SDK_06_CHAMP

How would you rank the 4 starting QB's in the North so far this season?

I would rank them as follows:

1) Grossman
2) Favre
3) Johnson
4) Kitna

JCD

QB
1) Grossman
2) Favre
3) Johnson
4) Kitna

RB
1) T.Jones
2) K.Jones
3) C.Taylor
4) A.Green

FB
1) Richardson
2) Henderson
3) Schlesinger
4) McKie (and he is playing good, just the NFC North is stacked at FB)

WR
1) R.Williams
2) M.Muhammed
3) D.Driver
4) B.Berrian
5) G.Jennings
6) T.Williamson
7) M.Furrey
8) T.Taylor

TE
1) Clark
2) Franks
3) Wiggins
4) Pollard

LT
1) Clifton
2) Tait
3) McKinnie
4) Backus

G
1) Hutchinson
2) R.Brown
3) R.Garza
4) D.Woody
5) Hicks
6) Spitz
7) Moll

RT
1) Miller
2) Tauscher
3) Johnson
4) Scott

LDE
1) Kampman
2) Ogunleye
3) Scott
4) Redding

RDE
1) Brown
2) Hall
3) Gbaja-Biamila
4) Udeze

DT
1) Rogers
2) Pat Williams
3) Harris
4) Kevin Williams
5) Boone
6) Jenkins
7) Cdy
8) Pickett

SAM
1) Leber
2) Hillenmeyer
3) Poppinga
4) Lenon

MLB
1) Urlacher
2) Harris
3) Barnett
4) Bailey

WILL
1) Briggs
2) Sims
3) Hawk
4) Henderson

CB
1) Winfield
2) Manning
3) Bly
4) Woodson
5) Tillman
6) Harris
7) Bryant
8) Smoot

FS
1) Collins
2) Sharper
3) Manning
4) Holt

SS
1) Bullocks
2) Manuel
3) Smith
4) Brown

K
1) Longwell
2) Gould
3) Hanson
4) Rayner

P
1) Manard
2) Kluwe
3) Harris
4) Ryan

katzenboyer

i have some disagreements, here they are
ernie simms better than hawk??
i think nawt!!
i'll take furrey and his 2 td's over williamson and his none
gimme tommy harris over anybody there, and k. williams is #2
and screw harris, and leber
leber: 6 tackles on the year.
as for Punters:
kluwe 40yrds
harris 44
ryan 47.4
menard 44.7

JCD

Without a doubt. Sims leads his team in tackles,with 50% more than Hawk. Doens't meanit won't change, but through 5 games, Sims has been better.

I would rather not take either. Teams focus on Williams first. Furrey sees single coverage from the 2nd CB. Sadly enough, Williamson is the best the Vikes have. This one if close though.

Harris is good, but he doesn't hold his ground against the run as well as Rogers, and the Williams do. He is more John Randal: get upfield and create havoc.

Kevin Williams doesn't have quite the same burst he did during his 1st two seasons. Maybe he is slow to recover from injury, but he isn't cominating like before.

All four of those DTs are elite.

Watch Harris before saying something like that. He has been excellent this season, a big reason why the Vikes defense has been respectable. He is a better player on a better defense than either Barnett or Bailey.

And 3 passes defended, tied for team lead (in only 4 games). The competition on the strong side is weak. Leber has been used primarily in coverage on the TE and the TE hasn't been a factor in a game yet. Lenon and Poppinga have more tackles, but that is it. More to a LB than just tackles. Leber has been exceptional in coverage, although proving to be a poor open field tackler.

You are cherry picking numbers. Punting is MUCH more than just gross average. What is the hang time? Where is he placing the kicks?

Maynard is the best. Only half his kicks have been returnable, no touchbacks, best net average and 2 inside the 10.

Kluwe also has had only half his kicks returnable, though his net is notably under Maynard. He has the most inside the 10 (3), but has 2 touchbacks.

Harris' net is less than a yard better than Kluwe. That marginal advantage is off-set by 6 touchbacks with inside none the 10. 2/3 of his kicks have been returned.

Rayner has a big leg. However, damn near ALL his kicks have been returned, with 3 touchbacks. I would take that as him getting distance but not time, outkicking his coverage. Something further supported when you see that despite having the best gross yardage, he has the worst net.

SDK_06_CHAMP

i dont agree with ranking longwell ahead of gould. gould i believe is leading the league in points scored. no way that longwell is better than him at this point in the season.

JCD

Gould hasn't missed a kick yet this year.

Kickers are not a good position to judge on stats alone. Look at Vanderjagt. Statistically, he is the best kicker ever. Do you really want him strutting on to the field for the game winning kick with second left on the clock?

Gould has never had to kick a clutch kick yet in his NFL career. He has no game winning 4th quarter or OT FGs. Nor has he ever even attempted a FG from 50 yards.

He is making the high percentage kicks. Great. But nobody yet knows how he does under pressure. Or from long range. Until he shows that, pretty tough to rank him ahead of a vet who is also among the career leaders in FG % but HAS shown the ability to make clutch kicks and hit from long range.

Put another way, if Gould missed ever kick this year, the Bears have maybe one loss (Vikes). If Longwell missed just half his kicks, Vikes have no wins.

