Hogs Haven
Well, at least we’ve determined the elasticity of fan confidence with respect to a late-season win against the Giants: it’s +17%.
A week ago, at the tail-end of an 8-game losing streak, fan confidence, as measured by the Hogs Haven Reacts survey, stood at 32%. This week, it moved up fairly sharply to 49% after a road win over the NY Giants. Interestingly, the last time confidence had dipped to 32%, it rebounded to 45% after an OT loss to the Dolphins. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what that might mean with respect to the Dolphins and Giants.
Our 2nd & 3rd questions in this week’s survey looked ahead; Question 2 asked about the running backs the upcoming game against the Eagles while the final survey question asked about the middle linebacker position for the balance of the season.
Running backs
Asked to say which running back should get the most carries in today’s game against the Eagles, the results were rather lopsided in favor of Bill Croskey-Merritt over Chris Rodriguez.
Looking through the comments of the survey article, there’s little to indicate why respondents chose Bill over Chris; in fact, more people indicated in the comments that they had voted for Rodriguez than for Croskey-Merritt.
The one comment that did give some useful detail said:
Bill needs the carries. We need to see if he can physically handle the load after getting dinged up often earlier this year. Is he the future or do we need to look at the draft again?
I appreciate that insight. Given that there hasn’t been a ton of difference in the production of the two backs, it seems to rest on the fact that Bill is a rookie while Rodriguez is a 3rd-year player. It seems worthwhile to note that, while Bill is a young 24 years of age, Chris is not ancient at 26.
You can see from this graphic that Bill has gotten much more work as a ball carrier this season, but Rodriguez has produced slightly more yards per carry (4.6 vs 4.5) and has been significantly more productive as a scorer (4 TDs on 372 carries vs 5 TDs on 646 carries).
My feeling from reading comments all season long is that fans are somewhat split in their preference between the two young running backs, and that their preference for one or the other has often been swayed by the performance in the most recent game(s). The results this week may have been heavily influenced by the fact that Bill ran for 96 yards and a touchdown against the Giants this past Sunday while Chris missed the game due to injury.
But a fairer portrayal of fan sentiment probably comes from the fans who commented that this shouldn’t be an either/or choice, but a “hot hand” or “two-headed monster” choice.
*Play the hot hand at RB. Most importantly, establish the run early and stick with it. CRod had...
