After a slow holiday weekend, we're back in it. Hold your applause!
I wanted to call your collective attention to an article from ESPN, penned by Scout Inc.'s Matt Williamson.
"Why," you ask, throwing your hands aloft in a gesture of helpless defeat that knocks off your top hat, "would I want to read an article on ESPN? Doesn't that stand for Entirely Stupid Pieces of Nonsense?"
Our collective pathos for the World Leader aside, Pat Yasinskas always seems to come up with delicious nuggets of information to share. Today, it's less information than it is another take on why Kroy Biermann is better than you think. Follow along after the jump and we'll briefly break this one down.
Williamson argues that Biermann is about to break out. You heard that in the Pro Football Focus article I linked to in greater detail, but adding a second football guru to the pile never hurts.
To understand what Biermann does, Williamson writes, you need to watch the tape:
Rushing the passer is what Biermann does best, though. He has yet to record more than five sacks in a season and had just three last season, but his overall disruptiveness shows up on film.
Some might take the glass-half-empty view and say Biermann comes up short when getting after the quarterback, but in reality he is creating pressure that forces the quarterback to move his feet when he doesn’t want to and results in poor throws. And he should only get better with experience.
It's somewhat difficult for your average football fan to embrace stats like pressures, because they represent the almost that is only supposed to matter in horseshoes and hand grenades. We're conditioned to love it when a guy gets his hands on the quarterback and slams him to the ground, but not to appreciate the subtler way a 280 pound man only a few feet away forces a bad throw.
So while Biermann didn't finish out with a ton of sacks in 2010, he was still very valuable. Think of Biermann's performance as having an abnormally high BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) in baseball. He's getting in there often enough that his luck is bound to turn, and it could very well happen in 2011.
So that's what Williamson is getting at. Do you agree?