Assani vs the StatHeads: Evaluating NFL QBs

[Assani Fisher]

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Averages are per game

2004: 284.8 yards, 3.06 TDs, 67.6% completion percentage, 0.625 INTs, 121.1 QB rating

2005: 234.2 yards, 1.75 TDs, 67.3% completion percentage, 0.625 INTs, 104.1 QB rating

2006: 274.8 yards, 1.94 TDs, 65.0% completion percentage, 0.56 INTs, 101.0 QB rating

2007: 265.1 yards, 1.77 TDs, 64.1% completion percentage, 1.11 INTs, 90.8 QB rating

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I wonder what these numbers were before last night, when he was missing 3 of his top 4 receivers and both starting tackles. Surely the INT numbers would be much better.

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But in the one game that Collins started, it was a total shootout: 38-36!! And Houston isn't known as a high powered offense at all either.

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It was 32-7 after 3 quarters. Are you arguing that the offensive gameplan made the defense give up 29 points in the fourth quarter?

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
I'm confused....I was trying to show that Manning wouldn't put up as great of numbers without having his great WRs and surrounding cast....and in reponse to that you point out that he was missing several of his top WRs and supporting cast last night.....ummmmm, isn't that the point of that analysis???

Edited to add: While Manning did hurt his INT numbers before last night, he helped his yardage and TD numbers last night. His completion percentage stayed about the same(maybe dropped a fraction of a point).


Meh....obviously I understand how ridiculous I am going to sound if I answer "yes" to your second question. But I do honestly think that some offensive gameplans(ball control, run the ball a ton, try for very long drives, no risks, give your defense good field position) will help your defenese while others(deep passes, little protection for your QB, big risks) will often hurt your defense.

99,987 and counting

[VarlosZ]

I may reply more later, but these things stood out.

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Meh....I don't see how DVOA is any less dependant upon your teamates skill level than other normal stats.

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There is a relatively minor way in which DVOA accounts for one's teammates. It's only judging performance based on similar circumstances. So, for example, if a QB has a horrible running game and is constantly stuck in 3rd & Long, he doesn't get penalized for having a lower Completion% and a higher rate of Interceptions. Or a RB with a terrible passing game doesn't get penalized for never being close enough to the goalline to score.

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I don't think I have any great ability that many on this forum don't have. I do, however, think that I do think things through a lot, I'm almost always unbiased. . .

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But the nature of bias is that you seldom realize when it comes into play, so there's no way you can make that claim.

And, as I alluded to before, it's confirmation bias that you really have to look out for. When we watch a player that we think is underrated, it's only natural that we take particular note of plays that confirm our hypothesis - it's more fun to be right than to be wrong, and the brain will find its pleasure. I'm sure you could point out several players that you recognize you were wrong about, but we all could. We also could all (or mostly) point to even more players we think we were right about, but it's impossible that most of us are right most of the time. Not in this instance, at least.

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I agree that I alone can't watch a game and scout every player well. However, I do think that if I go into many debates with an open mind that I can learn a lot. I'm sure you can tell that I love to discuss sports. And when I do find a valuable source of information, I ask them a ton of questions and try to learn as much as possible . . . I think that from listening to as much good and trusted info as I can that I can indeed form a solid unbiased opinion of players.

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That's fair, and collecting as many different informed viewpoints as possible is quite valuable.

I've heard you say previously that, because football is such a complicated, hard to measure sport, you have to rely on expert opinions: ex-players, coaches, etc. While that seems to make intuitive sense, I think that's part of the reason you get so much resistance from stat-heads.

We're taking a lesson from baseball. In baseball you had over a century of experience with the sport. You had hundreds of thousands (possibly millions considering college and the minors) of individual games. And you always had scores of people who had been a part of the game as players, scouts, coaches, managers, and/or front office people for decades -- people who by any definition would be considered experts on the game.

And then we start running the numbers (in a sport that we mostly can quantify), and it turns out that the experts were (and in some cases still are) very wrong about a lot of very important (and universally agreed-upon) things.

