Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments

Guilty.

The only thing you kicked off was a conversation.

You're right that the TEs had lower numbers of receptions before Loeffler, but so did the WRs. Lefty is pretty pass happy compared to his predecessors. And he does use the TEs more than Stiney did...but how much of that is due to us only having two viable WRs right now?

Here's the deal on TE receptions as a percentage of passes completed. Let's take 2008. Greg Boone had 22 receptions. He accounted for 13.2% of the passes caught that season. So...what does that tell us? Is there going to be some threshold above which we call a TE a receiving tight end? What's the threshold? How is it derived? I avoided percentage of total receptions because it exists in a vacuum. We need a baseline we're looking for: Boone's 13.2% qualifies him as a receiving TE in 2008, but Andre Smith's 10.0% in 2010 relegated him to blocking TE status? It's just arbitrary.

The only valid method is comparing the TEs to what other people who caught passes did. It gives context to make a better judgement. So in making my comparison, I set the the highest standard I could: comparing the top TE to the top WR. Now, I could have calculated the top WR's percentage of total completions, and then the top TE's, and then compare them together, bit that's unnecessarily complicated. The proportion of their percentages of overall completions will bear a strong similarity to the proportion of their total receptions.

Back to 2008. Boone had 61.1% of the receptions that receiving leader Danny Coale had. If we derive Coale's percentage of total receptions, he caught 36 of the 167 completed passes that season, accounting for 21.6% of all receptions. The proportional value of Boone's 13.2% of total receptions to Coale's 21.6% is...0.611. It's the exact same value. Breaking it down into percentage of total receptions is a useless step.

Rapidly becoming my new favorite meme.

Yeah, Miami this year was kind of Motley's equivalent to Brewer's game vs GT last season. Except that outside of Brewer's three turnovers against GT, he played a good game. Motley wasn't very good even when he wasn't turning it over. Tough outing for the guy. Hope the fact that was his last start before Brewer came back doesn't destroy whatever confidence he had built.

Think he's gone for sure?

A comparison of our leading WR to our leading TE establishes the degree to which the TE is utilized in the overall passing game. I'm arguing that if our leading TE is putting up 35-40% of the receptions as our leading WR, on average, that's a strong indication that the TE position plays a key role in our passing tree. Please explain your rationale for saying it is irrelevant, beyond the fact that it undermines your assertion?

I can't decide if your Georgia Tech analogy is a non sequitur or a straw man fallacy. We obviously wouldn't be having this conversation if we ran the flexbone or the Wing-T. But we don't. Don't draw false parallels.

I'm curious why you think the definition I'm using of a receiving tight end is a stretch. Also, I'm not really sure what you mean when you say a "balanced tight end." I think perhaps what you're calling a balanced tight end is what I'm calling a receiving tight end, and perhaps your threshold for a "receiving tight end" is a wide receiver pretending to be a tight end, like Gronk or what we're grooming Bucky to be. Tight ends will universally be used as blockers. It's the nature of the position. If they are also used as targets in the passing game, I call them receiving tight ends. You can call them balanced tight ends, that's fine. We're meaning the same thing. I've been pretty clear on what my definition of a receiving right end is. I think having this weird third category of a "balanced" tight end is convoluted, but as long as we realize we mean the same thing, you can call them whatever you want.

I'd think the idea behind a proportion of top WR production to top TE production would be pretty intuitive. We can certainly divide each receivers receptions into a percentage of the QB's total completions, and a few things will be obviously true. The WRs will account for a higher overall percentage of completions than the TEs simply by virtue of there typically being 3+ WRs vs 1 receiving (or balanced, if you prefer) tight end. But the proportion of the top WRs overall contribution to the total receptions vs the top TE's would be the same as the proportions I listed above.

Rather than confusing the issue with extraneous unnecessary stats, perhaps it would be better to look at the proportion of the top TE's receptions vs the second and third receivers'. If we're targeting our TE more than our third WR (in seasons unlike this one, when we actually had a third WR) it would definitely establish the function of the TE as a core component of our passing game. Then again, I think that's obvious at this point.

Keep in mind, Andre Davis finished his career at VT with 103 career catches total. So having a group of TEs combine for 100 career catches doesn't mean they aren't receiving tight ends. It's all proportional to how much you pass as an offense, and we didn't pass much until the last few years.

Like I said, they were receiving tight ends, we just pass more now. The numbers support me on this.

Bryan Stinespring became TE coach in 2006. In those years:

2006: Receptions leader was David Clowney (34). Leading TE receiver Sam Wheeler (13). Leading TE had 38.2% the receptions as our leading receiver.
2007: Receptions leader Josh Morgan (46). TE leader Sam Wheeler (15). 32.6%. (Note Wheeler only played in 9 games, Morgan in 14.)
2008: Receptions leader Danny Coale (36). TE leader Greg Boone (22, did someone say he wasn't a receiving TE???). 61.1%
2009: Receptions leader Jarrett Boykin (40). TE leader Greg Boone (7). 17.5%.
2010: Receptions leader Jarrett Boykin (53). TE leader Andre Smith (20). 37.7%.
2011: Receptions leader Jarrett Boykin (61, daaaaayum). TE leader Chris Drager (15). 24.6%.
2012: Receptions leader Marcus Davis (51). TE leader Ryan Malleck (17). 33.3%.
2013: Receptions leader Willie Byrn (51). TE leader Kalvin Cline (26). 51.0%.
2014: Receptions leader Isaiah Ford (56). TE leader Bucky Hodges (45). 80.4%

Note on Bucky in '14: as the season progressed, he was used more and more in the slot, assuming more of the responsibilities of a wide receiver. The "traditional" TE that season, Ryan Malleck, caught 24 passes, which would equal 42.9%.

Since Stinespring took over as TE coach, it's pretty clear that the TE has accounted, on average, for a little more than 1/3 the receptions of the leading wide receiver. There's some variability season-over-season, of course, but one constant is that the TE position has always factored heavily into our passing game. So I stand by my original assertion.

Well, we've always used receiving tight ends, so basically you need someone who can work in conjunction with the OL coach to teach blocking scheme, but can also teach them as receivers to fit into the overall offensive scheme.

I'd imagine teams that use strictly blocking tight ends could probably lump them in with the OL coach.

You forgot TE. We've got 9 now.

This is the first time I've ever heard the argument that TWD needs more deaths.