IDP Spotlight: A Griffen Rising
It’s fairly rare that I’ll go out and write a piece on a specific player. I tend, more often than not, to focus on concepts, strategies or theories that deal with improving an owners play in fantasy football. Sure, I am part of the IDP player ranking team and I’ve released the ORANGE Report so I’m no stranger to player evaluations, not by a long shot! However, full-blown articles focusing on a specific player are something that just doesn’t tend to interest me for the most part. Sure, I’ll do a sleeper piece here and there for DynastyleagueFootball.com during the pre-season rush, but rarely will I devote a full article just to tout the upside of a player to readers of my articles. I say this because I want everyone to understand just how interesting the player in this article has become to me lately.
The player I’m talking about is Everson Griffen, defensive end for the Minnesota Vikings.
“Who?”, many of you are surely saying. Well, Griffen was a highly touted defensive end coming out of USC in 2010. He was an All-PAC 10 player in 2009 and racked up 82 tackles and 16 sacks in his three-year college career. Question marks surrounding his desire and work ethic dogged him coming into the draft and his stock tumbled. He was finally selected in the fourth round by the Minnesota Vikings with the 100th pick overall.
At a point when Griffen should have been on top of the world and should have been fighting to prove every critic wrong, instead he seemed determined to fit exactly into the mold his detractors had cast for him. In his rookie season Griffen averaged only one tackle per game and posted zero sacks in 11 games played. Griffen wasn’t expected to make a huge impact in his rookie season, however it’s what he did in that off-season that ended up creating an impact, but for all the wrong reasons.
In the span of three days Griffen was arrested twice between January 29 and January 31, 2011. The first arrest was due to being intoxicated in public for which he spent a night in jail in Hollywood, CA. Following his release from jail he bought a Porsche sports car for $110,000 and began to speed it around the streets of Los Angeles. Normally this would result in a simple citation for speeding by the local authorities but Griffen, as it turns out, did not have a drivers license. When he was pulled over he told the officer that he couldn’t go back to jail and he fled the scene on foot. He was shortly caught and when the officers attempted to detain him he reportedly grabbed the groin of one of the officers and had to be tasered in order to cooperate. He was charged with felony battery for the groin grab.
At this point this article likely isn’t selling any of you on his potential, nor is it making any of you want to rush out and grab him off the waiver wire. However, be patient – this story isn’t over yet!
Following his wild weekend the Vikings management called him in for a sit-down meeting. The Vikings leveled with Griffen, either he can get his life in order with any help they could provide, grow-up and become a professional or he and the club would part ways. Griffen got the message immediately, he canceled a party he was holding and promoting in Las Vegas the next weekend and moved his life to Minneapolis. By all accounts he stopped partying and focused himself solely to his craft. Griffen was in the gym non-stop as well as the film room, he became the professional that the Vikings wanted. Ironically, just as he was getting his life together, life conspired to attempt to rip it all apart.
On October 10, 2012 Griffen was called to Head Coach Leslie Frazier’s office. When he walked into the office he was greeted by members of the Minneapolis Police Department. From the outside it would appear as if Griffen was once again in trouble, however, what Griffen was about to learn was much worse than anyone would have expected. The police informed Griffen that his mother, Sabrina Scott, had passed away. Scott was staying at Griffen’s home while visiting her son. Police were forced to break down the door to Griffen’s residence when they received an emergency call about a female in medical distress but received no answer when they arrived. A coroner determined that Scott died of a condition called spontaneous coronary artery dissection, which occurs when the outer lining of an artery ruptures and fills with blood which eventually constricts blood flow.
Few would have been surprised if Griffen regressed and succumbed to what he was used to, a party lifestyle filled with lots of drinking to help numb himself and wash the feelings away. However, between incredible support from individual teammates and the Vikings organization as a whole and a new, determined Griffen he was able to get through one of the toughest periods in his life. In a true testament to his professionalism and, more importantly, his mother, Griffen further submersed himself into becoming a better football player and as such he had his best year in the NFL thus far. The promise Griffen showed is incredible, if you don’t believe me then let me drop a few statistics on you in order to prove it.
First, Griffen registered eight sacks on 605 defensive snaps played, that breaks down to one sack for roughly every 75 downs played. For a bit of perspective, that is better than fellow teammate and five-time Pro Bowler Jared Allen who registered a sack every 87 snaps and roughly equal to seven-time Pro Bowler, Demarcus Ware who registers a sack every 75 snaps, the same rate as Griffen. Griffen also registered 26 tackles which means he registered a tackle every 23 snaps which is identical to Jared Allen. In his 605 snaps Griffen hit the quarterback 19 times which is more than such names as Greg Hardy (18 quarterback hits on 748 snaps), Robert Quinn (17 quarterback hits on 825 snaps) or Mario Williams (15 quarterback hits on 928 snaps). On a quarterback to snap ratio Griffen hits the quarterback once every 32 snaps, that a better ratio than Jared Allen who hits the quarterback once every 50 snaps, better than Demarcus Ware who hits the quarterback once every 41 snaps and better than even Von Miller who hits the quarterback once every 40 snaps. In fact, Griffen is second in the NFL only to JJ Watt who hits the quarterback once every 22 snaps.
In a league where quarterback pressure wins games and where quarterback hits are a clear sign of scoring opportunity among up and coming players, Griffen is a player that absolutely demands to be kept on the radar of all IDP owners and can be ignored at the risk of those looking for the next big sleeper. When you factor in the fact that several signs are pointing to this being Jared Allen’s last year with the Vikings and you’ve got a player in Griffen who could be primed for a big increase in playing time coupled with a skill set that is already performing at, or above, several huge IDP names in terms of production per snap. In case I haven’t connected the dots clearly enough thus far, this situation scream buy now!
I, personally, am collecting Griffen in as many leagues as I possibly can. I’m stashing him away in the hopes that come the end of next season I will have a player on my hands whose name could potentially be on the lips of every IDP owner in fantasy football and haunting my opponents for years to come!