So you can see how we'd be skeptical, right? We see the same kind of talking heads on TV (mostly former players and coaches, again presumably experts) spouting the same kinds of cliches without providing evidence, and almost every expert seems to agree with the cliches. And then we start running the numbers (numbers that are less mature and somewhat more fallible than baseball numbers, to be sure), and it looks like a lot of the cliches are just wrong. It looks like focusing on a QB's W/L record is crazy. It looks like close games don't tell you nearly as much as blowouts do. It looks like the experts on TV and in print have been (and mostly still are) using severely flawed data as evidence for their opinions. Etc.

So, we think "Here we go again." And yes, perhaps we do sometimes get ahead of ourselves in rushing to declare a particular canard dead. While that's risky, it isn't necessarily incorrect, though. And on your side, I think, the opposite may be true. I think you may be a little too quick to accept (and defend) the opinions of all these people who should be experts.

[Assani Fisher]

Let me also add, that of all my views(Manning, Brady, Vick, Young) I feel the least strongly about Vince Young right now. I say this because I notice that many of the replies ignored my points on the other 3 but concentrated on VY. I think that the reason for my uncertainty regarding VY is simply his youth and inexperienced. With those other QBs they've all pretty much hit their primes and we know what to expect from them. With Vince, hes up and down like a lot of young QBs and hes still(hopefully) improving.

99,962 and counting

[Jack of Arcades]

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I'm confused....I was trying to show that Manning wouldn't put up as great of numbers without having his great WRs and surrounding cast....and in reponse to that you point out that he was missing several of his top WRs and supporting cast last night.....ummmmm, isn't that the point of that analysis??

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No, you were talking about Harrison only. You made no mention of Dallas Clark, Anthony Gonzales, or Tony Ugoh.

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Meh....obviously I understand how ridiculous I am going to sound if I answer "yes" to your second question.

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Of course you don't. You threw it out there because it sounded good and supported your point, but you didn't really believe the specific example was relevant, did you?

I do think that offense effects defense and vice versa, but let's look at the Houston game again. Houston's first nine drives (not including a return touchdown) averaged 1:45. They had 11 minutes of possession through 3 quarters.

Compare that to the Titans, Sunday, who managed 4 drives 2 minutes or longer.

Besides, if your offense is ball control, no risks, field position - what happens when the Titans get behind? Vince Young turns the ball over 3 times? Vince Young did no favors for his defense yesterday. In fact, with 8 interceptions in his last 5 games, Vince Young hasn't done much for anybody but opposing defenses.

[Pudge714]

JoA,
Thanks for the PM [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Assani Fisher]

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There is a relatively minor way in which DVOA accounts for one's teammates. It's only judging performance based on similar circumstances. So, for example, if a QB has a horrible running game and is constantly stuck in 3rd & Long, he doesn't get penalized for having a lower Completion% and a higher rate of Interceptions. Or a RB with a terrible passing game doesn't get penalized for never being close enough to the goalline to score.

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point noted



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But the nature of bias is that you seldom realize when it comes into play, so there's no way you can make that claim.

And, as I alluded to before, it's confirmation bias that you really have to look out for. When we watch a player that we think is underrated, it's only natural that we take particular note of plays that confirm our hypothesis - it's more fun to be right than to be wrong, and the brain will find its pleasure. I'm sure you could point out several players that you recognize you were wrong about, but we all could. We also could all (or mostly) point to even more players we think we were right about, but it's impossible that most of us are right most of the time. Not in this instance, at least.


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Fair enough. I'll admit that when I typed that I was more thinking of the fact that I"m usually not biased when evaluating my home teams or my hated teams. I do think what you say has some merit though, although I can honestly say that I try to avoid that as best as I can, and I do think I've shown in the past a willingness to reform my opinions(even quite frequently at times).


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We're taking a lesson from baseball. In baseball you had over a century of experience with the sport. You had hundreds of thousands (possibly millions considering college and the minors) of individual games. And you always had scores of people who had been a part of the game as players, scouts, coaches, managers, and/or front office people for decades -- people who by any definition would be considered experts on the game.

And then we start running the numbers (in a sport that we mostly can quantify), and it turns out that the experts were (and in some cases still are) very wrong about a lot of very important (and universally agreed-upon) things.

