Jeremy Shockey is not on the trading block. We have stated here on Ultimatenyg and will reiterate the opinion that Shockey was not addition by subtraction in his injury helping the team win a Super Bowl, that Shockey should not get traded and that Shockey will not get traded. At previous times people like Manning have shot down anti-Shockey innuendo and this time it is O'Hara's turn to reject any anti-Shockey ideas. NEXT.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
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It pains me to say this because I’ve always loved the guy, but I disagree with you about Shockey.
Losing him was addition by subtraction: It gave Toomer and especially Smith a bigger role in the offense. Both of these guys responded and were absolutely huge in the postseason.
Shockey plays as hard as anyone and has been an emotional leader at many points since he joined us in ’02. But he’s also a whiner with a huge ego.
Now, this set of attributes doesn’t necessarily make him a bad guy to have on your team – there are certainly worse qualities football players can have. But the fact is that our quarterback went from being below-average to excellent right about when Shockey went down (the Buffalo game, in which Eli was horrible, notwithstanding.) Did Eli suddenly improve because Shockey was out? I don’t know. But he did improve when Shockey went down.
Going forward, we have enough targets for Eli in Plax, Smith, Toomer, and Boss (and possibly Moss), a group with which Eli showed more chemistry any group that included Shockey.
Adding Shockey to that mix will produce a very marginal upgrade at best. Whatever contribution we get from Shockey will be to some degree subtracted from the contributions from the others. As with scorers in basketball, you get diminishing returns with talented receivers in football – there is only one ball.
The blocking advantage you get with Shockey over Boss is obviously considerable (Yes, you could always say “Matthews,” but then the pass-catching advantage you get is considerable). But just as Shockey evolved into a good blocker, can’t we assume that Boss will improve enough to cut into this advantage over the next couple of years?
And is this blocking upgrade worth Shockey’s salary, the possibility that he’ll mess up the chemistry in the passing game, and a Saints second round pick, or whatever else we can get for him?
I say no.
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