King of the (Shaun) Hill

I couldn't resist the off-topic title, as I found out the other day that "King of Hill" is being canceled by Fox. Its hard to believe that Fox actually has better options than the show that brought us Hank Hill, Dale Gribble, and, of course, Boomhauer (I have a friend that says he has an uncle that talks just like Boomhauer).

Anyway, the reason for this post isn't to lament the loss of a juvenile animated series, it is to analyze what will happen with Shaun Hill, now that he has the reigns of Mike Martz's offense in San Francisco.

Before the season started, I told you that you didn't want JT O'Sulivan, because he was unlikely to keep his job all year. Pretty smart, huh? Well, not really, when you consider that after O'Sullivan had a fast start and Alex Smith was put on IR, I told you that O'Sullivan was a good pick-up, startable in about half his games. Ever since then, O'Sullivan has returned to the level of crappiness that we all expected, and the 49ers have now turned things over to Shaun Hill.

Hill started several games down the stretch for the 49ers last season, and did a decent job. His TPV averages from 2007 were 18-of-26 passing, with 160 yards, 1.9 TDs, and 0.3 interceptions. In the Martz scheme, JT O'Sullivan's TPV averages where 16-27, 192 yards, 0.8 TDs, and 1 Int.

So it doesn't look like Hill will be asked to throw many more passes than he did last year (although he may be asked to look at coach Mike Singletary's naked butt if he falls too far behind). There could be a slight uptick in yardage due to the Martz system, but I don't see Hill even reaching the 192 TPV yards that O'Sullivan produced. 180 might be closer. I think that Hill's TDs in limited play last year were flukey, and he is very unlikely to average nearly 2 TDs per game again. The advantage that Hill has is that he will be less prone to throwing interceptions than O'Sullivan. JT also had a problem with fumbles, but since the Mike Martz scheme is based on the philosophy that it is better to have an extra receiver instead of an extra blocker, Hill will get pummelled just like JT O'Sullivan this year and Jon Kitna last year. That pummelling will eventually lead to fumbles.

So, in short, Shaun Hill looks like a poor man's JT O'Sullivan in terms of fantasy production. I didn't even know that there was such a thing.