TOTAL QB Rating Coming From ESPN

Yeah, but how are they supposed to factor in "it" factor and "moxy" now?

 

Yet another reason to despise stat monkeys, "we" all know what kind of season Henne had, and his injuries, "we" do not need BSPN foisting their system upon us to tell "us" what we all watched.

 

I saw a report that listed Henne as "average" according to the new TQBR. Based on the chants and many of the comments here that would seem to be news to those who think that starting Henne kills our season.

 

If by "average" you mean 27th out of 32...

 

CK, you know this stuff better than most. What do you think about this new rating system they are trying to push. I don't like the one that's been in use forever, because it doesn't seem to make sense.

 

Henne was behind Colt McCoy, Shaun Hill and Jason Campbell amongst other luminaries. He did finish ahead of McNabb and Favre so there's that at least, I guess

 

One issue I have with this QBR thing being developed by the Brady-Manning sycophants at ESPN is that it's likely to reward Tom Brady and Peyton Manning for being Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. There are really a lot of ways to be a good quarterback for your team, but Brady and Manning have sort of jumped out into the vanguard and are changing peoples' ideas of what is best and what is not, etc. In effect the formula ends up grading Tom Brady and Peyton Manning for how well they're acting like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, and then grading the rest based on how much they play like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.

I generally have issues with these attempts to form unified formulas that take into account a million different things and then output one simple number to tell you who is best and who is not. I view the QB Rating as an important tool for devising how well a QB is passing the ball, but really just one tool among many, and I often view the elements that constitute the QB Rating each individually. I like the stats to be basic and pure so that I can use my brain to make sense of them rather than using a formula to make sense of them. I don't trust formulas any more than I would trust my life savings to a black box investment style. In fact, Richard and I got into a really big argument about that when we were trying to figure out how we were going to rate and grade prospects. He wanted to come up with grades for a bunch of individual aspects of a guy's game then average them in a formula, which is very popular and common and there's nothing wrong with him wanting to do that, and I personally would rather not. I trust my head more than a formula.

For the record Tom Brady (of course) came in #1, and Peyton Manning (of course) came in #2. They were followed by Matt Ryan at #3 and Aaron Rodgers at #4. Michael Vick, Drew Brees, Eli Manning, Josh Freeman, Phil Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger round out the top 10.

Chad Henne is #27 of 32. Donovan McNabb and Sam Bradford rank right behind him with a small margin (0.4) in between.

Ryan Fitzpatrick ranked #17. Mark Sanchez ranked #18.

 

I don't have the link, but here's the outline I posted earlier copied from the article I saw.


Top tier: Brady, Peyton Manning, Matt Ryan, Michael Vick, Rodgers and Drew Brees.
Well above average: Josh Freeman, Eli Manning and Philip Rivers.
Above average: Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, Joe Flacco, Matt Schaub, David Garrard and Kerry Collins.
Around average: Matt Cassel, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Mark Sanchez, Carson Palmer, Colt McCoy, Kyle Orton and Jon Kitna.
Below average: Shaun Hill, Jason Campbell, Jay Cutler, Matt Hasselbeck, Chad Henne, Donovan McNabb, Sam Bradford and Alex Smith.
Poor: Derek Anderon, Brett Favre and Jimmy Clausen.

I was wrong on Henne being listed as average though. As you can see above he was listed as below average.

 

No, I mean more like the 17th PFF had. IMO his performance last year was somewhere in between those two rankings. But I also believe that with a few simple and logical changes that Henne's production would be right around what Orton produced the last two seasons.

 

The great thing about tiering is being able to gerrymander the groups a little bit. Gerrymandering the actual rankings is a little harder to do:

Rank - Year - Player - Team - Action Plays - QBR

1 2010 Tom Brady NE 607 76.0
2 2010 Peyton Manning IND 779 69.5
3 2010 Matt Ryan ATL 709 68.6
4 2010 Aaron Rodgers GB 627 67.9
5 2010 Michael Vick PHI 547 66.6
6 2010 Drew Brees NO 760 65.9
7 2010 Eli Manning NYG 654 64.3
8 2010 Josh Freeman TB 626 63.5
9 2010 Philip Rivers SD 667 63.2
10 2010 Ben Roethlisberger PIT 500 59.8
11 2010 Tony Romo DAL 251 58.1
12 2010 Joe Flacco BAL 647 58.1
13 2010 Matt Schaub HOU 678 57.8
14 2010 David Garrard JAC 510 57.3
15 2010 Kerry Collins TEN 342 56.0
16 2010 Matt Cassel KC 566 51.2
17 2010 Ryan Fitzpatrick BUF 551 48.7
18 2010 Mark Sanchez NYJ 619 47.4
19 2010 Carson Palmer CIN 720 46.7
20 2010 Colt McCoy CLE 290 46.6
21 2010 Kyle Orton DEN 612 46.6
22 2010 Jon Kitna DAL 409 46.1
23 2010 Shaun Hill DET 499 44.8
24 2010 Jason Campbell OAK 479 43.8
25 2010 Jay Cutler CHI 596 42.6
26 2010 Matt Hasselbeck SEA 547 42.4
27 2010 Chad Henne MIA 604 41.4
28 2010 Donovan McNabb WAS 596 41.0
29 2010 Sam Bradford STL 732 41.0
30 2010 Alex Smith SF 426 40.0
31 2010 Derek Anderson ARI 387 35.9
32 2010 Brett Favre MIN 459 25.8
33 2010 Jimmy Clausen CAR 397 11.7

 

The difference with this QB rating system is that "average" doesn't come about based on your comparison to the other 31. Average is a built in figure of about 50. The closer you are to 50, the more average you are.

