Its been a while since the last post but in my defense, I went to New Orleans over Thanksgiving and abused my liver so much it filed domestic abuse charges against me. Also I was writing an article about how terrible the Dodgers were last year considering how they had both the Cy Young and MVP on the same team and barely finished .500, then the BBWAA fucked me over by giving the MVP to Ryan Braun. I had to do a lot of math in that article, did you hear me BBWAA?! I had to do GODDAMN MATH! So instead I worked on this piece about Peyton Hillis. I am also currently working on an article about Christmas Songs that don't suck, so stay tuned for that later in the week.
I have a confession, Peyton Hillis is better than me a football. Alright, there I’ve said it. Now that that is out in the open though, I must confess compared to other professional football players this year though he sucks. What other terms could you use to describe the constantly injured locker room cancer and how did this happen? Last year the White Avalanche burst onto the scene with a good season and kind of looked like a poor man’s Christian Okoye or Mike Alstott had he been you’re starting tailback. He ran through and over would be tacklers and paced the browns attack with over 330 touches (both rushing and receiving) and half of their offensive touchdowns (13). He was their 3rd most productive receiver behind Ben Watson (768 yards, 3 TDs) and Mohamed Massaquoi (483 yards, 2 TDs). And if you had him on your fantasy team he was an absolute monster and was the 3rd highest scoring RB in PPR formats and 4th in Standard formats. In short, Peyton Hillis was the by far the best offensive option on the 2nd worst offense in the NFL.
Hillis numbers and ranks for 2010 season
| YPA | 4.4 | 18th |
| YPG | 73.6 | 15th |
| Attempts | 270 | 11th |
| Rushing Yards | 1177 | 11th |
| Receiving Yards | 477 | 8th among RBs |
| REC | 61 | 4th among RBs |
| TD | 13 | 5th |
| Fumbles | 9 | 1st |
(If you are into advanced stats they back up these numbers fairly well. Hillis ranked ranked 8th in the league in DYAR and 13th in the league in DVOA. If you care to start getting an understanding of what these stats mean please go read www.footballoutsiders.com written by people much smarter than me.)
To recap so far Peyton Hillis was probably somewhere around the 10th best running back last year, his only year as a starting running back. So after one good year why did Hillis start holding out and nursing injuries to the point that the Brown’s front office essentially told him to enjoy free agency, when like I’ve already pointed out, he was their best offensive player last year.
Let’s start off with this, fantasy football as a game is least like its sports counterpart. I’ve already written about the unreality of fantasy football, you can read about it below. But, FF is also big business so if you are good in that very specific way, then people will write about you, talk about you, cover you on Sports Center and buy your jerseys. Plus, Peyton did this all in Cleveland a place so devoid of sports joy (disregarding the schadenfreude of the Mavericks winning the NBA title) that they jumped all over him like they were starving and he was a Honey Baked Ham.
Second Hillis was on the cover of Madden which is the most popular sports game on the planet earth, or at least the part of the planet earth known as the United States. The White Avalanche emblazoned on discs and cases as the greatest example of runningbackdom in the history of the grid iron. But, they let fans vote for it and the Cleveland fans mobilized amazing well. Couple this with a dubious win in the finals against Michael Vick (who was recently named the most hated player in the NFL) and suddenly this massive honor, isn’t that massive. (There is no way the final isn’t fixed , you’re EA sports this is your flagship game, are you going to risk getting in any hot water by putting an amazingly polarizing figure on the cover of your game. No you go with the boring white guy from that team in Ohio.)
So what happens one morning Hillis wakes up and says to himself, “White Avalanche, you’re the best running back in the history of not only University of Arkansas, and the Cleveland Browns but most likely also the world and you are only the 51st highest paid RB in NFL? How is that possible? You’re going to be a first round fantasy draft pick, you were on the cover of Madden, and you need more money now!” So you hold out and milk injuries and generally act like a big bag of dicks. Fast forward, you are injured not playing and Cleveland just told you to have fun with free agency.
Now to play devil’s advocate, I am not against holding out for a new contract; The NFL has some weird pay scales. CJ2K was woefully underpaid for the first 3 years in the league in which he averaged over 1,500 yards/year (the highest in the NFL over that period) over those same 3 years he was paid an average of $410,000. There is no argument that he didn’t deserve the contract he got. And as much as he is underperforming this year technically he still on his rookie deal until next year so he’s only making 800K this year with his recent good games he will most likely end up somewhere around 1100 yards for the year, which though a drop off in performance is still a good monetary value. (I get all my salary info from here http://www.spotrac.com)
I don’t know if it was a fluke last year and I’m sure there are other reasons that Hillis hasn’t played well, when he’s played at all this year. Maybe he’ll turn it around down the stretch string together a few massive games and earn himself a big contract. But remember this Avalanche your team doesn’t get bonus points for you being on the cover of a video game or what your average draft position is in an ESPN fantasy league. You earn big contracts on the field not on the internet.
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