Who Dat?

Maybe so...but Harris is in the opposing backfield so much that it doesn't really matter if the others are stronger against the run from a read/recognize/get off the block type of standpoint because Harris is back there blowing up the play before it even gets to the point where he has to hold his ground like the others.

JCD

Disagree. Thing is, Harris has been involved in so many blow-outs that he hasn't been needed to stop the run. Saying that it doesn't matter isn't true, it just has not mattered yet.

The system the Bears run is a variation of the Cover-2 developed by Dungy with the Vikes. Harris is in the Randall role. The Vikes inability to stop the run didn't matter. Until the game was close. Then Henry-Randall's upfield play hurt us. Ditto Sapp. Ditto all the high-end 1-gap pass-rushing QBs. While great at getting past the blockers, the importance of being able to stand your ground is critical from your DTs. If the DT shoots the wrong gap against a quality RB, the RB will be behind him bearing down on the RBs (Vikes saw this far-too-often; we still have nightmares about facing Alexander). Being aggressive upfield can be dangerous against the run. Guess right, you are meeting the RB behind the line. Guess wrong, you are taking yourself out of the play.

Right now, Pat Williams and Shaun Rogers are considerably better at holding their ground. On a scale of 1 to 10, they have to be around a 9 (not treestumps like Hampton or Jamal Williams, but as good as anybody else). Against the pass, they both collapse the pocket and drag two blockers with them (this frees up the edge rushers and blitzers to finish the play), while not gettign the glory themselves, they are still effective because they make the players around them better. They would rank a 6 or 7 IMO. Harris is a different animal. Against the pass, he is a 10. But against the run, he is no better than a 5 or 6. The net sum puts Harris a notch below Pat and Rogers in my book.

Now all that said, we are talking about minor differences. Pat Williams, Shaun Rogers, Kevin Williams AND Tommie Harris ALL belong among the best DTs in the league. Add in Coleman, Hampton, Jamal Williams, Stroud and Jenkins and I think you have what most would put in their list of the top-10. The NFC North just has FOUR of them.

Who Dat?

The guy that can blow up the play in the backfield is so much more valuable from an individual standpoint than the guy that can hold his ground "better" (I say that because Harris can also hold his ground). You surround the guy that can blow up the play with guys that consistently meet the lineman at the point of attack and you've got yourself a great balanced front line. If you are rating these folks from an individual standpoint (which in this case we are I guess according to the OP) you have to say that Harris is the best of the bunch at this point in time. There are a lot of DLmen who can stand their ground but none have the explosiveness that Harris has right now. I take the rare player and surround him with strict run stoppers. That being said your analysis is spot on that the team itself even really hasn't had to focus on stopping the run and we don't know if that will be an issue or not. What I am saying is for the purpose of the OP asking to rank the best I still think that you have to put Harris at the top right now because he is a rare talent...and maybe you're right maybe when he can't move upfield in passing situations he'll be exploited a bit...but we're not sure of that yet and right now he has been the most dominant DT in the NFL this year. I don't think any NFL analyst would disagree with that.

JCD

I think you underestimate just how quick Pat Williams and Shaun Rogers are. Yes, both are 330+ pound human mountains, but both are also very quick off the snap. On passing downs, when able to pin his ears back and go, Williams shoots the gap nearly as well as Kevin Williams.

I guess I just give more emphasis on a DT's flexibility. I would call Pat Williams and Shaun Rogers 2/3 the pass rusher that Harris is. Combine that with their near-immovability and I pick them as the best.

We could have a similar disagreement on DEs. KGB is, without a doubt, the best pure pass rushing end in the NFC North. But he has an allergic reaction to tackling anybody with a number >20 on his jersey. Harris isn't as 1-dimensional as KGB, but he isn't as versatile as Pat or Rogers. That drop-off in pass-rushing is off-set by the advantage in run situations.

Just to reiterate though, Harris is a special player. Compared to the other 60-or-so DTs in the league, he is going to be better than damn near all of them. But the NFC North is odd. It has FOUR special players in it. You can really pick any of the four out in any order and not be wrong. Compare K-Dub or Harris or Pat or Rogers to near any other starter out there and they will win. Listing Harris 3rd isn't a slight on him at all, just a statement of how good they all are. Call them 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d if you like.

Jomichka

You went all on the rating JCD, impressive. I'll just stick with the QBs

1) Grossman
2) Favre
3) Kitna
4) Johnson

katzenboyer

and thats coming from a packer fan. fo sho better than shaun rodgers. rodgers doesn't go 100% every down either. i'll take tommy and his relentless motor, age, skill, and potential. so stick that in ur DRAGQUEEN pipe and smoke it

katzenboyer

and nepolean harris cant carry barnett's jock. he's garbage. i watch him every week.

JCD

You sure do have a convincing point there.

No wait, you don't. Just another run-of-the-mill Packer idiot with more mouth than brains.

SDK_06_CHAMP

the problem with just going with the vet is that the kid isnt being compared equally with what he has done this year. longwell's experience kicking doesnt make him #1 in my eyes. gould has scored the most points. points matter in sports. i think longwell is a great kicker and is only percentage points behind gould, but is still behind him up to this point in the season.