Assani vs the StatHeads: Evaluating NFL QBs

[tolbiny]

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In 2000, the Pats hired Bill Bellicheck who had 1 winning season out of 5 in his previous job with the Browns. They went 5-11 that year. Next year they started 0-2. In the third game, they switched to Brady. The went on the win the SB and start a dynasty.

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This is your problem Assani. You go through the "you have to count the o-line, and receivers and all the other stuff blah blah blah", which is right and then you totally ignore that stuff and just throw out random stats that appear to support your cause. Go back and look at the team BB took to the playoffs for Cleveland, and look at the team he took over.

[Pudge714]

Golden Rhino,
That is why stats are adjusted for era.

Assani,
Watching games can be really good indicators if two things are true.
A) You are very good at anaaysing football and determining valiue
B) You have enough time to watch every single game.

[g-bebe]

cheese

[Zutroy]

I think most people knew Tom Brady was great before this season because he has consistently put up great numbers with mediocre surrounding talent. As far as better than Manning, I personally find the argument stupid. Both are incredibly good and the difference between first and second is negligible.

I disagree with your opinion of Vince Young. I do think you're rather off because you seem to believe that his presence is the sole or most prominent reason they are winning. It's not. He is a below average passer even when you consider that he doesn't have much receiving talent. His running sort of makes up for it but overall I believe he is at best an average QB. In addition a big part of their running game is due to their O-line. It has improved quite a lot over the last few years.

The reason they are winning because they have a top three defense this year. Finnegan was a rookie last year and has turned into a very good corner. Haynesworth and Vanden Bosch are excellent pass rushers and their LB corps is very good. Overall their defense is loaded.

In short, Defense > Oline > V.Young > Everyone else in terms of relevance to their recent winnings, in my opinion. Just because QB is the most high leverage position, doesn't mean it is more important than 5-10 other positions combined (if that makes sense.)

[Jack of Arcades]

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cheese

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Are you the biggest idiot ever? Everyone knows it's meat.

[VarlosZ]

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In many sports, stats give us a very accurate representation of an athlete's ability and value. However I believe that in football, significantly more than any other sport, stats are greatly influenced by a player's surrounding cast and the coaching philosophy and system. In the NFL, stats only tell a part of the story. While some groups(such as football outsiders) have attempted to give us more in depth stats that take some of this into account, I believe that for the most part they greatly fail and the stats are still very much skewed.

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FO's individual stats are just as susceptible to influence from teammates as traditional stats, but you can't really call that a "failure" because they haven't tried to correct for that. They frequently point out that when they say that Player X has a DVOA of Y, they mean that he has a DVOA of Y with his particular teammates and in his particular offensive scheme. DVOA and DPAR take lots of other things into account that traditional stats do not, but they only account for a player's teammates in the most limited way.

That said, your objection doesn't apply to a team's offensive and defensive DVOA. Keep that in mind when people (including myself) start posting those to illustrate differences in defensive quality that had a lot to do with some of those won/lost records you mention.

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Clearly I saw something in Brady before this season that let me know that he was capable of this. . .

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Not "clearly" at all. I mean, that's certainly one possibility, but it's also entirely possible that you basically got lucky. Every fan has a handful of players who he thinks are better (or worse) than they seem for one reason or another, and every fan is sometimes proven right and sometimes proven wrong, but frequently he's right or wrong for reasons completely unrelated to what the fan thought was going on with the player.

Now, I do think it's fair to say that Tom Brady is a better player than myself and most other stat-heads thought he was; i.e., that we underestimated just how bad his supporting cast had been all these years. OTOH, I think you're underestimating the extent to which Brady is (probably) playing better than at any time before in his career. I really hope Randy Moss doesn't sign with another team next year. If he does, all of the Brady-backers will point to that when he regresses somewhat to his mean instead of acknowledging the extent to which Brady's '07 is an outlier performance.

That's not to say that Brady's '07 isn't indescribably fantastic, or that Brady isn't phenomenal in general, but he's not this good. He's a great QB in the midst of a perfect storm: having the best year of his life, with a great WR with a chip on his shoulder, with one of the best #2 and #3 WR tandems in the league, and with a coach who has a big chip on his shoulder and is sending out his QB to run up the score on inferior and defeated opponents.

More to come.


P.S. -- Prediction: this thread is going to have 200 posts by Sunday. . .

[kyro]

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cheese

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Are you the biggest idiot ever? Everyone knows it's meat.

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You know, I try to keep my mouth shut in situations like this, but you're being a complete douchebag prick. You don't have to act like a jerk anytime someone disagrees with you, no matter how strongly you feel regarding your opinion.

[kyleb]

listen here [censored], it's clearly meat

my boy joa knows his [censored] ya heard

[Jack of Arcades]

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cheese

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Are you the biggest idiot ever? Everyone knows it's meat.

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You know, I try to keep my mouth shut in situations like this, but you're being a complete douchebag prick. You don't have to act like a jerk anytime someone disagrees with you, no matter how strongly you feel regarding your opinion.

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ya dude whatever, just because I owned all these dumb cheese noobs doesn't mean you gotta cry about it.

[bowens]

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cheese

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Are you the biggest idiot ever? Everyone knows it's meat.

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You know, I try to keep my mouth shut in situations like this, but you're being a complete douchebag prick. You don't have to act like a jerk anytime someone disagrees with you, no matter how strongly you feel regarding your opinion.

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God, can't you jerks get along? [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]