Mario Williams spent most of last year playing through multiple injuries. All he did was notch nine sacks, blow up entire game plans, and stop running backs cold in their tracks with a much-improved game at stopping the run. Yes, he didn't notch the same amount of sacks as he did in his previous two years, but hopefully with time to heal his shoulder, his hip, and everything else that is wrong with him now, he'll return to the dominant form he showed last year. Or will his lack of intensity lead to him taking a nap on the field next year, as some commenters have implied he did in the Arizona game last year? That is up for you, the reader, to decide.
Will Mario Williams reach his stellar sack per game season again? Will he make quarterbacks openly weep on the field this year? Will he make Vince Young openly weep on the field this year? Will he get so fed up with Amobi Okoye that he throws him over the line and into the quarterback? Will I be able to make a non-snarky question up for this segment?
Simply predict Williams' regular season tackles, sacks, and the total number of his forced fumbles, interceptions, assists, and passes defensed.. Additionally, as a tiebreaker, select the defensive lineman you think will have the second-highest amount of tackles for the Texans at the end of the 2010 regular season. I'll list the weighted formula behind the jump so as to not bore you, but the person who is closest to these numbers will receive...something Texans-related as a prize, should they be around after the season to claim it. I can't tell you what the prize will be, both because it would ruin the surprise and because I'm just planning to make it something on sale and random at Amazon for the free shipping, but believe me when I tell you that it will change your life.
I'll try and run an average of what we come up with as well in a few days. If we were a baseball site, here's where I would include a player's CHONE and PECOTA and #6ORG systems, but to the best of my knowledge, there aren't really any companies doing that for free. Football Outsiders has a projection system, but they only predict individual defensive stats in their KUBIAK projections, which cost extra and so I'm assuming they don't want them leaked out. Last year, Williams combined FF/INT/ASSIST/PD number was 10, if you need a baseline on that.
Oh, and just to clear things up for me. Write "PROJECTION" as the subject of your actual projections. Thanks.
ETA: I'm going to stop accepting entries at 11:59 CT on Thursday, August 12th, so I don't have to refer back to this thread since I'm going to be putting everything in a spreadsheet. You have until then.
Real simple here, I'll just dock you a point off for every tackle, sack, and (FF/PD/ASST/INT) you are off. Because of the lower nature of these numbers, I'll add an additional 5 points if you hit the number exactly. Lowest number of points off takes home the...whatever the hell it'll be. First tiebreaker will be whoever guessed the right lineman, second will be whoever was docked less on tackles, third tiebreaker will be whoever has been in my kitchen most**.
**-since none of you have, it'll be a coinflip.