Curtis Samuel is not killing drives

[MasterAwesome]

2 hours ago, Icege said:

That phrase "cherry picked" is being used to invalidate the evidence presented, but have any of you actually gone thru and counted the individual plays on display?

Because it's a lot of fuging cherries

It's quite literally cherry-picking...if you don't think so, you should look up the definition.  You're talking about maybe 5 bad overthrows out of a sample size of 90 targets.  I question whether you actually watched your own video if you think all of those throws in the first clip were egregious cases of Allen missing an open Curtis Samuel.  Many of those were in tight coverage which support the statistical evidence that suggests Samuel is among the worst in the league in separation.  Other than the blatant overthrows, you can probably consider most of those incompletions in the video "50/50 balls" and say maybe Samuel could have snagged a few of those if they were placed better, but Samuel has not exactly proven to be proficient with contested catches/jump-ball situations.

You asked someone to address your videos and yet you continue to just throw out vague assertions...doesn't seem like you're interested in actually engaging in any fruitful discussion.  You presenting a "Worst of" compilation (created by a Twitter user with 75% of his page dedicated to trashing Kyle Allen) as "evidence" is laughable.  You're basically the equivalent of that guy who prioritizes anecdotal evidence over statistical data. 

Imagine there's a restaurant that's rated 4.9/5 stars on Yelp, based off of 200 reviews, and you take the 10 worst reviews of 1-star and use those to make the argument that it is a terrible restaurant.  Then when people try to refute your claim, you reply with "wow so are you just going to flat out ignore that evidence then??".

[Icege]

Do we all agree that if the examples available from the OP are "cherry picked," that would mean that this is a very small sample size used to make an issue seem bigger than it really is, yes? Meaning that were just a couple of examples shown, and that it doesn't actually show anything?

Curtis Samuel has received 89 targets this season. 65.6% of those balls were deemed catchable. That means ~58 of those targets were catchable (or that 31 of those throws were deemed uncatchable, however you want to present it).

There are 15 unique examples (meaning not counting duplicates) in the two threads mentioned in the OP.

How are 15 video examples of 31 bad throws considered "cherry picked?" That is a huge difference between 10 reviews out of 200. 15 out of 31 almost literally half of the "reviews" when it comes to Kyle Allen being the issue with drives being killed and not Curtis Samuel.

[MasterAwesome]

1 hour ago, Icege said:

Do we all agree that if the examples available from the OP are "cherry picked," that would mean that this is a very small sample size used to make an issue seem bigger than it really is, yes? Meaning that were just a couple of examples shown, and that it doesn't actually show anything?

Curtis Samuel has received 89 targets this season. 65.6% of those balls were deemed catchable. That means ~58 of those targets were catchable (or that 31 of those throws were deemed uncatchable, however you want to present it).

There are 15 unique examples (meaning not counting duplicates) in the two threads mentioned in the OP.

How are 15 video examples of 31 bad throws considered "cherry picked?" That is a huge difference between 10 reviews out of 200. 15 out of 31 almost literally half of the "reviews" when it comes to Kyle Allen being the issue with drives being killed and not Curtis Samuel.

The fact that you're only looking at the "bad throws" is precisely what I mean by cherry-picking.  When assessing whether the QB is the problem, the WR is the problem, or whether they're both part of the problem, you don't simply look at only the plays where the QB makes a poor throw lol.  No poo you're gonna come away thinking it's all on Kyle Allen.  Going back to the restaurant analogy: that's like filtering out the 3-5 star reviews and only looking at 1 and 2-star reviews and then picking some reviews within that already cherry-picked subset to say the restaurant sucks.

What is your criteria for "drives being killed"?  Are those 3rd down misses?  Cause only like 2 or 3 of your clips were even on 3rd down.  If you're just talking about missed throws, that's fine...I just need clarification cause you keep using this phrasing of "killing drives".

