Mark Wimer (FBG staff member) has Steven Jackson ranked 31st in his overall rankings and ranked as the 16th best RB.
I can't think of 30 players that I would take before SJax or 15 RB's
So I take it Wimer has SJax as a bust this year???
This seems way off base to me but he is the Expert!!!
Any thoughts on this?
Hey Yitbos69 and Sharks,It just happens that I recently wrote a faceoff for the site on Steven Jackson and my relatively low ranking of him, which I expect to be posted soon. I'll post it below and then expand on my comments below that:
The St. Louis Rams are moving into 2006 with a new head coach, Scott Linehan, and a new, more run-oriented offense. 33 year old Marshall Faulk’s knees are flaring up, and he may need season-ending surgery – Steven Jackson is locked in as the Ram’s top running back. So what’s not to like?
Plenty – starting with the fact that the offense is well behind the defense in absorbing their new system, according to coach Linehan. After mini-
camps, the team has approximately 40% of the offense in place and has yet to work on installing red-zone plays and other “special situation” schemes (
http://www.stlouisrams.com/article/54218/). If the offense stumbles early in the season, Jackson’s owners will feel the pinch.
Second of all, the offensive line has spent years pass blocking with little emphasis on the running game, and the unit has several question marks. Especially worrisome are the OG’s, with RG Adam Timmerman (he’s 35 this year, along with C Andy McCollum) slowing down, and last year’s LG Claude Terrell struggling so far – he’s being challenged for his starting spot by Richie Incognito. Last year the Rams managed an average of 4.0 yards per carry, which is not outstanding.
Finally, Jackson wore down during the second half of 2005 – he scored only 3 TDs from week 8 onwards, and posted only 3 games with 100+ combined yards during that span. Week 11 vs. Arizona (12/6/0 rushing and 3/16/0) and week 13 vs. Washington (11/24/0 rushing and 4/18/0 receiving), he struggled to move the ball at all. Jackson handled the ball 297 times over 15 games last season (254/1046/8 rushing and 43/320/2 receiving), but was only 16th among fantasy RBs in fantasy points per game (
Jackson PPG 2005(13.11 fantasy points per game)).
Given the huge transition that the Rams’ offense is undergoing, and considering all the other offensive stars on this team (Torry Holt, Issac Bruce and emerging star Kevin Curtis), it is premature to believe Jackson will vault into the top 10 fantasy RBs. We need to wait and see how the new offense functions when the pads go on and the hitting starts, at the very minimum. Right now, I believe Jackson boosters are overly enthusiastic about his 2006 prospects.
Look at Steven Jackson's game logs last year:
Jackson by Game, 2005
You'll see that he had only 2 100+ rushing games last year, and his TD production tanked in the second half of the year.
As I noted above, Jackson will very likely not have much competition for carries from Marshall Faulk this year - but his performance on a game-by-game basis last year (especially the 2nd half of the year, when Faulk was pretty limited due to his degenerating knees already) doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in my mind.
There is a lot of ground for the Rams to cover between the start of training camp and the start of the regular season, and we have yet to see how their new offense actually operates when facing a bona-fide NFL defense at full speed. IMO, it is early to be ranking Jackson in the top 10 at RB until we see if the Rams can get the new running game/blocking schemes successfully installed. I was especially alarmed when I read that they haven't even begun working on red zone situations/schemes yet, even on the fundamental footwork/playcalling level - let alone full speed action against a "stacked" defensive front.
On my RB board, there are a lot of guys ahead of Jackson who are in better situations, IMO. Clinton Portis sounds like he loves Al Saunder's new scheme in Washington, and I've read a lot of positive reveiws of the progress Washington (and particularly, Portis, are making in installing it). Cadillac Williams has had a year to absorb Gruden's complex offense (and he was pretty good in it as a rookie). Willie Parker doesn't have the Bus around to soak up goal-line situations. Foster gets the chance to be a featured back for a full year, and he's well-versed in Carolina's offense. And so forth. When I did my projections for the running backs, based on my assessment of their probable output, the guys above Jackson simply looked stronger production-wise to me.
In conclusion, it's not that I think Jackson will stink this year (1200-1300 yards rushing, 8-9 TDs, with 250-350 yards receiving and 1-2 TDs is my current projections), it's just I think he'll fall outside of RB1 range in production.
***As a side note, before someone pulls up a list of actual rushing/receiving statistics from last year, or averages from 2000-2004, or whatever, and tells me that I'm nuts for projecting the #16 back to hit those numbers, I'll point out that my projections in the vast majority of cases are for a full 16 game slate (except in cases of a known, degenerative condition like Marshall Faulks' knees or a rehabbing injury situation like Daunte Culpepper's catastrophic knee injury that make a full season for the player in question highly questionable before the fact of the approaching season - these exceptions happen on a case by case basis).
However, for example, out of last year's top 20 backs, only 9 played a full slate of 16 games. IMO, it is impossible to predict the many random situations which occur every year that cost even top players 1-3 games, or parts of games that ad up to 1-3 games (the flu, cramps, heat exhaustion, family tragedy/funerals, tweaked hamstring, etc.), so projections necessarily skew high (when compared to prior years' actual statistics for the entire season) the further down the rankings a person proceeds, as often the guys in the 10-30 (and below) range have often missed some time during an actual NFL season, for whatever reasons that cost a particular player a game here and there. However, my projections at any particular ranking are near the Points per Game #'s at those positions compared to prior year actuals (depending on the year or range of years that a critic may or may not include in their sample). - MW
to Mark.
)
I'd like to see an explanation for every ranking ideally, though I realize that would be quite a bit of work. Then I could choose whether or not I wanted to read all the justifications on Jackson at #7.
