Here's What's Wrong With Cutler...Give Me A Minute...Wait I Know There Has To Be Something...

The hell if I am!!


Lol

 

Time for a nice group hug. Cutler gonna win it all man.

 

Nobody is consistently clutch, that's what makes the clutch guy's clutch....being clutch.

 

I'm clutch in bed... all the time.

 

Did you read the articles?

 

I will just say I don't think the definition of clutch includes entire postseasons. Or even entire games. That doesn't fit well into statistics, which needs a clearly define beginning and ending. It's a concept, not a statistic.

Basketball playoffs are almost as long as the regular season. Someone like Russell Wilson can play like crap for 3.5 quarters, but absolutely step up for a couple drives and beat Green Bay in the playoffs. Ryan Tannehill plays like crap against STL and murders it for two drives and wins. Someone who is good for their entire postseason career, is just damn good. Like Tiger Woods who never won a major from behind and is a mere human in the Ryder Cup which is match play (head to head).

Clutch performances are almost always defined by actions late in the game, when the pressure is extra high.

The guy who throws 4 TDs in the first quarter, and 2 INTs in the 4th quarter, isn't clutch. Heck, they probably almost gave the game away. Or maybe he loses it!

Guy who throws 2 INTs all game, and then throws 2 TDs to win the game on the final drive, would be considered clutch.

Guy #1 has a better postseason rating then guy #2. Clutch is someone who performs well, late, to get it done. Even if the earlier mistakes were his own, or someone else's.

Alex Smith has a higher post-season passer rating than Russell Wilson and Tom Brady. Who you taking?

Clutch = You are down 6, 3 minutes left, 4th quarter, super bowl. Who you going with?

Peyton Manning has 2 GWDs in his entire postseason career. Entire. He leads the NFL history in reg season GWDs.

Eli already has 5. Just looking at post-season stats doesn't paint the picture. It is a concept and if you don't want to believe in it, fine. But don't use stats to debunk it as a myth.

 

OMG.

Have not seen this in ten years.

 

CLUTCH


CHOKER




Now you can tell the difference.

 

No.

If I posted articles saying clutch did exist, would you read?

Articles are another man's opinion, I see plenty of those in this forum.

 

Yeah, I would read them. You know why? Because reading other's opinions is how you learn. Of course, the post I was quoting was addressed in one of the articles, hence i asked.

If you guys want to believe that Eli just somehow plays better in the playoffs, go right ahead. I think Eli just didn't play hard in the regular season. I think that's more reasonable than some magic fairy dust "clutch gene" that somehow improves his ability in the playoffs.

 

I'll put this in the simplest terms possible.

The brain recognizes situations...those situations can effect a player negatively or positively depending on how they perceive it.

It's the reason so many people who play golf miss the 4' putt on 18 to tie, why you have people missing free throws with 1 second on the clock.

YOU ARE AWARE OF THE SITUATION....many people fold in these cases because they can't beat the mental aspect of the situation. And some say fk it, its go time.

 

If clutch exists, then that means the player playing their best under extreme situations was NOT playing their best (meaning they were slacking) at any other time.

Why the hell is that a desirable trait? Anyone?

 

So is it only clutch in the playoffs? Or only in a must win game? Or is it in the fourth quarter? When is clutch actually clutch?

Any player can be "clutch." Aaron Boone against the Red Sox. He wasn't great. His career wasn't clutch. But for one moment, he came through. You have players miss free throws in the first quarter. Players, even supposed "clutch" ones, almost always play to their norms averages, given a big enough sample size.

People choke, or people play to their normal abilities. There is no clutch.

 

For most players that's true, but it's worth noting that there are some outliers, notably Eli and Kurt Warner (not Flacco btw).

For Eli, average 2016-adjusted ratings for regular season is 88.69 while for playoffs it's 95.8. He has 400 total passing attempts in the playoffs and 150+ means sample size is good enough. The probability the two sets of ratings come from the same underlying distribution is 40.4%. So while nothing here is statistically significant (meaning you can't reject either hypothesis) it's marginally more likely his playoff and regular season performances are different than the same after taking random variation into account.

For Warner same story: 105.4 adjusted regular season rating and 113.1 in the playoffs, with 462 passing attempts in the playoffs. Probability they come from the same source is 42.1%.

