Baker More Important than Jets Realize?

Much ado about nothing. Baker is going to realize at some point his best course of action is to buck up and play his contract.

 

Because we have covered every passing position except tight end in the "best of/worst of" 2007 series so far, it seems only right to review that position in this week's segment. The previous installments detailed the vertical impact of various players, but for this article I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how well each tight end performs when he is flexed out as a wide receiver.

Glossary of terms

There are usually only a few tight ends who have high pass-attempt totals, so the qualifying mark here is 48 total attempts (i.e., an average of three overall attempts per game, regardless of whether the tight end was flexed out). The yardage totals once again include "pass in the air" penalty attempts and yards (i.e., penalty yards from pass interference, defensive holding, illegal contact, etc., have been added to each player's receiving yardage stats).

(I did make a qualifying exception for Quinn Sypniewski of the Ravens. Sypniewski had only 47 attempts, so he technically wouldn't have qualified, but I wanted to see the potential impact his loss to a knee injury for the 2008 season could have on Baltimore and thus decided to include him.)

Let's start by taking a look at the flex tight end totals from 2007 on a yards-per-attempt basis. Because only 25 tight ends had enough attempts to be considered qualifiers, we'll just list the entire group rather than break it up into top 10/bottom 10.

Rank Player 2007 Team WR Att WR Yds WR YPA
1. Heath Miller Pittsburgh 14 189 13.5
2. Vernon Davis San Francisco 11 132 12.0
3. Zach Miller Oakland 12 124 10.3
4. Owen Daniels Houston 18 181 10.1
5. Ben Watson New England 27 263 9.7
6. Jason Witten Dallas 33 308 9.3
7. Tony Scheffler Denver 28 261 9.3
8. Antonio Gates San Diego 68 594 8.7
9. Tony Gonzalez Kansas City 59 482 8.2
10. Kellen Winslow Cleveland 105 849 8.1
11. Chris Cooley Washington 51 400 7.8
12. Desmond Clark Chicago 16 122 7.6
13. Jeremy Shockey N.Y. Giants 35 262 7.5
14. Chris Baker N.Y. Jets 43 321 7.5
15. Dallas Clark Indianapolis 62 447 7.2
16. Eric Johnson New Orleans 29 204 7.0
17. David Martin Miami 15 98 6.5
18. Randy McMichael St. Louis 13 73 5.6
19. Quinn Sypniewski Baltimore 20 112 5.6
20. Alge Crumpler Atlanta 15 83 5.5
21. Jeff King Carolina 44 223 5.1
22. Bo Scaife Tennessee 25 118 4.7
23. Greg Olsen Chicago 30 137 4.6
24. Bubba Franks Green Bay 3 4 1.3
25. Marcedes Lewis Jacksonville 4 0 0.0

The top wide receivers in a season will typically average somewhere around 10 YPA, so the top 10 in this group does a terrific job as faux wideouts.

On an individual basis, Benjamin Watson and Heath Miller stand out because of their improvement in this category over their 2006 totals. Miller nearly doubled his 6.8 YPA and Watson added more than 2 yards to his 7.4 total.

Two big-name tight ends who underperformed as wide receivers were Randy McMichael and Alge Crumpler, but they have historically performed badly in this area (McMichael had a 4.2 YPA in 2006, Crumpler 6.2). So this showing was not unexpected.

Player 2007 Team % of att
Kellen Winslow Cleveland 74.5%
Chris Baker N.Y. Jets 71.7%
Dallas Clark Indianapolis 66.0%
Antonio Gates San Diego 62.4%
Jeff King Carolina 58.7%
Ben Watson New England 55.1%
Eric Johnson New Orleans 49.2%
Chris Cooley Washington 48.1%
Greg Olsen Chicago 46.2%
Tony Scheffler Denver 43.1%

One player whose poor showing does come as a surprise is Greg Olsen. Olsen had highly touted receiving skills coming out of the University of Miami, and it was thought that he would be able to serve quite effectively as an alternate wide receiver in the Bears' offense. It turns out Olson wasn't even Chicago's best flex tight end; Desmond Clark notched nearly as many yards as Olson (122 to 137) on just more than half as many attempts.

The other item of note is how often Kellen Winslow was thrown to from a flexed position. His 105 attempts nearly equaled the flex attempt totals of Antonio Gates and Tony Gonzalez combined. They were also 74.5 percent of his overall attempts.

That seems like a phenomenal total, and it led me to wonder how Winslow compares with other tight ends in this category. The top 10 in that area are above.

It turns out that Winslow's number is very impressive, but it doesn't quite put him in a class by himself. Chris Baker's 71.7 percent showing here and his equal showing to Jeremy Shockey in the flex YPA total may be indicators as to why Baker feels his value to the Jets is higher than the team seems to think it is.