 

Thanks CK. So it's like any other formula that tries to scale human behavior. Only thing I can say is it is welcomed to have a scale that ends at 100 rather some seemingly arbitrary 155.3 or whatever the heck it is.

Interesting take on the Brady/Manning factor.

 

To me the definition of "average" would be the median....Ryan Fitzpatrick at 48.7 QBR.

The guys above him would be above average and the guys below him would be below average.

Jay Cutler's ranking is a little surprising. Matt Ryan's is not.

 

I really can't take a list seriously where Matt Ryan is third, ahead of Rivers and Rodgers. Hell, Joe Flacco's numbers were very similar to Matt Ryan's.

I definitely don't like them putting that in the rating system. How is this probability determined? Based on their previous success? So Mark Sanchez gets a lot of points for his team stepping up? It automatically rewards guys who's team wins a lot of games regardless of actual ability.

So throwing away passes deep or short of the receiver takes down your rating? YAC is an idiotic thing to measure because of personnel. Bess can move, but he's not the best YAC guy. Neither is Hartline. Marshall is a YAC monster but he's talked about having not had that ability because of his injuries last year. It just seems like a bad system IMO.

The biggest piece of horse**** about this rating. Making a good play, based on the time of the damned clock gives you extra points. What kind of **** is that? Are they serious? So Santonio Holmes taking a quick slant to the house gives the QB extra points?

This thing fits in well with ESPN fans who can't discern from the empty sports entertainment talk that they have a lot of, and when they actually have people on who know what they're doing.

 

I can't speak directly about the TQBR b/c I haven't seen the formula, but I do applaud the concepts of rewarding QBs who use their feet and acknowledging successful and unsuccessful 3rd down plays. I always hated how Rob Johnson looked like a decent QB in Buffalo based on his QBR but his actual play wasn't helping the team win but actually hurting them.

 

I watched the special they had list night and there was another idiotic thing about the QBR. I think they used Rivers as an example. He threw an INT, but it didn't amount to any points for the cowboys, so his QBR doesn't change. Why does hs QBR not change because his defense stepped up? That's not an accurate picture IMO.

 

agreed. however, I could see an a way that a INT effects a QBR differently depending on where the pick is thrown. but yea, depending on whether the other team put points on the board because of that, is pretty ridiculous.

 

ESPN is a joke. REAL TALK!

 

This is ESPN trying to salvage its image and recover eyeballs lost to sites like CHFF, PFF, FO, etc. ESPN is no longer considered a serious entity for sports discussion (was it ever?) and they're trying to fix that.

My big problem with their stat is that it tries to fix what isn't broken. I know people hate passer rating because the numbers it generates are weird as hell, but it's accurate. Quarterback play actually can be described with numbers like 70.9 and 158.3. In fact, passer rating is arguably one of the most genuinely reflective, relevant stats in all of pro sports.

Sorry, ESPN. You can keep your stat.

 

Personally I'd like to see a ranking system based off the best ever in any given stat.

For example, you take the best ever number for each meaningful stat in a game and add those up, and that sum would be the perfect QB performance. Every game a QB played would be compared to that number. If a QB set a new record in a game, that becomes the new standard for that stat. Then you'd take the best of yearly stats to gauge a season. This would remove the bias involved with weighting of certain stats over others, because IMO that's were ratings breakdown and cause problems.

 

I concurr and lets remember something people, lets remember these are the *** clowns that droped Marino out of the discusions of the greatest qbs and Marino is always getting blamed for not winning a super bowl when in truth its been Jimmy Johnson and the Tom Olivdavotti or hawever you spell his name.

every one of miami 's afc east rivials gets pimped on espn while the fins get ignored and abused from this same network.

 

The stat is very well thought out and has been developed by some pretty good stats people.

Having said that, the more I break it down, it seems to reward the quarterback with great teammates. The stats also fails to take into account, OL play.

But the stat is pretty good. It is nowhere near what has been developed in Basketball however, and that is what it is trying to emulate. (the WP model)

 

I'm really excited about this...

 

Football's Sabermetrics. Yet, this seems to be as accurate, IMO, as W-L for a pitcher. Which is to say, susceptible to huge variations in team play.

Look at it like this, if a QB throws deep but the receiver runs the wrong route and runs a shallow cross, his rating goes down and vice versa. If a QB wants to throw the ball at the feet of the receiver to stop a sack, that hurts his QB rating as both an incompletion and am underthrown pass. If a QB throws a boneheaded pick, but the other team doesn't score, he saves his rating. If a QB hits a 5 yard slant in the first quarter for a TD, it would be worth less than one in the fourth quarter in a close game. Regardless of the fact that it's the same throw. Just some arbitrary condition of "clutch" or "crunch-time" gives him a better rating.

Having Ted Ginn on your team, and other guys with poor YAC numbers hurts the QB. Guys like DJax and Mike Wallace who catch long passes and aren't usually in the YAC game would count less toward a rating than Wes Welker. Think about it, sure, ball placement has a lot to do with YAC, but if the receiver falls, is too slow, or just runs out of bounds, the QB doesn't get as much points.

Win probability. This factors in one player's probability of winning a game, in a team game that isn't basketball. Guys with weak schedules get greater ratings than guys with tough schedules. Last year, the Bucs went 10-6 but only beat one team over .500, that was the Saints after they were resting players in Week 17. Why should your team's ability to beat teams factor into your rating as a QB?

 

It sounds to me like they have added a whole lot of subjectivity to what is suppose to be an unbiased stat.