Thursday, September 10, 2009

Sporting News Manages to Be Even More Full of Crap Than ESPN

While perusing the DMV on Mr Irrelevant this morning, I came across this embarrassing article from the Sporting news on the top-100 players in the NFL. This list did come from a supposed panel of experts, but come on, this is awful, and I'm not just saying that because it is very different from the DCLS Redskin rankings, which used far different criteria. Age is excluded here, but name-players are far and away overvalued, although I do enjoy seeing Fat Albert as the #1 defensive player (and also find it hard to believe that he isn't as good as Fitzgerald or LDT right now).

Some of the lowlights:

  • Ray Lewis #11.
  • Brees behind Big Ben.
  • Nnamdi Asomugha is the #8 defensive player, yet is probably the best player in the league relative to his position; he is head and shoulders above every other CB.
  • Brian Dawkins at #39. Maybe he ranked there about 8 years ago. Find me the GM who thinks he is better than LaRon Landry and I will show you the Cincinnati Bengals.
  • TO at #33 is probably the most egregious listing. There is a place for over the hill receivers like him, Dancing With The Stars, not a list of top-100 NFL players this season.
  • No wait, Vick at #88 is just absurd. He hasn't played in 2 years and is a 3rd string QB. Wow. Carson Palmer, Aaron Rodgers, and Tony Homo did not make the list.
I could run Football Outsiders metrics for days explaining the horror of this list, but I'm getting dizzy just trying to wrap my head around its logic. Maybe they used some votes from a few years ago to boost the old guys...

(Image courtesy of thebestgspot.com)

3 comments:

  1. Calm down. Over 100 people voted and they probably didn't spend too much time thinking about it. After the first 5 or 10, no one really cares. You are obviously the kind of person who ranks teams on ESPN.com every week for power rankings hoping to be part of the nation's consensus. However, you are obviously not one of those people who does not give a shit who comes in 15th, 18th or 29th. Most people are. So, relax.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous (cool name),

    There's nothing wrong with identifying something that's pretty egregious and dissecting it. This is why we blog...

    ReplyDelete
  3. But that list is not even close to being right. Ray Lewis and TO are not 5 spots off, they're more like 60 spots off.

    Dawkins is probably not even the #39 Safety in the NFL, let alone overall player.

    Child please!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.