I posted what I did because there was a personal attack post and I was trying to defuse escalation.
Thanks, Lott, but I don't want to clutter up this thread with material irrelevant to Hill.
Not sure if what he was referring to, but for context, I found an exchange with tdmills in the the Allen Robinson thread (8-3-14 if he or anybody else wants to verify) where I posted a highlight of him after the catch running through nearly the entire defense, he responded it was all reserves, I responded something to the effect that even with that qualifier, it didn't look to me like it was something any WR could do, and besides, just about any prospect from any year no doubt makes plays against reserves. He said this response was offensive. I had no idea what he was talking about, said no offense intended, but I stood by what I said, would have to agree to disagree, and may have invited him to counter the response (maybe by pointing to other prospects who didn't make big plays against reserves). Which I think he declined to do, reiterated that the play was against reserves and not that impressive to him, and I thought agreed to disagree.
Perhaps if he wants to discuss this further, he can do so in a PM (only bringing it up here because he did, and it raised a question). I'm not addressing it here any more.
* Since he brought up Watkins, also, I'll address that quickly, I don't recall any specific exchanges like the above, but do remember well the general tenor of the Watkins discussion, in several threads. In one instance, I may have posted another highlight, or been commenting about the play (which I do sometimes, like the 2014 Hill highlights upthread recently) where Watkins runs over a tackler and has a long TD. He responded that it was poor tackling form. I may have responded that if every prospect always met a defense with 11 players that always employed textbook, flawless tackling form, EVERYBODY would have less highlights. This may come across as sarcastic, I do employ something called reductio ad absurdum at times, maybe to a fault.
My sense is that, you can always find things to not like about a prospect, imo, this objection is a case in point. If td mills employs that method consistently with prospects he likes as well as dislikes, than he is being consistent and good for him if it works for him. Maybe there are lots of posts in the Gurley thread where the same kind of caution is exercised, and others are warned that some of the big plays came against less than perfect tackling technique, I don't know. If so, that would be an example of a consistent method across the board. Maybe philosophically, I agree more with Mayock, who related a scout telling him, show me what a player can do, not can't do. I don't watch copious film, we have many on staff that do, and I respect them a lot and value their opinions. I completely appreciate the caveat about youtube scouting.
On the other hand, if I was an NBA exec, and was invited to a try out a phenom who had never played in high school or college, and was maybe a street ball legend, and he was going up against the NBA's best in a scrimmage, and running rings around them with a 4.2 40, 48" VJ, dunking from the top of the key, 20 for 20 from the 3 point line, was 6'9" and 250 lbs., making no look behind the back, perfect strike alley oop dunk passes from full court, getting 30 rebounds, he scores 100 points with 20 assists, and 5 blocked shots, and the players come off exhausted saying he is the greatest player that ever lived, I'm probably not going to say I'll have to hold off and reserve judgement until I see him in the league for a few years where he can amass a body of work. If in a baseball tryout, a centerfielder is running down line drives hit to the left and right field foul pole, throwing ropes on the fly from the center field wall with an arm that smokes Roberto Clemente, and going up against the best pitchers in the organization, goes 100 for 100 home runs, same thing. This an extreme exaggeration, but sometimes information can be gleaned in a short time. I didn't break down film, but based on highlights, started the OBJ thread and I think noted some of the traits and attributes that made him successful, I had read scouting reports, so that no doubt contributed to my views. I didn't break down Hill film, either, but based on what I saw, I thought he had the potential to be very good. I get some wrong. I'm closely identified with Bradford for thinking he was better than his surroundings indicated early in his career. I didn't foresee back to back torn ACLs. Chip Kelly has resurrected interest in him, rehabilitated his image to an extent, and I think it is fair to say, the way he has used his imagination to envision what he could do in the PHI system and scheme (dovetailing with the skills he flashed in the Oklahoma spread) is more consistent with advocates like me than the most extreme detractors. Certainly none of them would have expected him to fetch something like Foles, a second AND relieving the Rams of an expensive 2015 contract without a prior restructure and trade deal. But he still needs to prove he can stay healthy, I kept him in multiple leagues where his value was obviously non-existent, but to reword something Mr. Wolf said in Pulp Fiction while helping Travolta and Jackson clean up a mess after an unintentional gun discharge while driving misadventure, I'm not uncorking the champagne just yet.
