Barnidge is the only one of the three to not make the Pro Bowl. I didn’t include Kelce’s two lost fumbles in here either. Eifert also has two less games played if you want to factor that in as well. When you look at the numbers though, I would go as far as to argue for Barnidge over the other two. We can start simply with receptions.
Eifert averages four a game so add eight to project to 14 games and he’s still only at 56. Barnidge leads the whole group in receptions. When we look in terms of yards, Barnidge is the clear winner in the group with over 100 more yards than Kelce and almost 400 more than Eifert. If we try to rule out a long pass skewing stats, Kelce’s is 42, Barnidge 40, and Eifert 31.
That argument becomes invalid. That makes two checks for Barnidge. When it comes to touchdowns, Eifert wins. I’m not going to argue three more touchdowns in two less games. However Barnidge did tie Hall of Famer Ozzie Newsome’s franchise record for touchdowns in a season by a TE with 9 and still has two games to break it. The only argument I can make for Barnidge over Eifert here would be TD%. We all know the Browns suck at QB.
Andy Dalton has been much better this year and was probably a fringe Pro Bowler himself. The Browns as a team had 20 TD passes with nine going to Barnidge for 45%. If we exclude the two games that Eifert misses, we can reduce the Bengals TDs from 28 to 25 and Eifert caught 12 of them for 48%. So even though he has three more touchdowns, he still only accounted for 3% more of his teams passing TDs than Barnidge and that was with Dalton versus McCown and Manziel.
When you look at the stats, the touchdowns probably come first followed by yards and then receptions. At the end of the day it doesn’t mattered how many yards you racked up if you didn’t score enough points to win so that’s why touchdowns comes first. If we do it on a scale of 1-3 and have TDs be x3, yards x2, and receptions x1 for importance multipliers, Kelce finishes with 9 (3×1, 2×2, 1×2), Eifert 12 (3×3, 2×1, 1×1), and Barnidge 15 (3×2, 2×3, 1×3). This is the salt in the wound that Browns fans have dealt with for years. The team has struggled record wise for years. The QB play has been horrendous.
Yet we have a guy perform his ass off out of nowhere and two other guys get in over him. At least it upsets Cleveland fans and he got his contract extension to stay with the team.
It’s just a shame that he probably got overlooked because he doesn’t have the name recognition and played for Cleveland when his stats were better than others, played in a worse situation than the other players, and his actions extend off the field as well being named the Browns nominee for the Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee. It should say Pro-Bowler under his name but instead it says THERE’S ALWAYS NEXT YEAR.
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