I just fundamentally disagree with this blanket statement.
Imagine my shock!
How much did they benefit from having talent around them vs how much they made the talent around them better. Its not all linear.
Of course it's not ALL linear. But some of it is. One guy objectively had two receivers that are going in the first round this year, and in the discussion for best at the position in this class. One guy objectively had an O-line that was nominated for the Joe Moore award.
The other guy objectively had one guy that routinely caught the ball away from his body, a good tight end, and a host of other guys primarily known for dropping things. The other guy objectively had an O-line that, if you hired them as bouncers with the sole purpose of keeping 18-year-olds out, your bar would immediately be filled with 18-year-olds.
The raw stats are clearly directly related to the surrounding cast
Correct. Based on the information above, it stands to reason that part of the differential between the stats for these two guys could easily be attributed to the differential in talent. It's easier to throw a TD to Michael Irvin than it is to throw one to the guy that drives Michael Irvin around. (Because the guy that drives Mike around is probably not very good at catching TDs. If he was, then someone would be throwing
him TDs and Drake Maye would be throwing balls at whoever drives
him around.)
and the opponents (ACC vs SEC defenses is not close, BTW).
Correct, but also somewhat relative. Maye was, in fact, playing versus inferior talent. But he was also playing
with inferior talent. That matters. I'm not saying it accounts for every ounce of the difference in productivity, or that these guys would have had identical results if they swapped teams.
My contention all along is that the primary difference between them is style; that they have a comparable number of strengths and a comparable number of weaknesses, and that those lists differ far more in style than they do substance.
And I think that's a pretty objective take, because the debate between them is still raging. I don't think that's a coincidence, regardless of how certain you personally are.
But the raw stats aren't the whole story at all.
Of course not. The entirety of this conversation is about the context around those stats, properly framing the realities of what made one guy lesser and one guy greater; that there's
way more to it than the stats. It's you that keeps saying simply that JD improved and DM regressed, which demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of that context.
Again, your praise of JD and criticism of DM are both too high. If the difference were as clear as you make it out to be, no one would be debating what Washington is going to do at 2 at all. But here we are, and the question of the #2 pick is the #1 draft talking point by a pretty wide margin everywhere in the NFL world.