But I digress. Not just with any exchanges td mills and I may have had, but the fact that he was 6'1" was a major bone of contention for many. Was it important or not? I recognize many of the best WRs are taller, I just question whether this is some kind of immutable, ironclad "law". td mills noted that 6'2" was a sort of a minimum height threshold that was important to him. I may have probed to see if this was arbitrary, a case of possibly conflating historical artefact and HAPPENSTANCE. In other words, at the time, Dez Bryant was maybe the shortest ACTIVE elite WR (he is also about 220+ lbs., another attribute that makes him great, and that is bigger than Watkins, but that is another story, I was focusing on the importance of height), at 6'2". I think I asked, if he had been 6'1", would he revise his criteria to making 6'1" (the height of Dez Bryant, in this thought experiment) the new threshold? Anyways, when pressed, ultimately, he acknowledged 6'2" being important was his opinion because it lined up with trending contemporary historical exemplars. My take, from now, hasn't changed much. Watkins was injured and didn't have great QB play, I'm interested to see what he can do if either or both of those change. Hypothetically, if OBJ was part of identical octuplets, than we could have a case where eight of the top 10 WRs were 6'0". This is what I mean by historical accident or artefact. Maybe it is that way now, but does it HAVE to be that way? Is this some kind of immutable, ironclad law. Are less people arguing about the height difference between Kevin White and Amari Cooper in this draft cycle or iteration, because of the recent cautionary tale of OBJ, and investing too much importance to height, at the exclusion of other factors? I don't know, but my guess, this would be the case to some extent. In fairness, height was just one of td mills criteria. The two others I recall, because I want to take pains to not misrepresent him and be unfair on this, were having a great QB like Rodgers (and I think Jordy Nelson and Cobb were BOTH very productive last year, so point taken there), or great athleticsm. On that point, we need to look no further than OBJ's success, one of the greatest rookie seasons ever at any position, for support and confirmation. Watkins ran as fast as OBJ, but didn't test athletically as well, not close really. Back to the debates that raged last year, many, many, many posts and exchanges focused on height EXCLUSIVELY. Perhaps the success of OBJ, will have others looking more at athleticism as an attribute, which in his case, showed how strictly height-based critiques (not saying td mills were, they weren't, but many were) could be very narrow and limited, to the point of being flat wrong and absurdly irrelevant.
*Last year, I was greatly helped in resolving to my own satisfaction some of these knotty, thorny, vexing questions about the importance OR NOT of height for a WR, by the below article, a FBG collaboration/joint by a statistician/historian and scout, respectively. The KEY, FUNDAMENTAL point, in my estimation, was that pedigree (the spot at which they were drafted) already baked in and accounted for differences in height. Simply, a 6'0" WR like Beckham, if he were taken at 1.1, would be expected to do no differently (accounting for expected slight deviations statistically that fell within the norm) than one 6'2", 6'5", whatever. I found it compelling, and a refutation of the pure, strictly height-based critique (again, not saying this describes td mills method, I was clear in stating the opposite, but it did seem to be brandished loosely by many - like any tool, it can be a pretty blunt instrument if not wielded carefully). They gave a lot of good examples where, while some tall WRs did well and average height or short ones bad, people tended to forget the converse, average height WRs like Marvin Harrison or Isaac Bruce that were all time greats, and ones like Limas Sweed and Jonathan Baldwin that were busts. Others can check it out to come to their own concusions about its merits. There is a presumption, with the "height being baked in" point, that these high pedigree short WRs compensate for not being able to post up like a power forward such as Kelvin Benjamin, by being able to explode out of their cuts like (and ignoring pedigree precision for a moment just to illustrate the general concept) like OBJ. Or think Antonio Brown, a current significant outlier in the past few years among his redwood and skyscraper WR counterparts and peers, arguably THE most significant contra-indicator to excessive importance being given to height as a rigid exclusionary criteria against projecting high level WR success.
WR Size: Is It Valid Analysis by Chase Stuart and Matt Waldman
http://mattwaldmanrsp.com/2014/06/02/wrsizeisitvalidanalysis/