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I don't know baseball that well, so would you mind going more in depth here and providing some examples.


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So you can see how we'd be skeptical, right? We see the same kind of talking heads on TV (mostly former players and coaches, again presumably experts) spouting the same kinds of cliches without providing evidence, and almost every expert seems to agree with the cliches. And then we start running the numbers (numbers that are less mature and somewhat more fallible than baseball numbers, to be sure), and it looks like a lot of the cliches are just wrong.

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Agreed, but I hope you don't think that I was saying that I'm basing my opinions off of "experts" like Skip Bayless, Michael Irvin, Chris Berman, etc.

Some people who I put into the "valuable opinions" group are even posters from this board....I'm not just blindly choosing well known tv personalities and following them.


99,961 and counting

[Pudge714]

JoA,
Peyton has had 8 INTs in the past two games.

[Assani Fisher]

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No, you were talking about Harrison only. You made no mention of Dallas Clark, Anthony Gonzales, or Tony Ugoh.

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The point is the exact same. And yes you're right that I didn't mention that those guys were out because I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT THAT GAME IN PARTICULAR. You are the one that brought up that one game in particular.Nevertheless, my point remains the same- Manning's great numbers are aided by a great supporting cast. When you give him a decent cast(which is what he had last night as Wayne and Addai are still solid weapons) he is good but not the best QB of all time.


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Of course you don't. You threw it out there because it sounded good and supported your point, but you didn't really believe the specific example was relevant, did you?


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Ugh....look dude, I've come into this debate with an open mind to learn and I've asked others to do the same....obviously its hard to decipher "tone" on a message board, but it really sounds to me like you just want to prove yourself right and not look to truly find the best evaluation methods...I honestly have no desire to do that. If you want to "win" this argument, then fine- I concece, you win.



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I do think that offense effects defense and vice versa

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Ok, thats all I was ever saying(although you conveniently picked out two sentences of my paragraphs so that people might not see that).



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Houston's first nine drives (not including a return touchdown) averaged 1:45. They had 11 minutes of possession through 3 quarters.


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I don't really understand what Houston's TOP has to do with Tennesee's offensive gameplan.


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Compare that to the Titans, Sunday, who managed 4 drives 2 minutes or longer.

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I still don't really see where you're going with this.


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Besides, if your offense is ball control, no risks, field position - what happens when the Titans get behind?

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Obviously you'd have a different gameplan for different situations.

To further my point about gameplan....

If I asked the "stat heads" what were VY's best games this season, they would probably say the Indy and N.O. games in which VY put up a 95.3 and 97.5 QB rating, 3 TDs, and only 1 INT. Do you think its a total coincidence that N.O. and Indy have high powered offenses and the Titans probably knew coming into those games that they'd have to open up their offense a bit to keep up? I don't.


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Vince Young turns the ball over 3 times? Vince Young did no favors for his defense yesterday

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I didn't see the game yesterday...in fact, for some reason I don't even remember seeing the highlights...dunno why. Anyway, obviously I am not qualified to comment on that game.



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In fact, with 8 interceptions in his last 5 games, Vince Young hasn't done much for anybody but opposing defenses.


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Statements like this are why I dislike the "stathead's" views so much.

99,959 and counting

[Kneel B4 Zod]

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No, you were talking about Harrison only. You made no mention of Dallas Clark, Anthony Gonzales, or Tony Ugoh.

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the WR's last night were

Reggie Wayne
Aaron Morehead
Craphonso Thorpe

last year vs the Colts, Brady had

Doug Gabriel
Troy Brown
Reche Caldwell

the Colts group is still better. Wayne is a legit #1. Morehead is a jag, and Thorpe is an emergency level guy.

Gabriel is out of the NFL, Troy Brown is a decent possession guy but is years past his peak, and Reche Caldwell is on the Redskins but doesn't have a catch this year

[Vyse]

Assani, the main reason "statheads" laugh at you is because you use flawed stats, and then get mad at the statheads for using these flawed stats... when we don't even value them. The only stats you even understand in football are TDs, INTs, and passer rating...