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Falcons recently lost against the Los Angeles Rams 7 - 10 in Atlanta
Overall Record

3 - 13 - 0 ---25th Ranked

Total Offense

185.13 Yds/Game ---21th Ranked

Total Defense

206.88 Yds/Game ---18th Ranked


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Alfred Jenkins
WR, ATL



SB Nation's Atlanta Falcons group page, The Falconoholic, recently ran a series of articles called "The Scale of Falconliness" in which former Falcon players are rated from 1 to 10 on a scale of who's "most Falconly."  Number one on the list, and the only player to receive a perfect 10, was Tommy Nobis, also known as "Mr. Falcon." 

It's a somewhat silly and entirely subjective measure, but I appreciate it.  It's because it was clearly written by true fans, knowledgeable fans who have a deep understanding of the team's history.  I'm not a Falcons fan myself, but as a Bills fan I appreciate the dedication of a fan who sticks by his or her team when things are rough.  Nobis's Falcons never once made the playoffs, and yet these fans still named him as their number one most "Falconly" player.

When the series turned to wide receivers, the subject of Alfred Jenkins came up.  He was given an 8.5, higher than any other player at the position.  He played nine years, all with Atlanta.  His teams made the playoffs a couple of times, but more usually finished well below .500.  Nevertheless, here was this fan page rating him as the most "Falconly" of all Falcon receivers, and the numerous comments to the article made it clear to me that to true Falcons fans, he is a very beloved and well-remembered former star.  One guy even recounted the story of an Atlanta deli that served his favorite sandwich, the "Alfred Jenkins" until it closed in the early 2000s.  He didn't even remember what was on it, just the name.

Jenkins may have been the Falcons' most Falconly receiver of all time, but was he also their greatest? 

Let's have a look at the Falcons' all time receiving leaders through the 2011 season:

Rk Player 
   From      To       G       Rec       Yds        TD
1 Roddy White 2005 2011 112 530 7374 45
2 Terance Mathis 1994 2001 126 573 7349 57
3 Alfred Jenkins 1975 1983 110 360 6267 40
4 Andre Rison 1990 1994 78 423 5633 56
5 Jim R. Mitchell 1969 1979 155 305 4358 28
6 Michael Haynes 1988 1997 99 266 4220 34
7 Alge Crumpler 2001 2007 108 316 4212 35
8 Wallace Francis 1975 1981 106 244 3695 27
9 Bert Emanuel 1994 1997 62 260 3600 24
10 Michael Jenkins 2004 2010 103 276 3512 20

Well it's a pretty open and shut case, right?  There's Jenkins, #3 in all-time receiving yards for the Falcons, and fourth in receptions.  So, that must mean Roddy White, not Jenkins is the greatest Falcons' receiver of all time.  The high Falconliness rating for Jenkins must have been due to the rosy glow of nostalgia.

Not so fast.  There's a problem with the numbers.  The problem is, these are raw numbers.  Comparing raw numbers across generations of football players is dodgy at best, and doing it for any stats involving the passing game is useless.  What we need instead is a rate stat, the kind of number I described in last week's article on Bert Jones.  As I said in that article, rate stats allow you to compare the relative contribution of players given the performance environments they played in.

For quarterbacks, stats sites like Pro-Football-Reference.com offer plenty of rate stats, like AY/A.  However, for receivers, no such stat exists, besides the generic Approximate Value (AV).  That number is pretty good at determining the general overall value of a player's contributions to his team's success in winning, but not at all good at pointing out a specific sort of performance, like catching passes and going downfield with them.  So, since I have no stat available to tell me what I want, I have to make one.

What I wanted to see is how much specific receivers contributed to the passing performances of their teams for the years they played in.  So the first thing I did was collect all the individual season performances for the Falcons since the 1970 merger along with the team's total completions and passing yards from those years. 

Here are the top seasons for Falcon receivers, in terms of the highest percentage of team completions by individual players:

Rank Player     Year       Rec    TmRe          %Comp
1 Roddy White 2008 88 265 33.21
2 Roddy White 2010 115 361 31.86
3 Art Malone 1972 50 157 31.85
4 Andre Rison 1991 81 260 31.15
5 Terance Mathis 1994 111 374 29.68
6 Wallace Francis 1979 74 251 29.48
7 Terance Mathis 1999 81 278 29.14
8 Eric Metcalf 1995 104 364 28.57
9 Andre Rison 1990 82 293 27.99
10 Alfred Jenkins 1977 39 140 27.86

Roddy White's 2008 sets the mark, as he caught 33.21% of all the Falcons' pass completions that year.  Notice White caught a couple dozen more balls in 2010, but the Falcons completed a lot more passes, and so White's production in this regard isn't as high.

Here are the top ten seasons in percentage of team yards by individual receivers:

Rank Player     Year      Yds    TmYd         %Yds
1 Alfred Jenkins 1976 710 1414 50.21
2 Alfred Jenkins 1977 677 1356 49.93
3 Ken Burrow 1974 545 1307 41.70
4 Roddy White 2008 1382 3336 41.43
5 Roddy White 2010 1389 3567 38.94
6 Stacey Bailey 1984 1138 3050 37.31
7 Wallace Francis 1979 1013 2729 37.12
8 Alfred Jenkins 1975 767 2067 37.11
9 Alfred Jenkins 1981 1358 3699 36.71
10 Jim R. Mitchell 1974 479 1307 36.65

Again, White had the most single-season yards in team history in 2010.  But in 1976, Jenkins accounted for a remarkable 50.21% of his team's yards (and try to imagine a team in today's fNFL passing for just 1400 yards).  My point is not whether or not Jenkins was a better player than Roddy White - rather, it is that his contribution to the 1976 team was more significant than White's was to the 2008 one. 

