For those who like Pro Football Reference, the 2012 AVs are now out.

[Paintballguy]

As someone who drafted Spiller on his fantasy team, he was an absolute monster this season. The Bills coach was an idiot for not giving him more touches.

[ActualSpamBot]

Ok. Yea, Spiller played pretty damn well, but the idea that him getting one fewer point than Ray on an arbitrary Adjusted Value Scale is some kind of injustice is still a bit much. He had 7 more yards rushing per game, but 2 fewer TDs despite Ray sitting for basically the entire final game of the season. Had Ray played, and played average, then the rushing gap would be incredibly narrower and the TD and receiving yardage gap wider.

CJ did a bit more, with a fewer touches than Rice which would argue that he is more explosive, not necessarily that he is more valuable. And frankly, they're only separated by one point.

[LukeDaniel]

One of the things I don't like about AV is that if Wide Receiver A playing with Drew Brees in New Orleans catches 96/1315/11 he could easily get a higher AV score than WR B who catches 106/1512/9 catching balls from Jay Cutler/Jason Campbell in Chicago.

If I understand their scoring system correctly, they take your unit (offense/defense) and look at how it ranks in the NFL and how much higher/lower it ranks than average. Based on that, it then calculates how much more of a percentage than the average you attained and multiplies that percentage on an average number to determine your "team offense points". Those points are then divided among all the offensive players.

That strikes me as wrong, because it's a lot more impressive to get 1500 yards with Cutler playing half your games in cold-weather Chicago than it is to get 1300 yards from Brees with a guaranteed 9 games per year in a dome.

Ogden's score gets dinged as a result. Was it his fault that Boller was such an underachiever or that the Ravens really had no weapons on offense other than Heap and occasionally Lewis? Ogden's best 4-year run of AV was 44. By comparison, Jahri Evans' current four-year total is 59. Both players made the Pro Bowl/1st team All-Pro all four years in question. Was Evans that much better? No, he fed off the strength of his teammates more (not to say he isn't a great player). He benefited from the Saints being a shootout type team and having no concern for defense.

In my opinion, if a WR catches for 1500 yards for the 23rd ranked offense in the league, it's far more impressive than someone catching for 1300 yards for the league's #2 offense. Yet, PFR scores it in reverse of that logic.

[bmorecareful]

Ok. Yea, Spiller played pretty damn well, but the idea that him getting one fewer point than Ray on an arbitrary Adjusted Value Scale is some kind of injustice is still a bit much. He had 7 more yards rushing per game, but 2 fewer TDs despite Ray sitting for basically the entire final game of the season. Had Ray played, and played average, then the rushing gap would be incredibly narrower and the TD and receiving yardage gap wider.

CJ did a bit more, with a fewer touches than Rice which would argue that he is more explosive, not necessarily that he is more valuable. And frankly, they're only separated by one point.

I wouldn't call it an "injustice" per se, it just moreso illustrates that there are certain factors that are weighted too heavily in the calculation. I don't think Rice had a better year than Spiller nor do I think he was more valuable to his team, all else equal, yet his AV is 1 more chiefly because of the Pro Bowl bid and starting all 16 games instead of 7.

If you want to talk more broadly about Rice's quality of play in comparison to his peers this year... in retrospect, it's kind of crazy how modest of a year he had. I don't think he was one of the 10 best backs in football this year. PFR rates his AV at 13, which is the same as 2010 when he had arguably his worst year as a pro. He was 16th in YPC and 14th in YPG. He was only 17th in attempts/game though which makes sense. Maybe he needed to be given more work? I'm not sure that I buy that. Rice was 8th in attempts/game in 2010 which was his worst year, and 14th in 2009 which was his best year.

Speaking of 2009, as weird as PFR's AV seems at times it has 2009 as by FAR Rice's best year as a 16-game starter, and I think that's absolutely correct. That was also the year he was part of a 3-back stable even if he was the lead dog, and I think it'd be much better for Rice if we returned to more of a rotational backfield.

[BigBob]

Ummm... what? Spiller STARTED 7 games, but he PLAYED in all 16. He was just in a rotation for the first half of the season. Spiller still had starter-type reps in the 9 games he didn't start, though. He had 150+ total yards his first 2 games of the season despite playing behind F-Jax.

Ray Rice is a good back but Spiller is on another level. He was absolutely amazing every time he touched the ball this year. The only back who had a better year than Spiller was AP, IMO, even if others had more yards. That's why PFR's AV is so jacked up... for some reason Spiller got MAJORLY undervalued just because he didn't get the start on the official game log and Pro Bowl voters have no clue what football is or how it works.

CJ Spiller had a much easier schedule in terms of run defense. Ray Rice faced 7 run defenses ranked in the top ten (2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th and 9th) while Spiller saw only 4 (4, 7, 9 and 9). In addition Spiller had 7 games against the worst run defenses in the bottom 25% (30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 26 and 24) while Rice only had 2 games (27 and 25). It makes a huge difference when you play the schedule the Bills had this year and some of his biggest games were in blowout losses. Not impressed.

[PerpetuallyBored74]

For 2012:
Cam Cameron was mostly in.
Bryant McKinnie was mostly out.

That impacted Rice's (and Flacco's and the WR/TE's) stats significantly.
Inconsistent/horrible playcalling + inconsistent/horrible O-line play--we had a carousel at LG and Oher is NOT a LT--will have that effect on your skill players' stats.