Assani vs the StatHeads: Evaluating NFL QBs

[BillNye]

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Vince Young is terrible. I wouldn't trade the Vikings' QBs for the Titans'.

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I think you might be the worst football poster on this forum.

[Jack of Arcades]

Kelly Holcomb and Brooks Bollinger have been pretty average this year. Tennessee would love to have average QB play. They'd be undefeated if they did.

[onlinebeginner]

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Kelly Holcomb and Brooks Bollinger have been pretty average this year. Tennessee would love to have average QB play. They'd be undefeated if they did.

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vince had a good game i thought against the colts... could be wrong

[BillNye]

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Kelly Holcomb and Brooks Bollinger have been pretty average this year. Tennessee would love to have average QB play. They'd be undefeated if they did.

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Holcomb + Brooks are average?

Holcomb has been bad, takes way too many sacks and way too many of his throws are batted down by the DLine. Brooks played decent considering we had 350+ yards on the ground and its fairly obvious that that opens up the passing game.

These guys are all more or less MN's Starting QB, cuz they dont have an established starter really. Plz name even 10 starting QBs who you would rather have Bollinger + Holcomb over.

If the Vikes had an actual "average qb" they would be leading the NFC.

[Jack of Arcades]

Yeah, you're right. I meant it in the sense that if they had a decent offense they'd be up there with Pats/Colts.

[Jack of Arcades]

You think there are only 10 above average QBs in the league?

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If the Vikes had an actual "average qb" they would be leading the NFC.

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Maybe if Tarvaris Jackson hadn't thrown half the Vikes' passes, they'd have a better record.

Holcomb hasn't really been that bad - he's played the KC defense which only Favre has looked good against. He's still managing 6 ypa and has only turned the ball over once. I mean, he hasn't been great, but he's at least been half-competent.

[Toro]

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you should read the miguel cabrera thread. toro threatened to beat me up because i was such a jerk (mebenhoe deleted the offending posts, though).

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Toro (who I assume most be 40+ based on his posts) saying he'd "kick your ass if you said that to him in a bar" is one of my favorite SE moments this year.

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Toro is older than Brett Favre.

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Yep, I'm old enough to Bret Favre's father.

[VarlosZ]

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Mike Vick: Ugh....best WR has been...??? I dunno, Peerless Price maybe? Jeez thats bad.

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But as others have pointed out, that works both ways. Peerless Price was a good WR in Buffalo (had the one excellent year before being traded, but also a couple of pretty nice ones before that), then went to Atlanta and was suddenly horrible. Two well-regarded 1st-round WRs were also apparently total busts with Michael Vick throwing to them. And now that Roddy White has a luminary like Joey Harrington throwing the passes -- surprise! -- he looks like a real NFL Wide Receiver.

You talk about having to actually watch the games, and I saw plenty of Michael Vick. The impression I always got: "He doesn't see open receivers, and the ones he does see he never hits in stride; often, the ball is so poorly thrown they can't even get a hand on it. He sure is fast, though."

All things considered, Vick wasn't a bad Quarterback. He was, however, a bad passer, and if you're a bad passer it's awfully hard to be more than an average QB.

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Mike Vick: . . . System calls for a lot of ball control and not taking chances.

Vince Young: . . . System is to protect the ball, not make mistakes, and hope the defense can win the game for you.

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If that's true, then they're not working very well within the system: too inaccurate, too many interceptions (note that Vince Young will probably mature into a pretty good passer, but right now that's not the case). You can be a QB in a system that emphasizes ball control and not making mistakes and still put up good numbers. It looks like this, or this.

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Vince Young:
This is a much smaller sample size. The Titans went 4-12 in 2005. In 2006 they started 0-3 without him. He took over and they went 8-5 the rest of the way. In 2007 so far, they are 5-1 with him and 1-1 without him. In total thats 5-16 without him and 13-6 with him.

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A JoA post from this thread that you didn't reply to:
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Kerry Collins was terrible last year, and Vince Young was anywhere from not terrible to pretty good. That's a pretty big upgrade and that, along with improvements in the defense made, turned the Titans into an average or slightly above average team.

They played a lot of teams close, including very good ones (Indy twice) and very bad ones (Houston twice). A few of their wins were kind of fluky, even if they played well. They beat a banged up Washington and Jeff Garcia in backup duty. Mathias Kiwanuka forgot to tackle. They got big return TDs against Jacksonville, and they beat Indy on a 60 yard field goal. I'm not saying this to call them bad, but just to say a few bounces helped them get to 8-8.

Also, note that if a few things go Kerry Collins' way, they start of 2-1.

