OreIdahawk":2vm597c6 said:
I'm with Tical on this one. I'm not saying either of you are right or wrong. I'm just saying that I agree that measurables mean very little in the NFL. If measurables were that important there wouldn't be any Russel Wilson's, Tom Brady's, Matt Hasselbeck's, Marquise Colston's, Shannon Sharpe's, Jerry Rice's, etc. Most of what makes a good football player is mental, and intangibles. You can have all the physical ability in the world, but if you don't have any instincts or know-how, or just plain skill, then you won't amount to much. I'm not saying that Irvin won't become a great player, in fact I'm expecting him to. But lets not crown him just yet.
That's all well and dandy, and its your opinion, but Tical focused on my original post in the wrong way.
His argument was based on the premise that I was trying to argue that Bruce Irvin is a better player than Chris Clemons. Which I never said once.
I used athletic measure and testing as the starting point of comparison because one it’s hard and illogical to compare a 9 year veteran to a rookie.
My point, is that many view Clemons as a very athletic player in regards to our defense. Even Carroll's own personal view on LEO in his scheme is that position is "usually the most athletic player on the team".
I wasn't using the athletic comparison to devalue Clemons in any way, only that, Bruce Irvin is much more elite in the regard. You can coach up a player to broaden skillsets and technique, and with experience plus a great drive of self-improvement usually comes intangibles, instincts, and intelligence. Maybe not right away and especially not all at once but over time a player learns to polish and refine his game or he likely won’t keep his job.
But elite athleticism isn’t grown on trees, you know, it has value. Irvin has a rocky road ahead and plenty of hard work to put in before he becomes as complete of a player Clemons is… (Even though I think we overvalue or overrate Clemons a little bit especially coming off his 2012 season where 7 of is 11.5 sacks came in 2 games (GB, @BUF), meaning he had 4.5 sacks in his other 14 games. But at the end of the day the Seahawks were a much better team with Clemons than without, that part is incredibly true, even though Clemons has missed only 1 game in his Seahawks career due to injury, an injury that will likely impact his future play for imo at least for 8-10 games 2013, hopefully it will be much less, and he comes back to his 100% much faster)
The whole post in general was basically to show that Clemons came a long way before he had any consistent success. Again, in 5 active seasons in 6 years, Clemons had 50 tackles, 20 sacks. On average, 10 tackles, 4 sacks per season before coming to Seattle and thriving in the LEO role.
My argument for Irvin was that even though he is widely viewed as a raw and undeveloped prospect, he has already accomplished in his rookie season what it took Clemons 4 years to do.
Irvin’s 1st season: 16 tackles, 8 sacks
Clemon’s 4th season: 20 tackles, 8 sacks.
Again, I’m not saying Irvin > Clemons, only that both players were more or less pass-rushing projects upon league entry, and that in comparison Irvin is likely ahead in development compared to where Clemons was at as a rookie in 2003. Irvin gaining 400+ snaps or so of experience in his rookie season where Clemons saw none.
Not saying Irvin is better than Clemons, now, only that in 2-3 more years, in which I did state in the OP, that I could see Irvin developing into comparable LEO prospect in regards to Clemons. A complete player in about 4 years of development.
Again, because apparently I have to restate this many times before my point gets across the right way:
I used Clemons as a comparison to Irvin because Clemons when I looked at his career in retrospect, he didn’t have great, premier DE success right away… he was a journeyman seemingly one trick pony before Carroll came along and put Clemons in a great positional fit for his skillset along with Dan Quinn then Todd Wash coaching him up.
Its not my fault that Tical freaked out and solely focused only on one aspect of my argument partly perhaps mostly because of a disagreement in a different thread where I didn’t think Seattle and St. Louis would trade their top three players at TE for one singularity of Vernon Davis.