Irreplaceable or Easily Replaceable??

Reader, and Seahawkaddicts.com technical adviser Chris Sullivan (he created the first RSS gadget) created something that the SA community (hopefully soon that will only stand for Seahawk Addicts) just have to see.

He has a done a fantastic statistical breakdown of all starting kickers last year. It is a pretty large graph, so to check it out...




As you can see, Josh Brown did not overwhelm the NFL with his kicking last year. He ranked 24th of all the Kickers. The average kicker made 83% of their kicks. If you factor out Mare's atrocious season, it would be 84%. The median kicker, or middle in the group, made 86%. Brown falls below those figures at 82%. That ranks him at 25th. Well, what about difficulty, ignoring long snapper statistics, Brown ranked 24th in average distance of made field goal.

Kickoffs were always a big concern with Brown. Touchback stats were always below average. Well, the Seahawks averaged giving the ball to opponents on the 27.6 yrd line. That puts him at 18th in the league. Granted, cover teams obviously play a large roll in this, touchbacks are the one thing that substantially helps the average.

So the one unmeasurable is clutch. We all know that Josh Brown hit game winners. However, he hit 82% of his kicks. So out of ten game winners no matter what he should hit 8. I count game 7 winning kicks in his career. Somebody tell me if i am missing one. 2005-Washington, Dallas, NYG, 2006- Det, Den, St.Louis X 2. He is 6/7, or 85%. That is simply what the average kicker does over a 7 kick span. Granted he has made his last 6, but truthfully, by the numbers, he is only preforming slightly better than his 2007 average in those situations.

Anyway you spin it, stack it, or frame it, Josh Brown simply isn't the best kicker in the league. Tim Ruskell probably got lucky he didn't have to pay him like one.

One thing to note also though, of the two rookies last year, Folk and Crosby. One did slightly better than Josh (folk) and the other was slightly worse (crosby). So I would say it is a 50/50 proposition we get someone as productive through the draft. I wonder what Jason Elam wants?