Last year was as much about the improvement of the offense as the improvement of the defense. However, predictably, their offense has regressed. This doesn't have much to do with Vince - they lost 3 valuable, if unspectacular playmakers. Vince himself has probably played a little worse but yes, his rushing threat has helped Chris Brown and LenDale White.

However, their defense this year has been elite. Even without Pacman Jones, their pass defense is one of the best in the league. They held Indianapolis to their lowest point total - 22. Meanwhile, the offense has never scored more than 24 points in a game this year. Sure, this is not entirely, or even mostly, Vince Young's fault, but Vince Young is not the main reason they're winning.

Cliffs notes: Young >>> Collins and that's part of the reason they're winning, but they got a little lucky last year and so far this year the defense is one of the best in the league.

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You say you're not just looking at won-lost records, but in your OP that is all you're doing (along with mentioning that these guys look good to you on TV). There are a bunch of problems with that. The quoted post above is a perfect example of how that can be misleading.

Also, note that you're comparing the W/L record of these QBs to that of their backups and predecessors . . . but there's generally a reason that a QB is replaced, or is sitting on a bench. You're comparing them mostly to scrubs (Bledsoe being the exception).

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But do you not see how hypocritical you're being??!!! On one hand, you're saying that while a QB may be the most important position on the field, we cannot give him all the credit/blame for the W-L stat. But then you're raising other stats, and completely ignoring teamates/system! The truth is that all stats(including W-L) are greatly influenced by surrounding talent and system and changes made to the roster and coaching and a ton of other variables.

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And in your OP you're making the opposite mistake. If you're aware of the obvious criticism that will follow your "This QB wins more games than other QBs on that team" argument, then why don't you ever address it?


Finally, you imply that the most important thing in evaluating a player is watching him play -- scouting him, basically. Of course that's part of it, and for a professional scout or coach, that may even be most of it. For a typical (even rabid) fan, however, there are excellent reasons that we focus on stats more than scouting.

We're biased. Not just in favor of teams and/or players we like, but also in favor of our previously held beliefs (as someone on this message board once said, confirmation bias is wicked strong). Even if you could neutralize bias, you have small sample size and, for most players, woefully incomplete information. How many games do you really see from the players about whom you have strong opinions? Maybe you see a few Vince Young games in which he leads his team to a 4th quarter comeback, but you miss the games in which he throws three first half interceptions and his team loses by 20.

And even for players on your local team, which you presumably see every single week, the way the game is displayed on TV means that you miss the large majority of what's happening on every single play. With the camera on the side of the field, scouting the O-lines' run blocking abilities is simply impossible, so you can never be sure how much credit to give the RB for success or failure. You only see about 5-10 yards past the line of scrimmage so you have no idea what the receivers and the secondary are doing. Were the Atlanta WRs horrible all these years, or was Vick failing to find the open man? You can't tell; Vick throws an incomplete pass to a WR who was well covered and you say that no one was open and it was the receivers' fault, but maybe the intended receiver did get open and Vick was late with the ball, or maybe the receiver on the other side of the field had a few steps on the safety deep (not that Vick would be able to hit him, anyway).

And even among the stuff that is on the screen during the games we are actually watching, most of it is a total mystery to us. Unless you rewind the play and go through it in slo-mo a dozen times to figure out what everyone's assignment is, you can very rarely properly assign credit and blame. It might look like the RB followed a nice block from the FB to pick up 12 yards, but maybe the WLB covered the wrong gap which allowed the G to kick out to the next level and block the MLB who would otherwise make the tackle, in which case the offense just got lucky. Or maybe everyone on the offense was in perfect position relative to the defensive scheme, in which case the coaching staff should get the credit (for calling the right play), not any particular player.

In short, we trust the numbers because we can't trust our eyes. We don't see enough games, and the games we do see are broadcast with the purpose of giving us something fun to watch, not inundating us with a lot of good information. A good stat-head is a stat-head because he's humble -- he doesn't presume to be able to watch a handful of Falcons games and know for a fact that the exciting running Quarterback with accuracy problems is actually one of the best QBs in the league.

Granted, a good stat-head also recognizes the limitations of his stats, and perhaps we should have been more willing to acknowledge that the Brady/Manning debate might have been closer than it seemed. It's just that, with our eyes and in our statistics -- i.e., with our imperfect information -- Manning seemed a lot better. And I still think he's a better QB. I'm just not as sure as I was three months ago.

[MyTurn2Raise]

statheads for football are pretty ridiculous

[Triumph36]

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statheads for football are pretty ridiculous

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awesome post imo

varlosz, phenomenal post - i'm not sure why an OP like assani's deserves it.