You're making an incredibly bold claim that Samuel is not a part of the problem in the slightest, while completely disregarding/failing to even acknowledge the repeatedly mentioned negative metrics like his drops and his low separation.  And you have the nerve to state that other people aren't interested in the facts?  Being tied for 3rd worst in the league in drops is not a part of the problem?  How do you choose to rationalize that?  Or are you going to continue to ignore it?

Also I counted 9 throws between your two videos...where are the others?

[Icege]

Both of those tweets are the start of threads. If you click on them in twitter, they have more videos in their replies. In total, there are 15 unique plays between them.

The statistic listed was that Curtis Samuel is in the bottom 5 when it comes to being thrown a catchable ball. This stat was doubted and accusations of cherry picking were made. The stat cited shows that Curtis Samuel was on the receiving end of 31 uncatchable passes thrown by his QB. 15 of those 31 passes were shown in the supporting evidence.

At this point, the insinuation is that the other 16 examples are all things such as Kyle Allen having to throw the ball away or Curtis Samuel running a bad route. That is ridiculous and intellectually dishonest.

 

Samuel has 6 drops and is averaging over 1.5yds of separation despite being given over 5yds of cushion. Yes, he has made mistakes. Is he killing drives? No. Kyle Allen is killing this offense. The numbers are right there in plain view. Curtis Samuel is a quality WR that is unable to be used for what he does best (speed) because our QB strains more than Matt Ryan to chuck the deep ball.

Yet, some folks here want to act like Curtis Samuel "is still an RB trying to learn WR."

It's a lazy narrative, and at times suspicious. There wasn't that type of concern when folks were saying "CMC should just play slot WR."

[MasterAwesome]

18 hours ago, Icege said:

Both of those tweets are the start of threads. If you click on them in twitter, they have more videos in their replies. In total, there are 15 unique plays between them.

The statistic listed was that Curtis Samuel is in the bottom 5 when it comes to being thrown a catchable ball. This stat was doubted and accusations of cherry picking were made. The stat cited shows that Curtis Samuel was on the receiving end of 31 uncatchable passes thrown by his QB. 15 of those 31 passes were shown in the supporting evidence.

At this point, the insinuation is that the other 16 examples are all things such as Kyle Allen having to throw the ball away or Curtis Samuel running a bad route. That is ridiculous and intellectually dishonest.

 

Samuel has 6 drops and is averaging over 1.5yds of separation despite being given over 5yds of cushion. Yes, he has made mistakes. Is he killing drives? No. Kyle Allen is killing this offense. The numbers are right there in plain view. Curtis Samuel is a quality WR that is unable to be used for what he does best (speed) because our QB strains more than Matt Ryan to chuck the deep ball.

Yet, some folks here want to act like Curtis Samuel "is still an RB trying to learn WR."

It's a lazy narrative, and at times suspicious. There wasn't that type of concern when folks were saying "CMC should just play slot WR."

Why are you being so weird...just quote me lol.  Do you not want me to see and respond to your post?

There was no such insinuation on my part...that was simply your preconceived inference.  Although if you want to make the claim that every one of those 15 video examples you have pointed out are examples of "uncatchable" passes, then that makes me highly skeptical of that statistic.  That would suggest that some of these 31 uncatchable passes are due to extremely tight coverage where Samuel was simply unable to separate from his man.  Do you acknowledge that Samuel was blanketed on many of those clips?  If so, then you can't entirely place the blame on Allen for not throwing a "catchable ball" when Samuel is not in position to catch these balls.  Rather, you'd place the blame on Allen for making a poor decision to throw that pass in the first place.  Without knowing the criteria for how a pass is designated as "catchable" or "uncatchable", I'm not comfortable putting all my eggs in that basket and using that statistic as the be-all end-all as you appear to be doing. 

For example, that second pass in the first video against the Packers was a shitty throw, but Samuel adjusted and came back to the ball and ultimately couldn't come down with it.  If the WR had a reasonable chance to catch the pass after an adjustment, is that deemed "uncatchable" by the metric you cited?  WRs adjust to poor throws all the time.  That obviously doesn't mean Samuel should get the fault for that incompletion, but calling that pass "uncatchable" when he clearly had a chance to catch it is a stretch IMO.  Let's say my slow untalented ass ran out on the football field and my QB forced passes to me in blanket coverage that continuously got batted away...are those passes considered uncatchable or catchable?  At the very least, this is highly subjective and so it should be used as part of the overall evaluation/assessment (along with his drops and lack of separation)...not the entire thing.  

