I woke up late this morning and as I scrambled to put myself together and get out the door, this refrain circled my brain: "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet". All the way up into the parking lot where I parked beside the flame red El Camino w/ the Mardi Gras beads strung about its rear view mirror that I always park by. Time is what I have today, but not tomorrow. Whatever I post tomorrow morning, will have been written today. So if Aaron Kampman dies tragically rescuing his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship, don't blame me for being irrelevant.
. . .
Every morning Jordan Babineaux wakes up, prepares a burnt toast breakfast and ponders how he will make some former nobody shine this Sunday. And each week, I wake up, steep a bitter brew, and figure out how I will say anew four unchanging words: "Babs sucks in coverage." I've been crude, trenchant, crude thrice more and now, wistful and pendantic. Sigh, Kafkaesque, (frown), Mencius Moldbug...
The Packers offer a bunch of potential problems for Seattle's nickelback. McCarthy doesn't spread teams with the regularity that Holmgren does, but he does mix it up. James Jones has been targeted 80 times, Koren Robinson 38 in just 9 games, Ruvell Martin, who has Moss like size (I'm sorry, that's cheap, but pretty funny), 28. The perplexing thing is that only Martin has produced a positive DVOA. Jones' DVOA is among the worst among receivers with 50 or more passes targeting them, -6.7% (68th of 87th). Robinson's DVOA is -11.4%. Both have decent reception percentages (59 and 62% respectively) and decent YPC (14.4 and 11.5), and a fair amount of first downs converted, too. So why are they below average producers as receivers? I decided to look back through the play-by-play and see if anything stood out. I found two answers: One, that he's targeted on a lot of dink and dunk short stuff that DVOA marks as having negative value (that's arguable, but best left for another day), and, Two, he's targeted on a lot of third downs, and fails to convert many of them. I also found one annotated play-by-play. I wonder if that will soon be standard, and if so, hooray. If ineffectiveness in third down situations is all that hold down the two's value, well, the Seahawks and Babs particularly have patented a panacea for all opposing offenses third down woes. Unless!
Unless, the two posses poor hands. That is, they drop passes even after blown coverage. We know that was once one of Koren Robinson's bugaboos, so we'll skip him. Whether he still is prone to dropping passes is almost impossible to determine because, he has yet to outlive his reputation and hasn't been targeted on enough passes to prove whether he does still have problems dropping passes or not. Jones is the greater concern, anyhow. So let's Google "James Jones" Drops OR Hands:
It'd be silly to call this a pitfall. Pitfalls befall superior teams, the Hawks, perhaps on par with the Pack, are not a superior team, and given home field advantage, are a definitive underdog. No, this is just my shot at fair and balanced. James Jones should slice through Seattle, and Koren Robinson still has his wheels, so Jones could convert the first and Robinson could burn Brian Russell for the long score. Yep. Not decisive, slot backs rarely are, but a good indication that Seattle will have to score some points, because the Hawks cannot totally shut the Pack down.