Tonight, in this very ring: Alshon Jeffery vs. Jordy Nelson

{Current Mood: Fungry}

Good Day,

I’ve decided to start working on another fake football writing project. This one has the potential to go in multiple different directions as the offseason, and even the regular season, rolls on.

For this, the first installation, I’m going to try and decide who I would rather draft between Alshon Jeffery and Jordy Nelson. If one isn't available for me in Round 2, I'd gladly draft the other. But if given the chance to make that choice, I need to have a preference. 

Before I continue, I’m letting it be known that the type of league (PPR or standard) wouldn’t affect my decision. Assuming a point per every 10 receiving yards and six points per TD, Alshon only outscored Jordy by five points (184 to 179) in 2013 before accounting for PPR where his edge increased to nine points (273 to 264) so the difference is negligible.

Yes I included their Week 17 totals. And if you take them away, Alshon winds up putting more distance between himself and Jordy. But I’m not a big believer in cumulative stats that can be cherry picked to give you the answers you want to hear telling the whole story. And if you want to be a better fantasy owner, you should totally pay attention to cumulative stats and base most of your decisions off of them so I can win your money shouldn’t be either.

As of this writing, Jordy is being drafted ahead of Alshon per Fantasy Football Calculator ADP. But My Fantasy League ADP data paints a much different picture, one where the general populous prefers Alshon by a larger margin than one would think for two guys who finished the 2013 season with similar raw totals. The aggregated rankings over at Fantasy Pros also currently favor Alshon to Jordy, but not by a substantial margin.

To me, this seems like a case of recency bias. Eventually we’re going to get to a point where the regular people will begin to join us degenerates in their fantasy prep for the coming season. A good amount of these people will be led into thinking that since Alshon finished 2013 with a better fantasy rank than Jordy, they should automatically be ranked in that order for 2014.

Let me stop myself quickly. Throughout the offseason, I’ve been using platforms like Rotoviz, Roto Academy, & Pro Football Focus to help shape the way I think about football, both real and fake. My mental shift towards a more analytical, stat-driven approach to the game helped win me a butt ton of money in 2013 by virtue of taking first place in my highest paying league.

Having said that, I’m not 100% against the “eye test” approach that a lot of people take to the fantasy game. I have to take that mindset because between being a Giants season ticket holder and dating a girl whose mother is a Jets season ticket holder, I find myself at Metlife Stadium at least 10 times every season to watch live football.

The truth, much like it does with every facet of life, probably lies somewhere in the middle of the ever-present stats versus film debate. The eye test can be misleading because it’s impossible to watch everything. The numbers don’t tell the whole story because 16-game seasons give us terribly small sample sizes to work with in relation to other sports.

But when everything else seems equal, as it does in this case, I tend to look at the situation through a more objective lens.  

One thought that keeps entering my mind is whether 2013 represented Alshon’s best-case scenario as it relates to his role within the current Bears offense (assuming everyone stays healthy, of course). Presumably, Brandon Marshall’s role as the top dog (bear?) in that offense is safe for at least another two seasons.

I don’t doubt that Alshon will put up numbers regardless of who is throwing him the ball, but the fact that Marshall received double digit targets in 11 of 16 games as opposed to five games with double digit targets for Jeffery, two of which came with Jay Cutler playing the entire game, gives me pause.

As for Jordy, I can say with approximately 82% certainty that 2013 didn’t represent his best-case scenario. We can only imagine the kind of numbers he would’ve finished the season with had Aaron Rodgers not been injured. At this point in the summer, I almost feel like I can get all of that potential at a discount. In the second round.

I’m not as worried as some about the return of Randall Cobb eating into too much of Jordy’s workload. For what it’s worth: in games where they were both on the field in 2013, Randall received 47 targets to Jordy’s 56 (all of those games were played with Aaron Rodgers). While it’s a small sample size, it tells me that Jordy is viewed as the team’s top receiver.

If you want to cherry pick, you can throw out the Week 17 game that saw Jordy get 16 targets to Randall’s two (that went for 55 yards and two TDs) because a lot of leagues don’t play Week 17. But if you move that game to any other week of the season, it likely gives my argument more merit.

Even if you’re of the mindset that Randall is the top dog at WR in Green Bay, you cannot make a reasonable argument for Alshon being the top dog in Chicago over Brandon Marshall, at least not yet.

The last thing I want to look at regarding the Fat Cock and the Jumping Jordy* relates to TD production. Even though TDs are a volatile stat from year to year, both of these guys have the requisite frames to be consistent TD producers at the NFL level. One plays on a team that lost a former 14-TD scorer in James Jones to the Raiders in free agency. The other plays for a team that snuck up on a lot of people last year due to a new head coach and a new offensive philosophy and didn’t lose any key offensive pieces.

James Jones, who only scored three times in 2013, is going to be replaced in Green Bay by either Davante Adams, who is much more suited for the role that Jones played but is highly likely to need some time to acclimate himself to the NFL, or Jarrett Boykin, who didn’t break out until Aaron Rodgers went down and was only targeted 26 times by Rodgers last season.

Even if Jordy only receives a little bit of the production that Jones is leaving behind, combining this with the prospects of a healthy Aaron Rodgers, and the fact that Alshon doesn’t project to put up numbers substantially better what he put up in 2013, makes Jordy the winner of this particular contest.

Of course, if Brandon Marshall is still on the board, there’s a good chance I’m taking him over both of these guys but that’s another story for another time. 

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this little piece and I’ll do my best to do more like it in the coming days, weeks, etc. I may try a version of this in which I’m mock drafting a team and writing smaller blurbs for players I’m deciding between in certain rounds.

If anyone has any ideas for players you would like to see “square off” in this manner, let me know and if I don’t have any better ideas, I’ll work with any suggestions I have the time, energy, desire, and/or elbow grease to work with.

-Ray-

*It actually should be spelled Geordie being that this is a picture of current NXT champion Adrian Neville, aka the “Jumping Geordie,” with ‘Geordie’ being slang for someone from the Newcastle, England area. It seemed apropos to use at the time.