My point, and I'm not sure how many other ways I can phrase this, is that you're ignoring the totality of Samuel's targets and JUST looking at one very skewed subset...the "uncatchable passes".  THAT'S the cherry-picking, not the 15 out of 31 or whatever you keep thinking the cherry-picking is.  That's like arguing whether a QB is good or not and looking at only his incompleted passes.  Then being like "okay well within those incompletions, it looks like 90% of those were bad throws or poor decisions and 10% were dropped passes from the receivers.  So mostly those incompletions were the QB's fault so he's bad".  You can't just ignore every "catchable pass" and focus on the "uncatchable", that's hella cherry-picking...that is exactly how you end up ignoring Samuel's drops, since those are "catchable", so you are able to just outright dismiss them within this data subset of yours.

How do you acknowledge he has 6 drops and then quickly proceed to say he hasn't killed any drives?  1.5 yards of separation per route is not at all impressive, ESPECIALLY considering the 5 yards of cushion on average per play...you realize that much cushion makes separation much easier on short to intermediate routes, right?  How many times have we blasted Rivera and this defense for soft coverage that routinely gives up 10 yard slants and curls?  Unless you honestly think we just send him on streaks every play...which is not a point anyone would make who has even seen a single Panthers game.

What are you basing Curtis Samuel being a "quality WR" on, exactly?  The only time he has excelled in this league is apparently in training camp...otherwise he hasn't done much to prove himself yet, neither with Cam nor Allen.  He is incredibly talented and has a high ceiling, but lots of players do and ultimately never get close to it.  I do think a large portion of Samuel's shortcomings can be attributed to Kyle Allen, the o-line, and the playcalling, but for you to want to exculpate Samuel and say he is not even part of the problem is completely ridiculous and indicative of how much coddling we do of the fan favorites.

If you're intent on attaching racial prejudices to claims, then did you call out those posters who were saying "CMC should just play slot WR" for some kind of insinuation that white people can't play the running back position?  That seems far more egregious than this "suspicious" narrative that Curtis Samuel "is still an RB trying to learn WR"...can you explain the racial undertones of that statement?  It isn't a contentious statement to say that Samuel was extremely raw as a WR coming out of the draft...he was used as a gadget player and spent significant snaps at RB.  The body-catching is a valid criticism of his and is not indicative of a refined receiver.

[Icege]

Don't mind me, just preaching the truth

https://theriotreport.com/why-curtis-samuel-is-actually-having-a-great-2019/

 

[Icege]

Curtis Samuel is "blanketed" but has better separation than DJ Moore (1.72 vs 1.36). Samuel is ranked #24 to Moore's #42, and we all agree that DJ is good (I hope?). Samuel also gets on avg the 3rd most cushion out of all receivers.

The stats and tape don't line up with the rebuttals provided. Curtis Samuel is a good WR.

Btw, why is it that folks like to claim that Cam "can't throw a WR open" but when Kyle Allen can't throw to an open WR it isn't Kyle's fault?

[Harbingers]

26 minutes ago, Icege said:

Curtis Samuel is "blanketed" but has better separation than DJ Moore (1.72 vs 1.36). Samuel is ranked #24 to Moore's #42, and we all agree that DJ is good (I hope?). Samuel also gets on avg the 3rd most cushion out of all receivers.

The stats and tape don't line up with the rebuttals provided. Curtis Samuel is a good WR.

Habitual body catcher = not so good WR. 

Not getting YAC or to the first down marker before the throw = not so good WR. 

He’s good at the specialty roles he plays and the endzone. He’s improved the last few games, otherwise or this little stat thing comparison wouldn’t make any sense. 

