahawks can hire the NFL's first Billy Beane-like executive. There are numerous angles a smart strategist could exploit in the NFL. A savvy, young, creative and ambitious general manager could free Seattle from the orthodox approach of systems and windows and trend-following, and build the Seahawks into next decade's Red Sox.
Shoot, I'll volunteer myself and promise a return to the playoffs by 2011. I've made a lifetime out of irreverence. I'm sure it reads as ludicrous boasting by an armchair GM, but I am equally sure an outsider not indoctrinated in the league's procedures and methods could hand some of these good old boys their ass. And though it won't be me, I do hope it is somebody, somebody that's not Bill Polian's, by way of Rich McKay, by way of Ozzie Newsome, regional scout and Director of Doing Things the Same Way They've Always Been Done.
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"Shoot, I'll volunteer myself and promise a return to the playoffs by 2011. "
If this doesn’t happen then Field Gulls will remove you from writing duties and we will replace you with VBJohnson.
I like Burleson but I am starting to think he’s worn out his welcome here. It’s not the ability but the effort I have an issue with. Some of the things he tries are stupefying. He fights for extra meaningless yards at the risk of his eventual fumble…his punt returns also suck now more than ever.
I hope Cleveland signs Holmgren so that entire coaching staff (except maybe Rob Ryan) is cleaned out and he can build them back to respectability.
ME! BANE!
It's like John said. He just isn't very good.
I really have a strange desire to see Holmgren turn the Browns around, a desire that is completely independent of any repercussions that has for Seattle.
by jacobstevens on Dec 15, 2009 4:16 PM PST up reply actions
I promise I won't harp on this
but what a thrill it would be to have a hand in fixing the team I love so much. I am quite literally as qualified as Matt Millen.
You didn't play in the league, John.
What could you know?
I disagree...
Harp on it….Get some support and see where it takes you. What better employee is there than one that is emotionally invested in the company (in this case franchise) for whom they work for?
I think I could do it
which is enough to turn off plenty, but I won’t waste readers time glorifying myself.
Timberwolves, IIRC.
That’s exactly what this reminded me of. Hey, if Randy Mueller could work his way up from literally the bottom of the Seahawks organization, maybe John could too.
This.
I'm pretty sure cronyism has already been done
For example, during the Behring years here in Seattle … or, now that I think of it, during the Holmgren years too.
But the roles Brian and Misfit want to fill would be new. ;-)
Maybe Jack Zduriencik wants to try duel GM duties and conquer the Seattle sports world?
If not, I’m on the John Morgan bandwagon.
SEA!
If I was an sports franchise owner
I probably would never hire a blogger, not even the brightest of them, to run my franchise. However, for guys that clearly know what they are talking about, like Dave Cameron at USSM, I would hire them in an instant for some lesser capacity with the team.
Bill James is not a blogger per se, but he’s kind of the prototype. He was a huge baseball nerd that looked at the statistics and their causes instead of outcomes, something that wasn’t done in those days. He had to self-publish his own books to get his point of view out there because it was so at odds with the mainstream. Bill James isn’t running a MLB franchise, but he is a paid advisor for the Boston Red Sox, undoubtedly one of the reasons that franchise is so intelligently run, and his influence has spread to the Billy Beane type owners of the league.
So if I was Paul Allen, I wouldn’t hire JM to be my GM, but I’d figure out some way to get him involved with the team.
The Mariners organization has a statistics department headed up by Tony Blengino.
Among their consultants is the brilliant author and blogger Tom Tango.
I hadn't realized the Tango hiring was only 2 months into the Z administration
What a brilliant GM Z-man is. I can’t prove it, but I’m guessing Z relies on his statisticians a lot. Just about every move he’s made has been well supported by things like WAR and UZR.
I have to think the M's front office is now the gold standard for how to run a baseball team.
Jack Z brought in a staff that embraces both old-school and new-school philosophies, and is using that dual-effort (stats and scouts in unity) to build something special with the Mariners. The bloggers love him, obviously, but the mainstream media has also caught on, and are now working in tandem with the blogosphere (think Geoff Baker and Larry Stone’s relationship with USSM, or Brock and Salk on the radio openly talking about new-wave baseball analysis) to educate the fanbase. It’s an incredible development that’s going on, and leagues ahead of the dinosaur Bavasi regime.
