Football Outsiders: Worst rated CBs in the NFL in 2010 (DeAngelo ranked #2)

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Ruhskins

The team is lacking a lot of talent, but getting rid of Hall is not the answer. I've always said that Hall and Rogers compliment each other, and by themselves are not that great. Adding Otogwe should help, and hopefully improving the pass rush can help the secondary.

With Hall you get high risk and high reward. Instead of b*tching about how terrible Hall or Rogers, let's talk about how the team needs to improve to play to their strengths and limit their weaknesses.

I think you're misusing the concepts of risk and reward to describe Hall. The reward to Hall, in 2010, is that he scored two touchdowns. Maybe a replacement level corner scores a touchdown every two or three years by just being in the right place at the right time. Doing a little bit of fuzzy math, maybe the reward to having Hall vs some other corner (Justin Tryon, for example), is that our point differential is ten points better than it would have been without him.

So if you replace Hall with an equally incompetent cover player (someone who would be out of the league after such a poor performance) who doesn't have Hall's ability to score touchdowns, the Redskins probably lose another one game (the Bears game, for example). Of course, if you replace Hall with a competent cover player who may lack inate TD scoring ability, you get a lot better than 10 points better on defense. Maybe 25 points better on defense is overstating the ability of a competent cover player vs. Hall, but I think 18-21 is reasonable. And then you lose multiple TD scores, so you maybe improve your team half a win to a win.

I guess what I'm saying is that if the end game is points and wins, the only risk in a player like Hall is the erratic-ness of his TD scoring. Sure you could get 2 TD's in 2010 and be only a little worse than average, or you could get 0 TD's like in 2008 or 2009 and be multiple wins below average. The only erratic part of Hall's player profile is not whether he's a liability -- but how much of one he is.

My belief - in 2010, he was less of a liability than he usually was because he probably scored enough (twice) to offset his lost coverage value. I just think he's very unlikely to do that again in 2011, or 2012.