Overall: Not a complete loss this season but not the caliber people were hoping for. 

[TheRumGone]

Curtis is what I would call a “soft” wr after this year. Which kind of takes me by surprise when he was taking on contact last year and fighting through stuff. 
 

he reminds me a lot of Ginn but with better route running, short area quickness. The alligator arm stuff is overblown. We need a qb who can connect with him deep to really see what he can become. Unfortunately next year is the last year of his contract so this new management/coaching staff need to make a good decision whether to resign him before the season to get a really good deal or let him test free agency IF he explodes next year. Lots of “ifs.” Hate to lose a guy if he’s on the precipice.

[Moo Daeng]

He has one of the worst catch percentages in the league and also up there in drops. He has a decent separation stat because that is based on separation amount at time of catch. Hes not making the more difficult contested catches only the wide open ones. You have to look at the definitions of the stats.

[top dawg]

On 12/12/2019 at 11:13 AM, MasterAwesome said:

It's quite literally cherry-picking...if you don't think so, you should look up the definition.  You're talking about maybe 5 bad overthrows out of a sample size of 90 targets.  I question whether you actually watched your own video if you think all of those throws in the first clip were egregious cases of Allen missing an open Curtis Samuel.  Many of those were in tight coverage which support the statistical evidence that suggests Samuel is among the worst in the league in separation.  Other than the blatant overthrows, you can probably consider most of those incompletions in the video "50/50 balls" and say maybe Samuel could have snagged a few of those if they were placed better, but Samuel has not exactly proven to be proficient with contested catches/jump-ball situations.

You asked someone to address your videos and yet you continue to just throw out vague assertions...doesn't seem like you're interested in actually engaging in any fruitful discussion.  You presenting a "Worst of" compilation (created by a Twitter user with 75% of his page dedicated to trashing Kyle Allen) as "evidence" is laughable.  You're basically the equivalent of that guy who prioritizes anecdotal evidence over statistical data. 

Imagine there's a restaurant that's rated 4.9/5 stars on Yelp, based off of 200 reviews, and you take the 10 worst reviews of 1-star and use those to make the argument that it is a terrible restaurant.  Then when people try to refute your claim, you reply with "wow so are you just going to flat out ignore that evidence then??".

Nah, dude. It's been way more than five passes. Ball placement, and under-throws have been consistent. I've seen markedly more bad passes than drops. The drops aren't good, but, then again, some of the best receivers in the game have dropped balls. I say this only to point out that we're missing way more potential game-changing plays on bad passes than drops in reference to Samuel. You and Igo can talk about cherry picking all your want; I've watched every play of every game, and my eyes aren't lying.

I do think he needs to work on catching & hands-catching with that JUGS machine he bought though. That's been a problem, but he's still a legitimately explosive receiver regardless. 

[top dawg]

By the way, I've seen Samuel legitimately kill maybe 2-4 drives this season, so I'll still bet on his potential & upside. 

[mav1234]

2 hours ago, Icege said:

Btw, why is it that folks like to claim that Cam "can't throw a WR open" but when Kyle Allen can't throw to an open WR it isn't Kyle's fault?

For years I have advocated for getting Cam better receivers, and I never blamed Cam for not throwing receivers open or whatever. There are some QBs that are better at that than others.

1 hour ago, top dawg said:

By the way, I've seen Samuel legitimately kill maybe 2-4 drives this season, so I'll still bet on his potential & upside. 

For sure. I agree.  But to pretend Samuel hasn't killed drives / hasn't made some mistakes is unfair (not saying you are doing this btw)

Allen is clearly not a great QB, and he is clearly partially responsible for Samuels output.  But as you note in your other post, Samuel needs to work on his hands still. 

[45catfan]

I find hilarious that we are discussing how our #2 WR is somehow a main contributor to our offensive woes.  Is Samuel still a work in progress and had some drops?  Yes, but he is a undeniable talent that is only getting better and has had decent stats is what has been a very inconsistent year for our offense. 'Ohs noes, our #2 WR not a Pro Bolwer; time to cut bait!'