I’d love for the Seahawks to find their own Zduriencik, someone who will embrace the new wave of football analysis while relying on solid old-school scouting, and will always be on the cutting edge of football trends. That would be so much better than clinging to the past by bringing back Holmgren.
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlights of an oncoming train?
I really envy the Saints right now.
Payton is a mastermind, and he also has a great QB in Brees. Same with the Colts and Peyton—it’s that kind of sustained success I’d to see in Seattle someday.
It’s like Mariners Asst. GM Tony Blengino said once: “we’re going to get good and stay good.” I really want our new GM with that kind of can-do spirit.
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlights of an oncoming train?
Grammar fail:
^it’s that kind of sustained success I’d like to see in Seattle someday.
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlights of an oncoming train?
I don't.
The only team that I actually really envy are the Colts and the Patriots. Now THAT is sustained sucess.
Sam Bradford, future Seattle Seahawk.
by Carl Shinyama on Dec 16, 2009 8:40 PM PST up reply actions
Does this mean we need to start making some John Morgan for GM posters?
Hasn’t something like this happened before in the baseball world, where a blogger was hired into the front office? I know it wasn’t as GM, but I swear the guy that invented UZR got picked up by somebody as a stats expert.
Perhaps there’s a future in finding front office talent from the “Armchair GM” crowd. I’d bet a lot of them could be hired straight into assistant positions and be successful.
A lot of stats people are hired on as consultants to MLB front offices.
Like I mentioned above, the Mariners are fortunate to have the consulting services of Tom Tango at their disposal.
Pretty much what Brian said.
Lots of MLB stats experts have been brought on as consultants with MLB teams. I do wonder why no NFL team has tried to recruit a Football Outsiders writer. Makes me wonder if the NFL is even more stubborn and traditional than MLB is.
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlights of an oncoming train?
And, if Mr. Allen or Mr. Leiweke are out there, I'd donate 90% of my salary to charity.
Ok, I’m done. Time to finish up this Curry piece.
Since you are lobbying for GM (seriously or not) let's have your top-10 Seahawks draft board?
:)
This.
This would be my short term plan, well before evaluating coaches.
Begin a player by player audit of the roster, using a set of outside scouts that were not connected in the drafting or acquisition of players. I would then separate players into distinct categories: Those that should be retained, those that must be retained, and those that present more value by being cut or traded.
Once I did that
I would asses the roster and match the coach and his style to the talent, rather than the other way around.
I would create a department of advanced statistical analysis and evaluate every player's functional measurables: reaction time, speed through route, ability to sustain a block, etc.
I promise you don’t want me to go on. I have given this idea considerable thought.
I would have models of how every player type ages
and what innate human abilities fade, and how much, with age.
Football, like any sport, is best run as a business
and football, unlike most major sports, seems stubbornly resistant to that idea.
The overuse of statistics can be a problem
People make decisions on past performance that doesn’t necessarily reflect future performance either due to statistical noise, sampling error, etc. Comparing athletes on a purely statistical basis is very difficult since there are too many variables at play. If statistics was the root of all decision making then Statistics may show Hass is in the decline phase, but if you made your decision on strictly statistical past performance you may have gotten rid of Warner.
Statistics are a tool but as the saying goes “past performance is no guarantee of future performance” and can be mis-used to the extreme.
Whenever we hire a new GM, I'm going to start an email campaign for him to bring you on the staff.
Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or the headlights of an oncoming train?
I think they do this already...
the tried and trusted 1 – 5 scale
is 80 the highest...
20 the lowest? I think that’s what they use
well I think the combine tests need to be revamped
I mean how cool would it be to have the DB’s backpedal their 40?
