SSOG

I think it would be if it were possible. The issue is that there's no way to compare a "fresh" 30 year old LaDainian Tomlinson with a "worn down" 30 year old LaDainian Tomlinson because there's only one LaDainian Tomlinson. We have no way of really knowing how long a guy like Tomlinson, Faulk, or Portis could've played if he hadn't been worked into the ground from the age of 20-27. Without the wear and tear, maybe they could've lasted longer. I think it makes sense to consider mileage as a negative, even if there's nothing concrete in the data to support it. On the flipside, the fact that a ba

John Riggins and Mike Anderson were also backs that had great older seasons after light workloads early in their career. Still, I agree with you that "mileage" is an answer in search of a question. It's intuitively appealing, especially given the fact that overuse over a short time frame is generally considered to be bad- witness guys like Larry Johnson, Shaun Alexander, or Ricky Williams getting run into the ground in a single season. If we agree that too much workload in one year can be bad, it makes sense that too much workload over an entire career can be bad, too. It's just not really sup

The same could easily be said about Frank Gore and Steven Jackson, who are both the same age as Sproles, who are both on teams that know how to use them and who are both guaranteed to get their touches this season (or as guaranteed as a 30-year-old back can possibly be), and who both have a dynasty ADP after Stewart's (Gore is the next back off the board, and SJax comes off 5 RBs and 17 picks after Stewart). What makes Gore and Jackson different from Sproles? Are owners underrating Sproles' age risk? Are they overrating Gore's and Jackson's? Seriously? Gore and SJax have had a lot more touche

The same could easily be said about Frank Gore and Steven Jackson, who are both the same age as Sproles, who are both on teams that know how to use them and who are both guaranteed to get their touches this season (or as guaranteed as a 30-year-old back can possibly be), and who both have a dynasty ADP after Stewart's (Gore is the next back off the board, and SJax comes off 5 RBs and 17 picks after Stewart). What makes Gore and Jackson different from Sproles? Are owners underrating Sproles' age risk? Are they overrating Gore's and Jackson's?

Oh yeah, Stewart is absolutely a flawed asset. That situation is toxic, and who knows if it'll ever revert back to 2011 levels or remain at 2012 levels going forward? Who knows how the carries are going to be broken out? I'm not arguing for Stewart as a top 12 dynasty RB, here. According to the DLF mocks, Stewart's being drafted as RB23. Looking at the RBs around him, that seems out of whack to me. Darren Sproles is going 2 rounds before Stewart, despite being 4 years older, never having double-digit TDs, and only topping 400 rushing yards once. Yeah, he gets 80 receptions a year, but... two r

Oh yeah, Stewart is absolutely a flawed asset. That situation is toxic, and who knows if it'll ever revert back to 2011 levels or remain at 2012 levels going forward? Who knows how the carries are going to be broken out? I'm not arguing for Stewart as a top 12 dynasty RB, here. According to the DLF mocks, Stewart's being drafted as RB23. Looking at the RBs around him, that seems out of whack to me. Darren Sproles is going 2 rounds before Stewart, despite being 4 years older, never having double-digit TDs, and only topping 400 rushing yards once. Yeah, he gets 80 receptions a year, but... two r

Since 2008- Yards per carry: 5.0 DeAngelo 4.7 Stewart 4.0 Goodson 3.4 Tolbert Also, moving beyond YPC (which is a pretty flawed metric heavily influenced by usage patterns), you've got the following stats: 2008 DVOA: Williams (24.9%, 1st overall), Stewart (4.6%, 13th overall) 2009 DVOA: Stewart (12.8%, 8th overall), Williams (11.3%, 10th overall) 2010 DVOA: Stewart (-12.2%, 37th overall), Goodson (-15.3%, 52nd overall), Williams (-17.2%, not enough carries to be ranked) 2011 DVOA: Stewart (23.4%, 2nd overall), Williams (18.0%, 3rd) 2012 DVOA: Williams (-6.6%, 26th overall), Stewart (-18.5%, no

Talk about revisionist. If all they needed to do is meet the salary floor they could have overpaid a someone just for that year, not locked up Williams with a $21M guaranteed contract.It's only revisionist if I didn't believe it at the time. Look, even if we leave aside all talk about WHY they did what they did and just present the facts on the ground, it's pretty compelling. Up through 2010, Carolina was shedding money like their life depended on it. The front office even acknowledged that that was what they were doing- using the uncapped season to shed salary. Then, the new CBA was signed,

I don't think that's a valid assumption. I think all it means is that former GM Hurney was an idiot with the owner's money. And with a lot of other things -- IMO one of the worst GMs in the league when he was in there. Now he's gone.The situation is more complicated than that. Leading up to the end of the CBA, Jerry Richardson issued a mandate to be incredibly cheap (I'm sure he'd call it "cautious") until he saw what the new CBA looked like. Carolina purged assets and cleared cap space like it was their full-time job, leading to the 2010 season where Carolina was so talent deprived that e

Rule of thumb #102: all rules of thumb are sometimes wrong, even this one.

Yeah, the dynasty distinction is very important. I find that the redraft market tends to be very, very good at pricing Stewart. Whatever his redraft ADP winds up being, I feel pretty confident that it will represent a fair and accurate value for him.

Value is pretty relevant when discussing Stewart. If you buy him as rb22 in a startup and he gives you three top-5 seasons, that's worth a lot more than if you buy Peterson as rb1 and he does the same. That's what I was saying about reaching a point in the draft where upside begins to far outweigh downside. As for consistency... It's not the key to a great player. Great players are often consistent, but that gets the causal arrow backward- players that score a lot of point tend to have fewer games where they don't score many points, sure, but that's because they score so many points. Players w

He was the #5 fantasy RB over the last half of the season, the #3 fantasy back in week 15, and the #1 fantasy back in week 16 championship games (plus #10 in week 17 for those guys still playing at that point). He's not the reason I made the playoffs (although some big games down the stretch sure helped), but I went from barely a playoff team to blowing the doors off of people because my RB2 went from spot starter to top 3 stud. When Peterson performed like a top3 back that year, he helped his teams, but they spent a top3 pick to get him. Stewart's ADP that year was outside of the top 24 entir

PFF loves him. He might not have the best ypc, but he's pretty consistently been the top graded RB on the team. Prior to last year, they ran an "elusiveness score" retrospective and Jon Stewart was the best back in the league at evading or breaking tackles since they started grading. Last year, Stewart was pants... but prior to that, he was legitimately great. Plus he has the most wicked stiff arm in the entire league. Absolutely filthy. It just remains to be seen whether last year was a harbinger of things to come, or the lingering effects of his preseason injury. I still like him towards the