Sander said:
That's probably true. But we can't say anything on Titans with or without Chris Johnson.
Yes. And that hurts his candidacy.
Sander said:
That's a running back gaining almost as much yardage as his quarterback, and the quarterback is the MVP?
I have no problem with CJ as an MVP, I'm just saying, if the Titans make the playoffs (unlikely), VY will be the MVP unless CJ breaks some rushing record.
Sander said:
Also, I don't know about that. How many top level RBs are there in the league now? 6 people with over 1000 yards rushing, there are 5 QBs with over 3000 yards passing.
Wrong angle. You're too new to this game to know that we've seen a recent shift from single, full-workload backs into two-or-three RB backfields. We've seen this shift because it's usually more effective, and it avoids risk of injury. We have markedly not seen this shift because of a lack of talent at RB, just a lack of durability. That makes the question of "is there an equal single talent" less relevant because generally an RB like CJ would be replaced by a committee.
Look at the top-5 passing teams; Colts, Pats, Texans, Saints, Cards. Now look at the top-5 rushing teams: Jets, Titans, Dolphins, Panthers, Saints. Where's the special talents on the Jets team? Who's rushing extraordinarily well for the Saints? Rushing stats aren't about talent as much as they are about situation, the Jets are the leading rushing team in the NFL because of their O-line, I could replace Thomas Jones with a rookie at the drop of a hat and not lose a step. The same is not true for the absolute top-tier talent (two of which, AP and MoJo, you'll conspicuously find have no team in the top-5 rushing), but even them I could replace by committee and slow down, but look at it this way: if the Jets lose Thomas Jones and replace him with a committee of street free agents, do they lose as much speed as the Colts if they replace Manning with a street free agent?
Sander said:
That's not actually 'by definition'.
Yes, it is. The talent dropoff is not the same at every position in the NFL, and some positions have always had steeper dropoffs than others. The QB position has always had a shallow talent pool compared to RB. That's the nature of the game.
Sander said:
but the talent dropoff really doesn't seem that apparent to me.
Really? That's hilarious. Please go back and count for me the number of times this season a team has lost a starting QB with no dropoff in production vs the number of times this season a team has lost a starting RB and seen no significant dropoff or even an increase in production. Hmmmmm?