Commentary

Most overrated players of 2011

Five players who had much worse seasons than traditional stats show

Originally Published: January 4, 2012
By Aaron Schatz | Football Outsiders

Football fans are used to the standard stats: yards, touchdowns, maybe tackles. But when you look at a football player's performance, it's important to look closer at his performance on every play. How did he do based on the situation? How did he do based on the context of his opponents? For a receiver, are you considering not only the balls he caught but all the balls he didn't catch? Often, those standard stats overstate a player's performance because the player did poorly in important situations or was inconsistent.

Those more nuanced numbers are the kind of advanced stats we use at Football Outsiders, and, based on those stats, here are five players whose value didn't quite match their standard statistics in 2011.


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Aaron Schatz

  • NFL analyst for ESPN Insider
  • Founder of Footballoutsiders.com
  • Contributes regularly to "Numbers Never Lie"

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