How do I know summer has officially arrived? I know because the traditional annual flare-up in the ongoing Jihad against Jack Hunt has started once again.

Why do I always find myself defending this guy? Hell, I thought I had already personally written him off after week 4 last year. But here I am again, confusing the shit out of non-LSU-fans with all the Jack Hunt stuff, and once again acting like the married female friend who for some reason is wearing long sleeves in May and won’t take off her sunglasses. "He can’t help it. But he’ll change, I just know he will."

Actually, I’ve long since given up hope that Devery will ever be anything more than the no-hands-havingest big-play deep threat to ever have lost any and all semblance of trust from the people who decide whether or not he gets the ball. Best I can do at this point is to steadfastly maintain that he’s not completely useless, and that until someone else steps up to fill his role, the Saints are better off with Devery on the roster than not.

This year, Mike Triplett fired the first shot in a Sunday article about Meachem:

If Meachem lives up to his potential, he’ll not only push Devery Henderson for the No. 3 receiver job, but he could eventually supplant his mentor, veteran David Patten, in the starting lineup.

… Even more eye-catching during Wednesday’s organized team activities was seventh-round draft pick Adrian Arrington. … It’s not outlandish to make early comparisons to Marques Colston, and not just because both were seventh-round picks.

… typically, teams keep five receivers on the active roster.

… Henderson is in the most jeopardy after four inconsistent years in New Orleans (he offered a reminder during Wednesday’s practice by dropping another routine catch).

… Moore and Copper, meanwhile, bring added value on special teams — which is key for the fourth and fifth receivers on any NFL team if they want to be active on game day. Henderson, Meachem and Arrington have little or no experience playing special teams.

Triplett’s take was perfectly reasonable. He did point out Devery’s value as a deep threat, and he noted that the Saints did think enough of Devery to bring him back after he became a free agent earlier this spring. He did qualify his statements, pointing out that it was only one practice. Predictably, those points were largely ignored, and message board reaction has been as emotional as usual.

The Jihad against Jack Hunt is a textbook example of why you can’t always just believe what you see with your eyes. Emotion, bias, lack of perspective and the fog of war all contribute to skew the perception. The saying goes that "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." Bullshit. Statistics don’t lie. Ever. They’re completely unbiased, they only tell you what actually happened. Selective, agenda-driven use of stats is what can make them "lies." They say you can make stats show whatever you want them to show. But the agenda is brought into it by the person presenting the stats, not the stats themselves. It’s more accurate to say that "Stats don’t always tell the whole story." That’s certainly true, but neither do human observations.

Here is the part where your eyes glaze over as I bore the shit out of you with facts. But after that, we dance! So try not to lapse into a coma or anything, okay?

According to Football Outsiders‘ Catch % stats, Devery caught 48% of the passes thrown his way last season. And yeah, that’s pretty crappy. No denying that. Now it’s very important to understand that this isn’t a "drops" statistic. The stat does not tell us that Devery dropped 52% of the catchable passes thrown to him, all it tells us is that 42 passes seemed to have been thrown his way, and 20 of those passes were complete. But since Drew Brees is a god, and the prevailing wisdom is that Jack Hunt "can’t catch", let’s just go ahead and assume that they’re all drops, for the sake of the discussion.

So 48%. Yeah, that sucks. But by golly, math is fun! So let’s do some.

What you might not have known is that league average is roughly 56%. So while 48% is still crappy, it doesn’t look nearly as bad in context of the league overall. In fact, a whopping four 2007 incompletions were the difference between Devery and league average. In 2006, Devery caught 59% of the passes thrown in his direction, which was above league average.

Obviously I’m not going to sit here and insist that Devery has good hands. Clearly he doesn’t. What I’m telling you is that the frustration of seeing Devery drop balls skews the perception and leads people to believe that he’s a lot worse than he is. Inconsistent doesn’t always necessarily mean "bad." They’re two different things.

To illustrate, consider two other stats from Football Outsiders, DPAR (Defense-adjusted Points Above Replacement ) and DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average). Despite being held back by inconsistent hands, and in what everyone will agree was not a very good year for Devery, he still posted a DPAR of 7.8 and a DVOA of 12.3. Positive numbers are good and negative numbers are bad.

Devery’s DPAR is higher than that of Reggie Brown, Mushin Muhammad, Santana Moss, Lee Evans, Jerry Porter, Steve Smith. Javon Walker and scores of others most Saints fans would gladly accept straight up in exchange for Devery. In fact, with a sufficient number of passes thrown to him, Devery would have been 59th in the league last year by DPAR. Or in other words, a great #3, borderline #2 guy.

Devery’s DVOA is higher than Larry Fitzgerald, TJ Houshmanzadeh, Braylon Edwards, Amani Toomer, Hines Ward, Plaxico Burress and scores of others most Saints fans would gladly accept straight up in exchange for Devery.

In 2006 it was even better, as Devery’s DPAR was 17th in the league and his DVOA was tops in the league. That’s right, number one.

So why is it that even though Devery "can’t catch", he ranks so well by stats concocted to reflect the overall value of a player’s performance?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because consistency isn’t the end-all be-all of a player’s value. It’s because a player can be inconsistent and still be a net positive, even a big one. It’s because one 40 yard completion on 1st & 10 and one drop is more valuable than two 8 yard completions on 3rd & 14 and no drops. It’s because the difference between 48% and 56% isn’t as big a deal as you might think at the moment you’re about to punch a hole in your 52 inch plasma because Devery dropped that pass, and now it’s 2nd and 10 where it "shoulda" been 6 points.

Consistency is added value, nothing more, nothing less. And to be fair to Devery’s detractors, lack of consistency is a pretty significant drawback. But when league average is 56%, isn’t that kind of like calling your .270-hitting 40 home run slugger a bum because he doesn’t bat .333? Even though, when you look a little closer, you find that league average is a lot closer to .270 than .333?

Consistency is only one aspect of a player’s overall value. But what counts is the overall value, not the lack of one aspect of it. Devery was 6th in the league last year in yards per catch, and the five guys in front of him combined for a whopping 13 receptions. In 2006, Devery was 4th in yards per catch, and the three guys in front of him combined for 3 receptions.

Devery is the home run hitter who you want to choke when he goes 0-4 with 3 strikeouts. But when you get past that emotional element of frustration and draw a sober assessment of his overall value, you keep him in the lineup. That is, until you find the guy who can hit 40 home runs and bat .333. Hey, good luck with that.

On the other hand, coaches aren’t immune to emotion either. Surely Coach Payton is as frustrated with Devery’s lack of consistency as the next guy. Which is why when Triplett opines that Devery is in the most jeopardy, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to assume that that’s true.

What is unreasonable is to dance in the streets over a potential decision to throw the baby out with the bath water. And that is something that Saints fans are all too often guilty of.