So there are a few exceptions to the "regression to the norm".

 

via Imgflip Meme Generator

 

Joe Montana, check regular season, playoffs and then Super Bowl.

 

Montana's no exception in the playoffs. His adjusted regular season rating is 111.4 while his adjusted playoff rating is 113.1. Montana's like Flacco in that there are some impressive stretches, specifically that 8 playoff game stretch from 1988-1990 where his average adjusted rating is a whopping 147.1!!

Actually that 147.1 is more impressive putting it another way: statistically speaking that 1988-1990 playoff run would be significantly different from his regular season rating even if average playoff ratings league-wide were 13.1 passer rating points ABOVE regular season ratings! But again, that's taking an 8-game sample from 23 overall.

Montana's Super Bowls would be similarly impressive because he has an adjusted average of 148.95 except that he has only 122 passing attempts and we need 150+.

 

Are these adjusted for defenses? Remember you are generally playing better teams in the playoffs, and oftentimes that means better defenses than you play in the regular season.

And Super Bowl?

 

You can add Flacco to that, like you said, take out his first 2 seasons, and he scores higher than these guys maybe.

Flacco has 25 TDs and 10 INTs in the playoffs, which is pretty good, but in his first 2 years he threw 1 TD and 6 INTs, however since 2010 Flacco is 24-4 in that regard with a rating over 100.

 

I mean....I guess that's one way to look at it. If you agree people can choke then i guess it's fair to call the people who underperform when the heat is on choker's and those who rise to the occasion normal?

Sure I can get onboard with that. As long as we agree that the world has far more chokers than normal people out there.


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Taking out subpar seasons actually bolsters whay I'm saying. You can have "clutch" performances, but there is no "clutch" player. If there were "clutch" players, then did they suddenly lose their "clutchness" when they miss a crucial free throw, or throw an errant pass late in a game?

 

Yes, I agree with this. The reason people are infatuated with "clutch" is precisely because most people do choke under pressure. Therefore, when we see someone NOT choke, it stands out to us. Think about game winning shots... even superstars like Jordan or Kobe miss more than they make. Are they suddenly not clutch when they miss one?

 

No. And there's a reason I'm starting to report things the way I've been doing (from post #205). That is, saying it would be significant if average passer rating in the playoffs is X points above or below that of regular season.

Thing is this. Long time ago I cherry picked ~10 QB's that went to the playoffs often and looked at the average decrement in passer rating from playoffs to regular season, and the mean decrement was about 8 PR points below in the playoffs.

But that's cherry picked (and unadjusted) data. Pro-football-reference simply doesn't seem to list playoff passer ratings in table format so that I can just automatically parse the data like I do with regular season stuff. You have to click on boxscores and I'm not taking the chance that whatever program I write will pick out the right ones each time.

So 2 days ago I just went through the last 3 years (which requires no adjustment because average PR is about the same) of playoff passer ratings and computed their average (as if they came from a single game.. that makes it comparable to the league averages I'm using). Keep in mind I did this quickly so there might be some error in there.

But WOW the results were surprising. Understanding there might be some error in this, I got 88.17 for 2014, 77.11 for 2015 and 91.91 for 2016. Regular season averages are: 87.1, 88.4 and 87.6 for those 3 years. That means the average difference is only -2.3 PR points over those 3 years.

Problem isn't the -2.3, but the massive variance! Even if I mistyped something somewhere that won't create that kind of variance. So I'd really need to go through ~10 years or more worth of playoff PR to find the average decrement.

Either way, maybe the intuition is wrong?? Defenses are better, but so are the QB's. Does that wash out? Not sure, so I think it's best if I just report things like I've done since post #205 by saying it's significant up to X PR points decrement. At some point I'll figure out a quick way to get that playoff PR data (unless you can find a table of all playoff passing stats in a given year.. ideally of just the components of passer rating: comp, att, yds, td's, int's) and then we'll see what playoffs really do.

EDIT: So it's clear, ideally I'd need a table like this, but for playoffs:
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2016/passing.htm

 

Well, we have to allow for learning curve, his first 2 playoffs he wasn't good, ever since he's been one of the best playoff QBs in the league, so were not talking about isolated incidents, since 2010 Flacco has been a dangerous playoff QB.

