Falcons Quote of the Day: Offensive Line Smoffensive Line

I smell a Pulitzer! Seriously,

I’m going to make this my flogging horse. Sorry. The criticism of Sam Baker should be his play when injured / after injury. When healthy, he’s been moderately decent (see other years). When injured or after injury, he’s been pretty “not good” (see this year). A bad back will do that to you. The length of his “t-rex arms” didn’t change from when he was healthy (and played decent) to when he was unhealthy and needing back surgery (and played poorly). His arms are not the issue, his health is (likewise, any debate about his drafting should be focused on his injury history at USC and whether he was a worthwhile medical gamble, rather than focusing on the group-think “t-rex” arm length). When healthy he’s decent, when not healthy, he’s not decent.

Paraphrasing from my earlier grousing about this: NFL combine stats for Sam Baker’s arm length were arms 33 and 1/8 inches long. His arms are longer than Jake Long’s (measured that same year at the same combine, likely by the same person using the same method). Perhaps you’ve heard of Jake Long. Jake Long’s arms were measured at 32 and 7/8 inches long. Ryan Clady’s arms during that same combine were 1 inch longer than Baker’s. I don’t even think 1 inch of reach matters in heavyweight boxing (or really, anything else in life, unless you’re reaching for a lightsaber and don’t have the force…). I think the NFL combine measurements of these three should be considered more likely to be accurate. I can provide links to the nfl.com pages if people would prefer.

In sum, I don’t think Baker actually has t-rex arms. If, however, he does have t-rex arms, those t-rex arms are not actually to blame for his poor play this year (and his poor play during parts of other seasons). Instead, you can directly correlate his poor play to his (un)health, and his decent play to his health. With Baker, there seems to be a much more dramatic difference in his level of play when healthy and unhealthy than other players (e.g., Lofton was still pretty damn decent when he had to have surgery on both knees after the season). Perhaps it’s a toughness issue. More likely, since it’s his back, it’s a fundamentals issue. Regardless of the reason, it’s a significant enough problem, that’s been repeated enough, that I’m fine with them letting him go. But it’s because of his health (or lack thereof), not mythical t-rex arms.

End rant (maybe).

Beyond season statistics,the Falcons have reached the point where it only matters how you measure up against the top third of teams in the NFL.The term ‘not competitive’ describes the Falcons lines of scrimmage performance against the better half of that group of teams.And it is not close.

And in case noone has noticed,there are more teams gaining on us,
than in danger of being surpassed by us,in that regard.