Thursday, October 15, 2009

Ticked Off

The Giants' players and coaches are going out of their way not to make a big deal of Brandon Jacobs' lack of yardage production this season. But Jacobs managed to throw a little kerosene on the fire today when he cut his only interview session of the week short after a reporter dared press him on the issue.

Actually, one could tell he was getting touchy after he started the interview by addressing the problem, a clip you'll see at the bottom. At the end of two questions, he said, "Now, any more questions about the Giants' success or the Saints game?"

A few minutes later, a reporter asked him whether he considered himself a tone-setter with his running style.

"You're just looking for some bull...," Jacobs said. "Yes, I see myself as a tone-setter. I'm just going out and running into people. I got a 6-4, 265-pound frame and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, running into people and getting two-yard losses (rolls eyes)."

The reporter asked, "What's wrong with that question?" And Jacobs answered, "Are we all gonna argue or you gonna ask questions? No. I'm done." And with that, he marched off.

Even center Shaun O'Hara seemed to tire of the questions, though he offered a pretty good defense of Jacobs' performance so far.

Anyone think all this Jacobs stuff is overblown? I know of at least two guys who believe if Jacobs' yardage numbers are the worst of their problems, they're way ahead of the game.

EP

Posted by at

1 comment:

  1. MatcohenOctober 15, 2009 9:05 PM

    I'd love to see an intelligent analysis of what's going on here - there are a ton of reasons that this could be happening. Here are some questions.

    1) What is the percentage of plays where BJ and AB are the backs where the Giants run. If they run more often with BJ as the back, defenses can key on him.

    2) yards per carry for each back broken down as follows:
    a) 7 men in the box
    b) 8 men in the box
    c) 9 or more in the box
    Again - is BJ running against a stacked defense.

    3) Yards per carry for each back broken down as follows:
    a) first and second down
    b) third down

    4) median yards per carry (excluding short yardage) - Bradshaw's totals are inflated by some nice big runs. No complaints, but in a small sample size, these can distort the data.

    I know that is is easier for everyone to just repeat the same nonsense and to ask the players (who have no idea) as opposed to doing some actual work to figure out if there is something else going on here. But some useful data would be nice. If this were baseball, we would have all of this at our fingertips and would have a much more intelligent discussion.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)