Jeremy Shockey was traded to the New Orleans Saints for second and fifth round draft picks in 2009. In
Jeremy Shockey:
In six seasons in the NFL, Shockey has always been amongst the top ten tight ends in a point per reception scoring system despite missing 13 games and playing through injuries for most of his career. Shockey will also have Pro Bowler Drew Brees as his quarterback who loved throwing to tight end Antonio Gates in
The New York Giants have a lot of weapons on offense and the trade of Shockey should not impact Manning’s production as we saw in the playoffs. Kevin Boss had 9 receptions for 140 yards and a touchdown in five games. Boss will be the starting tight end but he is nowhere as talented as Shockey and it would be quite surprising to see him have more than 35 or 40 receptions next season. If you put those two together it means that the wide receivers should be targeted more often even though one could argue that they will be covered better. Manning completed 101 passes in the final two games of the regular season and the four playoff games. He completed 30 to Toomer, 23 to Burress, 17 to Smith, 16 to the running backs and 6 to Tyree. This means that 75% of Manning’s completions were to his wide receivers as opposed to only 55% in the other 15 games and 15% were to running backs as opposed to 21%. The main explanation for the decrease in passes thrown to running backs is that Derrick Ward, who is the best pass catching running back on the Giants, did not play in the post-season. We can assume that the running backs will still catch around 20% of the passes in 2008 but as we had assumed previously, the passes that do not go to Shockey will go to the wide receivers. Look for Burress, Toomer, Smith and Moss to combine for about 180 to 190 receptions. Plaxico Burress and Amani Toomer should still have about 130 so Steve Smith and Sinorice Moss will battle for those additional 50 to 60 receptions but neither should catch enough to have a fantasy impact.
New York Giants Rushing Offense:
A lot has been said about Jeremy Shockey’s run blocking abilities so we decided to look at statistics to see if this was true. In the 14 regular season games that Shockey missed in his NFL career, the Giants averaged 4.8 yards per carry but we have to be careful since quite a few of those were week 17 games. Last season the Giants averaged 3.6 yards per carry in the playoffs which was well-below their regular season average. In 2003, Shockey missed seven games and the Giants averaged 4.0 yards per carry without him and 4.1 with him. Other than last year’s four post-season games against very good teams, there does not seem to be any proof that the Giants are worse in the running game without Shockey.
In the first part of this article we predicted that Shockey would be looking at about 80 receptions for 900 yards and four touchdowns. The Saints spent most of last season looking for a number two receiver behind Colston and it was only in the second half of the season that David Patten emerged in that role. Lance Moore, Terrance Copper, Eric Johnson and Billy Miller are four players that should have very few catches this year and they combined for 122 receptions and eight touchdowns last year. The initial reaction to this trade may be that Colston will not be targeted as often but the counter effect is that he will be more open. Those 122 receptions are plenty to split between Shockey and Meachem, the two new targets for Brees this year. Without those disastrous first four games, Brees would have had 4,600 yards and 36 touchdowns over 16 games and he now has two new targets in Shockey and Meachem. This trade has made us increase Brees’s reward grade from low to medium and now moves him ahead of Tony Romo in our quarterback rankings. Colston will remain at number three in our wide receiver rankings since we already had him quite high compared to other sites but we have lowered Meachem and Patten slightly.
New Orleans Saints Rushing Offense:
The Saints were well-below average last year when running to the right side and the addition of Shockey will likely help right tackle Jon Stinchcomb who is not a very strong run blocker. The player that this will help the most in the Saints running game is Reggie Bush. Bush loves running to the outside and the addition of Shockey will now give him a blocker to seal the end and will allow him to turn the corner more often. For that reason we have increased Bush’s reward grade from medium to high which now moves him up to number nine in our running back rankings (in point per reception leagues) right behind Steven Jackson. This may seem high but Bush has averaged 271 points per 16 games in his first two NFL seasons and now has a better run blocking center in Goodwin as well as a much better run blocking tight end. This could be the year that Reggie Bush breaks out and becomes one of the premiere running backs in the NFL.
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