All season long, many have dismissed the Cardinals, labeling their hot start as a fluke and waiting for their inevitable downfall. However, even with the passing of 11 weeks, Arizona is still on top. No one has a better record than the Cardinals, who sit at 9-1 and have a record of 16-3 dating back to week 8 of last season. Let’s take a closer look at how the team from the desert has been so dominant this season.
Through the first half of the NFL season, the Philadelphia Eagles were one of the best teams in the league. After eight games, the Eagles find themselves atop the NFC East with a record of 6-2 and legitimate hopes of making a playoff run. Their high-powered offense, orchestrated by Chip Kelly, is largely responsible for their hot start: Philadelphia’s fast-paced offense, which runs the 2nd-most plays per game in the NFL, ranks 4th in points per game (29.2), yards per game (409.2), and first downs per game (23). Nick Foles has carried the workload for the Eagles’ offense, as he ranks 3rd in pass attempts per game (38.9). However, Foles suffered a broken collarbone this past Sunday and is expected to miss anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks. In steps Mark Sanchez – yes, the same Mark Sanchez that we last saw sliding into his own o’lineman’s butt. Sanchez came in mid game last Sunday and actually performed fairly well, going 15-22 for 202 yards, 2 touchdowns and 2 interceptions with one of those interceptions taking an unlucky bounce off an Eagles receiver. With eight games left on Philadelphia’s regular season schedule, the question is how much trouble the Eagles are in with the man formerly known as The Sanchize at quarterback.
The Jets continue the second year of the Geno Smith era at 1-2, with plenty of highs and lows already in a small sample. I’m here to tell you this year will be a significant turning point for the franchise.
The Jets have been extremely fortunate to have Rex Ryan as a coach for the last few years. Ryan is a polarizing individual who has his fair share of supporters, but far more detractors who don’t like his loud, boisterous style (which hasn’t been as loud and boisterous over the last two years). Regardless, he represents a complete statistical anomaly, and in a good way.
Continue reading “Geno Smith’s 2nd Year and the Future of the Jets”
You have heard coaches preach it constantly and consistently – win the turnover battle and you will win the game. More takeaways give your offense more opportunities to score, and minimizing your turnovers limits the opportunities of your opponent. Seems simple enough, but does winning the turnover battle truly translate to winning games? Although we are only two weeks in, the 2014 season has provided us with one overwhelming answer.
In sabermetrics, one of the biggest concepts is the idea of the value over a replacement level player. In baseball that stat is WAR, wins above replacement, and in basketball it is WAR and also VORP, quite literally value over replacement player. For our Corner Three fantasy rankings we have followed the sabermetric path to create the only fantasy football stat you need, Points above Replacement, or PAR.
Here is how PAR works.
Continue reading “Explanation of the Corner Three Fantasy Football Rankings”
If you have ever played fantasy football, you know that quarterback is the most plentiful position, with tons of solid starters available for pickup off of the waiver wire, and running back is the most scarce, with very little top-flight talent. What I set out to do was to truly quantify the “Wins Above Replacement” of each Fantasy Football Player, by creating a “replacement-level” baseline for each position (essentially a player that you could pick up off of the waiver wire throughout the year), and then calculating which players had the most projected 2014 points above their position’s replacement level. Using 2014 projections from DraftShark.com (future projections may change, due to drawing on a combination of different projection services when they put out their 2014 projections, such as NumberFire or ESPN), I created the CornerThree WAR Top 200 Fantasy Football Players for 2014 (based off of PPR fantasy football).
Continue reading “A Way-Too-Early 2014 Fantasy Football WAR Ranking”
Last night was an absolute roller coaster for NFL fans – one the NFL world probably would have enjoyed ending a little more quickly, but still a great ride. The draft truly is a special event that gives fans across the country immense amount of hope for the upcoming season. Whether you are a team in rebuilding, or a team that may be one player away from hoisting the Lombardy trophy, the draft is always exciting. Last night had some eye-opening picks, some head scratchers, and everything in between. This is not a list of the five best players chosen last night. Rather, this list shows the five biggest picks that best pair an organization with a draftee, not without questions. The factors that go into this list are when the player was drafted, what the team had to do to draft him, and the overall fit of the player with his new team.
Three national championships in four years. Dozens of draft picks making millions of dollars in the NFL. The Alabama Crimson Tide, led by defensive gurus Nick Saban and his henchman Kirby Smart, have been without question the most dominating team in college football for the last five years. Viewed as the kings of college football, the Crimson Tide pride themselves on their defense. Generally speaking, they have been almost impossible to score against. However, the Alabama defense has been exposed the past two years against a certain type of offense- the hurry-up spread with a quarterback capable of evading defenders.
Continue reading “Attention, SEC: The Achilles’ Heel of the Alabama Defense”
It has been said recently that the NBA has never been stronger than it is right now, and it really is true. The NBA is all over the sports news, currently dominating the news cycle on ESPN, getting more airtime than America’s pastime, the MLB. Franchise values are skyrocketing and the league recently turned down a prospective owner who wanted to pay a billion dollars for the Kings, over $300 million more than they was valued at before the bidding war began. The league has two extremely marketable superstars in Kevin Durant and LeBron James, who by all accounts are not only phenomenal basketball players, but also good citizens.
The NBA is an interesting test case because of the idea of parity in sports. With the NBA, you can pick 8 teams at the beginning of the season and you will have a 90% chance of getting the correct champion. Don’t believe me? Check this out.
As May 8th creeps up on us, the Houston Texans’ time on the clock is slowly winding down. After winning their first two games of the 2013 season, the Texans went on to lose fourteen straight, securing the organization the first overall pick in this years draft. Many holes are in need of plugging in Houston, on both offense and defense. And unlike in many other drafts in the past, there is no consensus number one pick. If Houston believes improving their 31st ranked scoring offense, which put up just 17.2 points per game last season and has now traded away their starting quarterback to the Raiders, is their main priority, they have a three-headed monster of quarterbacks to choose from. We will take a look at the pros and cons of candidates Teddy Bridgewater, Blake Bortles and Johnny Manziel.
Corner Three 