His playoff TD/INT ratio over that span is 2.4 TDs and .4 INTs per game, .4, lol, that is just plain sick, that is a 6 to 1 ratio.

His stats don't actually change much otherwise, he just throws more TDs and less INTs, it's because he's more focused.

I know from personal experience, I'm a clutch pool player, a ringer, I play my best in tourny's and playoffs, it forces me to focus more, I can't manufacture that focus without something on the line, some people can, I can't.

What I do see is the shaking hands on the table, people unable to focus, 2nd guessing every decision and they have no chance, the better I play, the worse they get, including higher ranked players than me, who win most games vs me during the season.

I have that reputation, no one wants to play me in the playoffs, my nervous energy, because we all have it, gets channeled into focus, I stand away from my teammates, I don't talk to anyone and my entire being is focused on that table top.

I cannot, in any way shape or form manufacture that, a large room filled with pool tables, dozens of teams competing, hundreds of players, even more spectators, playing on a table surrounded by people watching, your team, their team, spectators, trust me, that'll get the juices going, lol.

Any group of people has the same dynamic, at whatever level, some players thrive in that environment, others wilt while others are a mixed bag, human beings are human beings no matter where you put them.

 

Right. So, when you're not playing in that environment, you play below your potential.

 

When did clutch = perfect? A great hitter still misses 70% of the time. If you agree there are clutch performances, then you agree there are clutch players. They have more clutch moments.

Again, it's not about stats. It's being presented with an opportunity to ice a game or come back from a game, and getting it done.

Not addressed to you res, but clutch doesn't mean rising above and playing out of your mind (although it encompasses that). It's not choking under pressure. If you believe in choking, you believe in clutch whether you want to admit it or not. It's being dependable when the pressure mounts.

 

You just described every successful pro sports player. If clutch is nothing more than not choking "every time" then every player in the NFL is clutch.

Hell, with this definition, 99.9% of all people are clutch.

Handling pressure accordingly doesn't make a person some magical being. It just makes them human.

 

Again, one of the articles I posted addresses this. In baseball, the most "clutch" players weren't the ones people thought of as "clutch."

Again, though, choking does not mean there is clutch... unless were defining clutch as playing to your normal level.

 

Out of curiosity I checked out Dalton lol.

Mean adjusted passer rating for regular season: 93.06
Mean adjusted passer rating for playoffs: 58.71 (lol btw)

Dalton's a statistical "choker" as long as playoff passer rating is at worst 6.5 PR points below regular season. If you're wondering why that decrement is only 6.5 instead of far larger, it's the effect of sample size. Guy only has 158 passing attempts in the playoffs. Double the number of attempts and that 6.5 goes to 14.6 LOL.

 

Sacks are also counted as run plays. So those negative yards are subtracted from his total yards.

 

It is rumored that Gizelle has a bigger dong than Marcia, so yeah, maybe he does choke a little. But at least he's giving 100%

 

That's not true. It's only a sack if there is a pass attempt made, and the yards are deducted from team passing stats but not from QB stats (and not from rushing stats). Here are the official NFL guidelines for statisticians:
http://www.nflgsis.com/gsis/documentation/stadiumguides/guide_for_statisticians.pdf

 

I never knew that. I thought it was the same as college where a sack counts against rushing.

 

I stand corrected.

 

See...for me anyway, being a choker is a very important component of someone being clutch in bed. So I guess I'll just have to admit that I'm not clutch at all.

 

No one plays at peak potential all the time, not even machines can do that.

 

Never could understand the term "clutch" when it comes to sports. Perhaps I'm reading TOO much into it but seeing how a clutch disengages a transmission from the engine and prevents the vehicle from moving forward, how would that be a positive?

And if you look at it on the flip side, when the clutch re-engages the engine and allows the vehicle to move forward, it's doing what its supposed to be doing so how is that anything special if the team is moving forward all of the time?

 

Clutch also means to grasp tightly.

In the early 1900's, "in a pinch" and "in the clutch" emerged right around the same time, in baseball, a guy was good "in a pinch" or "in the clutch", from the players, it's not a media creation as some have eluded to.

This is where the term "pinch hitter" comes from, because originally, this was just for guys that were good "in a pinch", or "in the clutch", because back in those days there weren't all the changing of pitchers and runners and so forth.

 

Res, D, Falco (o'sorry) can you confirm this?