To further the discussion on Vereen's target rate last year, he had 4 games with 10+ targets.
Week 1 @BUF: 7 catches on 10 targets. No Gronk or Dobson, Amendola banged up.
Week 10 @CAR: 8 catches on 11 targets. No Gronk or Amendola, Dobson banged up.
Week 11 DEN: 8 catches on 11 targets. No Dobson, no Boyce
Week 13 CLE: 12 catches on 17 targets. No Dobson, no Thompkins, Amendola and Gronk banged up (ACL injury early in game).
As I mentioned earlier, if the Pats have a cupboard stocked with healthy weapons on offense, I would suggest that a lot will change in who gets the ball. Last year, it seemed players got a lot of opportunities out of necessity, not necessarily based on them being the best guy for the job.
I wholeheartedly disagree with that last paragraph...after Gronk the two best weapons (and most trusted by Brady) on the Pats are Edelman and Vereen...and I believe it's by a lot as well...if healthy I look for them to duplicate last year's production (for Vereen you have to take the #'s over a 16 game schedule)...right now the Pats don't have a TE after Gronk that is a factor in the passing game...Boyce might not make the team...while he has a lot of upside Dobson is still questionable health-wise...Thompkins looks like he could be solid but he's still somewhat of an unknown...LaFell can be a factor but I just don't see big numbers from him...Amendola is a huge wildcard...he looked real good in week 1 but was never the same after his injury...hopefully his production increases...and if he can stay on the field it should...
Overall I see Brady having bigger numbers than last year (especially if Gronk is healthy) and the Pats should be deeper at the skill position than last year...while both Dobson and Amendola have a chance to make a jump this year I don't see it coming at the expense of Vereen and Edelman...if they do make that jump I see it greatly helping Brady in putting up better #'s than he did in 2013...
Feel free to disagree, but project the Pats 2014 offense if all the players are healthy, and I don't see Vereen getting 2013 x 2 since he only played in half the games and Edelman getting the same amount of targets.
So account for 16 games for Gronk instead of essentially 6.
16 games for LaFell vs. 0.
16 games for Dobson vs. 11 or 12.
16 games for Amendola instead of 12 . . . all of which where he was nowhere near 100%.
16 games for White vs. 0.
Edelman had 151 targets. Double Vereen's targets from last year would by 138 targets. That would be 289 targets between just those two guy.
I can't agree or disagree on the Brady statement about him having bigger numbers compared to last year. If bigger means more yards and TDs, I agree. If bigger numbers means more passing attempts, then I would disagree. I would guess that better defense = fewer passing attempts this season for Brady. If I had to guess, they will try to run clock more than last year, as I think they will be playing from ahead instead of behind a lot more this season if the defense really is better this year. So I would bump Brady's attempts down by 50 from last year and bump up their rushing attempts some.
well, I think your holistic methodology in making projections is fairly rational and kind of good because it keeps things grounded, but I think it's also a bit flawed in certain ways when trying to divine just one particular guy.
so, for example, you've set out to account for the following
So account for 16 games for Gronk instead of essentially 6.
16 games for LaFell vs. 0.
16 games for Dobson vs. 11 or 12.
16 games for Amendola instead of 12 . . . all of which where he was nowhere near 100%.
16 games for White vs. 0.
but we all know there will be missing games, just not who or how many ---- all these guys can't play 16.
if all these receivers are playing 16 games it just means they each play fewer snaps in each game.
if I compare vereen to 'all others', and let's just say all others constitute 6 guys --- that's 16 vereen-games as compared with 96 other receiver-games, so just through statistics it's more likely that we lose some of the 96 than the 16, and those missed targets just get shuffled around.
it's fair to say that vereen still might miss time, but that becomes kind of irrelevant, as you bear that risk from anybody on your roster, and would just plug in some guy off your bench, introducing outside production to what would otherwise be a closed system.
maybe I get 3 weeks of chris johnson's production added into my vereen slot that isn't accounted for in your patriots team projection, which is why I prefer ppg to yearly totals based on 16 games.
I think the problem with the holistic method is so much of a guy's year end total is simply based on games played and games missed, and we have no way to guess on that.
so, you can easily have a 50 target team swing just based on what brady throws, for example, then we have all these +/- targets on each guy just based on guessing, and on top of that we need to account for the unknown missing games, so while your closed system might seem to total up correctly when it's based on the assumptions of everybody playing, in reality, there will be huge variance on the moving parts within the whole, and just a swing of 30 on 1 guy is significant.
I don't know who will miss time, but I know it's unlikely nobody misses time.
it's true that guys like lafell will end up with some targets, and this other guy who missed games might play more games, etc, but there won't be 5 or 6 receivers on the field, so whoever is out there will just steal from the other guy, but we have no idea which of these guys in particular will be able to stay on the field, although I think it's pretty likely vereen maintains an approximation of his snaps, unless you really feel white is a big threat -- which is always possible.
the point being that it's not like we'll see 50% of the snaps as 4 wr + gronk.
edit: to keep this more on vereen, let's say I'm guesstimating some amount of production for white based on making numbers up in my imagination --- it makes a big difference how those numbers are distributed.
let's say I give white and vereen equal production --- do they both play all 16 with white stealing half of vereen's production, or is vereen missing half the season, with white filling in the other half?
either way, the numbers add up the same for my year end team total.
