Raiders Pick Up Culpepper

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Yeah they probably would be, simply because there's nowhere to go but up. Defensively, you could say the opposite. There's more room for a backslide than there is for an improvement.

But really, I was intending to say that '04 Culpepper's points over replacement isn't entirely attributable to his amazing skill. He had a lot of factors working for him that can't be separated from the points over replacement calculations; a much better offensive line than the Raiders have, a much better receiving corps than the Raiders have (Wiggins was a great safety valve, Moss was a great deep threat, and Burleson was a mix of both), and a scheme that Culpepper was comfortable with.

In other words, I don't think any points over replacement calculations are applicable here to the Raiders. Because the only way '07 Culpepper can look like '04 Culpepper is if he gets the blocking that '04 Culpepper had, gets the WRs that '04 Culpepper had, and learns the scheme as intimately as '04 Culpepper did.

In sum, I think Culpepper is a really, really good QB. But he's in a situation where he can't possibly look any better than ordinary, IMO.

All true. And the assumption behind the calculation was that Culpepper would overcome all that to post identical production to 2004. In reality, he probably doesn't have the tools around him to have any shot of replicating that performance, but that doesn't mean that the results still wouldn't rock the NFL if he could play very well at the position for the Raiders.

Basically I was just having fun with the numbers, not really trying to use them to predict anything.