Another thing I would do
Is measure a player’s field speed, obsoleting the forty. The idea that Crabtree’s injury hurt his stock because he couldn’t run a forty yard dash always struck me as a staggering indictment of the competence of general managers. How can a team get so far into the process and still not know a player’s speed?
that should actually be pretty easy to do
any video of crabtree running a streak route could easily be turned into a number and compared apples to apples (more or less) to other players in college and in the league
The Seahawks assess all the players every week
but not using measures; using the game tape. That’s the best set of measures.
If statistical measures could really be applied so consistently to football players, I would think the NFL draft would be something other than the crapshoot it is. But I doubt it ever will be measured so clearly. Football is not baseball. Baseball is closer to being a set of measurable actions repeated time and again by each player, and statistic apply well there.
I don’t think football is so consistently measurable. Success of each play is predicated on the outcomes of multiple simultaneous and supporting battles, group will, emotion, and a little luck and random chaos. I don’t think beanball stats will ever apply well.
I know it sounds corny, but there will always be a place in football for the scout that leaves his stop watch in his pocket and notes which guys play like ‘football players’.
That said, I’m sure you would make a fine scout, John.
"Football players are temperamental. That's 90 percent temper and 10 percent mental." - Doug Plank
whatever their methods...
they’re not working. I mostly agree with your larger point though. It would be exceedingly difficult to glean much quantitative data amongst the ‘noise’.
I think the rudimentary statistical analysis done with play by play is being conflated with the advanced work that could be conducted by an NFL organization.
I’m not talking about ANY/A. I’m talking about a detailed, objective accounting of the skills and abilities of every member of the Seahawks roster. I would track their reaction time, their exact acceleration curve, their speed running every conceivable route, etc.
Most companies do something like this. I bet Iverson could tell us all sorts of neat things about the processes within his factory. The NFL, for whatever reason, seems like it’s still about hunch and feel. Which I get, because it’s a game, but I don’t get, because owners want to win.
Well the tape can give some information
For example the team can break down every snap and assign ‘grades’ (still a judgement) based on assignments missed, succesfull blocks made, etc. It would be a very painstaking process but I’m sure that data COULD in principle be combined to give quantitative data about certain aspects of the game and players relative effectiveness.
I think you're too smart to just be blogging
when’s your book coming?
"Football players are temperamental. That's 90 percent temper and 10 percent mental." - Doug Plank
Maybe this should be the next podcast.
“What John Morgan would do as GM” and you’d always have it there as a reference.
SEA!
by MFAN on Dec 15, 2009 5:36 PM PST reply actions 5 recs
I actually think the combine tests are unbelievably archaic...
i.e. the ability to drive and explode into a block isn’t nearly revealed in the 225lb bench press test. What about Squats or an Olympic lift like the clean and jerk (all collegiate level athletes are doing these lifts anyways). That would provide more relevent data to talent evaluators than a bench press test (which only tests one aspect of movement in delivering a block)
Someone will rise to power and revolutionize the sport, not because that person is a wunderkind football mind
but because that person is not burdened with inertia and tradition.
I think there is room for more data evaluation in pro football but..
It is not baseball… not even close. Baseball is a team sport but the performance is in almost every way individual. This makes the process of quantifiable evaluation possible. I’m not sure about football.
Let me attempt an example. How do you compare receiver A and receiver B? Receiver A gets more yards after the catch the receiver B. But does this prove that receiver A is a superior playmaker? What about the role of downfield blockers?
This could be said of other sports but also how do you quantify how much better a player gets in a contract year. This is often suggested. Is it even true? How would you quantify that?
John, I can't speak for anybody but myself
But I am very interested to hear what it is you would do as the GM of the hawks. I come to this site to read your analysis, and it is always well thought out and justified. Never know, if u put together a string of posts with how u would handle this football team and u could get some links from sando or Salk, which could lead to some involvement with the franchise. At the very least, I would enjoy them. I’ve been amazed at how your analysis is so spot on sometimes, I think they would be good reads.
by quickhandsandfeet on Dec 15, 2009 6:21 PM PST via mobile reply actions
Or another alternative
Maybe owner of the team. C’mon Paul Allen. You know it’s a tax burden you’re looking to give away for free.
Your Philosophy of GMing
Aren’t you describing roughly what the Patriots have been doing the last decade?
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