One other barometer of flex tight end performance is how well these players perform as flex tight ends versus when they're lined up as a standard tight end. I decided to track this on a plus/minus YPA basis, with "plus" meaning that the player did better when flexed out. Here are those totals:

Player 2007 Team TE as WR +/-
Vernon Davis San Francisco 6.3
Heath Miller Pittsburgh 5.2
Zach Miller Oakland 3.9
Ben Watson New England 3.6
Dallas Clark Indianapolis 1.8
Chris Baker N.Y. Jets 1.6
Jason Witten Dallas 1.5
Owen Daniels Houston 1.3
Eric Johnson New Orleans 1.2
Quinn Sypniewski Baltimore 1.0
Kellen Winslow Cleveland 0.8
Chris Cooley Washington 0.8
Tony Scheffler Denver 0.7
Jeremy Shockey N.Y. Giants 0.5
David Martin Miami 0.3
Tony Gonzalez Kansas City -0.1
Antonio Gates San Diego -0.8
Jeff King Carolina -0.8
Desmond Clark Chicago -1.3
Bo Scaife Tennessee -1.3
Randy McMichael St. Louis -1.6
Alge Crumpler Atlanta -1.8
Greg Olsen Chicago -2.4
Marcedes Lewis Jacksonville -7.8
Bubba Franks Green Bay -8.3

If this chart is any indicator, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Oakland should do all they can to flex their guys out more often.

 

Nice info Vilmatic....

 

The recent draft has made Baker expendable. We picked up Franks in the offseason, and when he is healthy, he is a solid blocker and receiver.

Keller adds a whole new dynamic to the passing game, that we really haven't seen since Mitchell. Keller has the speed to be flexed out at WR and creates matchup problems for the defense. If Keller plays up to his ability, by year two or three, we could have a much better passing game.

Baker doesn't add much to the table. He is average at everything, and great at nothing. If he wants to hold out, let him. That will just give more opportunity for Keller to get on the field.

 

Something else to think about:

If we keep all three, Keller, Franks and Baker on the roster, where is there room for James Dearth? Dearth has been rock at LS for eight years now (and I'm being completely serious).

If Baker wants to whine about his contract, let him do it someplace else.

 

Somehow they always find room for Dearth. Last year wasn't the contingent made up of Baker, Ryan, Posciak and Dearth with Kowalewski being listed as H-Back?

For what it's worth, Dearth sucks to holy hell on Madden.

 

Another media creation...which is probably where Baker gets the justification for this nonsense in the first place (that and his agent). Nothing to see here...move along.

 

He's not expendable. We need 2 blocking TE's and keller is not a good blocker and he's a rookie. Also, what if Frank's goes down? We need Baker on this team and we hold all the cards. The Jets do not have to do anything but wait for him to come back after the Giant pre-season game. He probably pull a muscle and be out to week # 2 or 3.

 

Pociask is another blocker we have on the team...while I would like to retain Baker's services, he is completely expendable.

edit: Sean Ryan is now a dolphag in case anyone was wondering.

 

I am in favor of not trading Baker. Franks or Keller were not brought in to replace him and Pocisak is an unkown.

 

Baker will be on the team.

As the #3 TE. What a stupid play this was by Baker. he went all in and is holding no cards

 

do you not think they dont intend on replacing baker? franks is a stop gap thats fine. but i think theyre pretty confident in pocsiak's blocking and you dont trade up for keller unless you plan on having him as a mainstay to your offense for years to come.

albeit keller is more of an h-back at the pro level than a TE. the jets obviously arent worried about baker.

while i dont think he should be traded, hes very underrated, and under-used. at the same time he isnt someone id scream over losing.

baker mustve been bitching about his contract before franks was signed. therefore foreseeing another kendall situation they have the stop gap(franks) and the future player (keller) to deal with a situation in which baker refuses to play.

im not bashing him(cuz i actually like him as a player) but id say its a pretty fair assessment of the situation.

 

If nobody is offering anything in trade for Chris Baker, all he can do is ruin his career by holding out. He'll be in training camp.

 

agreed. he's not that stupid. or gullible.

 

Well, Becht has been missed in this offense. He was a horrible receiving TE, but was, and still is, one of the best blocking TE's in the league.

I'd much rather have Dearth on this team then Baker, if it's a choice in roster space. The way I see it, we can't possible keep four TE's on the roster and have Tony Richardson playing as well.

If it were up to me, Keller, Franks and Dearth are everyday roster spot, with Pociask being on the practice squad, just in case an injury to the Keller or Franks occurs.

 

For the 100th time, Bakers salary is actually $1.65 million because he took bonuses up front when he renegotiated recently. He has nothing to bitch about.

 

You freaking moron...how many times does someone have to say that he has a 4 year 6.6 million dollar contract.

6.6 million/4=$1.65 million per year. Exactly what pro bowl TE Franks is making. How is that hard to understand?!!