Now we need to put the two numbers on a scale that balances receptions and receiving yards equally valuable.  I'm not sure whether they are, but in this case we'll just take that as a base assumption.  To do that, we'll take White's 2008 receptions percentage and Jenkins' 1976 yards percentage, divide those numbers (33.21 and 50.21), and multiply them by 50.  We'll apply that same calculation to all the players, which will give us two numbers on a 0-50 scale with White's 2008 number and Jenkins' 1976 number at 50.  We'll call those Adjusted Reception Contribution Percentage (ARCP) and Adjusted Yards Contribution Percentage (AYCP), respectively.  Then we'll add the two numbers together to give us a total.  We'll call that number Adjusted Contribution Percentage (ACP).

Here are the top ten ACP seasons in Falcons' history:

Rank Player     Year            ARCP         AYCP      ACP
1 Alfred Jenkins 1977 41.94 49.72 77.78
2 Alfred Jenkins 1976 39.32 50.00 76.33
3 Roddy White 2008 50.00 41.25 74.63
4 Roddy White 2010 47.97 38.78 70.80
5 Wallace Francis 1979 44.39 36.96 66.60
6 Ken Burrow 1974 32.00 41.52 62.95
7 Andre Rison 1990 42.14 34.76 62.89
8 Tony Martin 1998 41.93 34.73 62.73
9 Peerless Price 2003 41.90 34.66 62.63
10 Art Malone 1972 47.95 30.36 62.33

Now we have a rate stat that allows us to compare individual seasons.  Finally, we'll add every season for every player and come up with their Career Adjusted Contribution Percentage (CACP):

Rank Player     From      To    CACP
1 Alfred Jenkins 1975 1983 524.37
2 Terance Mathis 1994 2001 491.76
3 Roddy White 2005 2011 470.13
4 Jim R. Mitchell 1970 1979 446.31
5 Andre Rison 1990 1994 357.19
6 Alge Crumpler 2001 2007 350.11
7 Wallace Francis 1975 1981 310.16
8 Ken Burrow 1971 1975 283.70
9 Michael Jenkins 2004 2010 258.39
10 Michael Haynes 1991 1993 255.25

So, there you have it.  Alfred Jenkins contributed more to the Falcon teams he played on than any other receiver in the history of the franchise.  So apparently it wasn't just the rosy glow of nostalgia: it seems that Jenkins deserved both the sandwich and the 8.5 Falconliness rating.  Maybe even a little more.

Jenkins sure put the 49ers between his buns in Week 14.  Though the Falcons aren't known for their offensive explosiveness, Jenkins exploded, hauling in 6 passes for a team-record 232 yards and three touchdowns as the Falcons rolled, 28-14, keeping their eyes on the NFC West prize.

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What do you get when you combine the league's worst ranked rush defense with the league's second leading rusher? Answer: 187 yards and 4 touchdowns. The Atlanta Falcons kept the Washington Ethnic Insensitivities on a losing slide in a game that was over by the end of the first quarter. The Falcons amassed a 21-0 first quarter lead, mainly upon the legs of William Andrews, and then coasted to an eventual 35-0 blanking of Washington.

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Quarterbacks

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG PS PC PA AR CO
Steve Bartkowski1030692561319256363504456
Mike Moroski15256925131319253838382538

Running Backs

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG BC RE
William Andrews31276944563144816963
Gerald Riggs42226925445031506338
Lynn Cain21276938383131636931
Bo Robinson33266944383819505619

Wide Recievers

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG BC RE
Alfred Jenkins84306938501344506356
Alfred Jackson85276944441338567556
William Curran89236931561313445638
Floyd Hodge83236938311331566338

Tight Ends

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG BC RE
Junior Miller80256938255019256338
Russ Mikeska87276919314413195619

Offensive Lineman

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG
Jeff VanNote5736693831562531
RC Thielemann6827693138631325
Pat Howell6425693831503825
Warren Bryant6627692531442525
Mike Kenn7826693838755050

Defensive Lineman

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG INT QU
Jeff Yeates7931383850501325644
Don Smith6525444444632544669
Jeff Merrow7529383150561944656
Mike Perko7125312538442544631
Mike Zele6326312531381944625
Doug Rogers7722252525381313625

Linebackers

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG INT QU
Al Richardson56253831443819501938
Fulton Kuykendall54293819443819562544
Buddy Curry50243850503819441950
Joel Williams58265650695619441981
RobertL Jackson62283125254419311331

Defensive Backs

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG INT QU
Bobby Butler23234431441344565050
Kenny Johnson37245650561344634463
Blane Gaison34242538441344443831
Earl Jones20253825381344563831
Bob Glazebrook36264431385031443850
Tom Pridemore27264438445638564456
Mike Spivey47283825313125313131

Kicker

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG KP AB AC
Mick Luckhurst1824815681311338635050

Punter

Name # Age RS RP MS HP BB AG KP AB
George Roberts12278125443113385044


Additional Practice Squad Players

--------------------No Players---------------------

Overall Record

3 - 13 - 0


25th

Home Game Record

1 - 9 - 0


29th

Away Game Record

2 - 4 - 0


29th

Passing Yards

103.69 Yds/Game


29th

Rushing Yards

81.44 Yds/Game


8th

Total Offense

185.13 Yds/Game


28th

Passing Yds Allowed

149.81 Yds/Game


29th

Rushing Yds Allowed

57.06 Yds/Game


2nd

Total Defense

206.88 Yds/Game


19th

0 Super Bowls, 0 Super Bowl Rings

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Defensive Players of the Year

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