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Thoughts on the Dolphins/Ravens Bloodbath

Discussion in 'Miami Dolphins Forum' started by KeyFin, Sep 8, 2019.

  1. Phins_to_Win

    Phins_to_Win Well-Known Member

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    But the rest of the picture is they were horrible for years before that, so they constantly had high picks in the draft. Even after getting stafford they had high 1st rounder picks for the next 2 or 3 years. They also did the same thing with Joey Harrington in 2002 with the 3rd overall pick.

    Detroit picks:
    2003 2nd overall pick
    2004 7th overall pick
    2005 10th overall pick
    2006 9th overall pick
    2007 2nd overall pick
    2008 17th overall pick
    2009 1st overall pick
    2010 2nd overall pick
    2011 13th overall pick

    My point to this is Detroit is not a good example of a team stuck in mediocrity, that chose to tank 1 year and turned things around. They were a bad team that if they had a good front office would have turned it around much much sooner.
     
  2. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Isn't cbrad using those QBs as examples of how picking the right QB changes your teams fortunes?

    The problem with Stafford is that Detroit, much like Miami with Tannehill, never assembled a decent team around him. Stafford probably isn't going to the HoF, but when having Stafford afforded multiple trips to the playoffs, even though Detroit didn't assemble a good team, and Stafford isn't elite. Tannehill want even as good as Stafford, so the team needed to be even better.
     
  3. Irishman

    Irishman Well-Known Member

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    What are the historic percentages of getting a successful QB in the first round?

    I'm guessing its around 50%.
     
  4. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    There simply isn't a QB that ended up in the HoF in the SB era that does NOT have the numbers to go with it. So I wouldn't dismiss the statistical argument over very long periods of time such as an entire career or so. Dismiss it for a year or 2 sure, but not a career.

    Here are the z-scores for the 3 QB's, remembering that the z-score for a SB winning QB averages about +1 in the year he won it.

    Cam Newton
    2011: 0.0153
    2012: 0.0522
    2013: 0.2363
    2014: -0.6870
    2015: 1.0415
    2016: -1.2017
    2017: -0.6273
    2018: 0.1084

    Andrew Luck
    2012: -0.7911
    2013: 0.0844
    2014: 0.7678
    2015: -1.7321
    2016: 0.6320
    2018: 0.4838

    Matthew Stafford
    2009: -1.4762
    2010: 0.6247
    2011: 0.9844
    2012: -0.5042
    2013: -0.1519
    2014: -0.3233
    2015: 0.7698
    2016: 0.3561
    2017: 1.2545
    2018: -0.2502

    If you need the stats for HoF QB's in comparison I can provide them. They look VERY different.

    No, I'm sticking with what I said: Luck was way over-hyped and ended up only slightly above average from a pure performance perspective even if you exclude his injury season, Newton only had one year he was really good (the one you chose: 2015), and Stafford in some years was good, some years not good.. overall just a tad above average.
     
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  5. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Totally agree.. just saying it's a good way to see the effect of getting a QB that certainly was far better than what they had.
     
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  6. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    But you're implying that the goal is to find a HoF QB and it's not.

    Let's be clear. The end goal is to win a Super Bowl.

    Peripheral accomplishments and pretty passing numbers are GREAT and I'm sure they correlate with winning titles. I'm sure that in most simulations Dan Marino ends up with a Super Bowl. Most of the elite QBs accomplished a Super Bowl victory (Manning, Roethlisberger, Rodgers, Brees, Brady, Favre, Elway, Young, Aikman, Montana, etc.).

    If I can find an elite (HoF-caliber) guy obviously I want that.

    But to decry a guy like Cam Newton while HE WENT TO A FREAKING SUPER BOWL LARGELY BECAUSE HE WAS ELITE THAT YEAR is missing the point of football, is it not?

    There are a lot of "good enoughs" out there who probably aren't going to end up in the Hall of Fame: Andrew Luck, Cam Newton, Carson Wentz, Jared Goff, etc. There are a bunch of guys like that in the NFL these days.

    Tannehill was not going to be "good enough." We can appreciate that. There are obviously levels to it.

    But if the goal to to end up in a Super Bowl I would think you have to relax your standards on what you're deeming a good pick.
     
  7. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Depends on what you consider "successful". Yes there are metrics (e.g., based on number of years started or stuff like approximate value) that put the number at 50% or 60%, but for the type of QB we really NEED.. the probability is extremely small, more like 10-15%.

    Here's a great way to see for yourself. pro-football-reference has a way of filtering by position and draft round. All 1st round QB's:
    https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/tiny.fcgi?id=PJkjr

    How many QB's on that list would you think are worth tanking? I'd say maybe 15 of them.. out of 124.
     
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  8. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Depends. Do you want a bunch of mediocre years with one SB appearance? Or do you want a 20 year dominant run like the Patriots?
     
  9. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Maybe you want decades of data but here are the guys who've come out since 2008:

    1 – Stafford / Bradford / Newton / Luck / Winston / Goff / Mayfield / Murray
    2 – Griffin / Mariota / Wentz / Trubisky
    3 – Ryan / Bortles / Darnold
    4
    5 – Sanchez
    6 – Jones
    7 – Allen
    8 – Locker / Tannehill
    9
    10 – Gabbert / Mahomes / Rosen
    11
    12 – Ponder / Watson
    13
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    15 – Haskins
    16 – Manuel
    17 – Freeman
    18 – Flacco
    19
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    21
    22 – Weeden / Manziel
    23
    24
    25 – Tebow
    26 – Lynch
    27
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    32 – Bridgewater / Jackson
     
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  10. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No I just used "HoF QB" to give an example of how career stats correlate strongly with who OTHER people think are great QB's. Just saying that using stats here is a good idea. As far as what our goal should be if we tank to get the #1 or #2 pick, it should be to get at absolute minimum a Matt Ryan type player who is consistently above average (with some random variation). Anything less and it's not worth it.

    And ideally we get someone better because Ryan has had at times a great supporting cast and didn't win the SB (though he did make it). But that for me is the absolute minimum.
     
  11. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Well, dude, be serious. Everybody would prefer to find the next Peyton Manning but randomness and uncertainty make that impossible.

    Everyone would take a 20-year period of dominance if they could just go buy it off the shelf.
     
  12. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    One thing to keep in mind is that I sometimes go after cBrad hard (and vise versa) but I have massive respect for him and we've become friends over the years. We may irritate the crap out of each other at times but it's the mutual passion of arguing football.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  13. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Agree, and based on my thread I think it's a pretty safe bet you'll get some who's at least Matt Ryan.
     
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  14. KeyFin

    KeyFin Well-Known Member

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    But you have to realize that even if we do get that QB and draft excellent the next two seasons, we'll likely still be a few pieces away from the perfect team. At the end of the day, no matter how good or bad your roster is...all of this comes down to recognizing and developing talent. If your coach/GM can't do that then nothing else matters.

    I really have four problems with this strategy-

    1) Ross speaks of it like it's a guarantee...just fire everyone, load up on draft picks, then you win the Super Bowl. He's just too stupid to see the flaws in that logic, which means he didn't make an informed decision.

    2) Grier cut Cam Wake, John Denny and several others that have led this team. You CAN'T do that in a rebuild and expect young players to react favorably.

    3) Grier is clearly a visionary in his plan, yet he's unproven in acquiring talent. He played the Rosen matter well and somebody found Preston Williams, so that does give a little hope. But he's already surprised Flores a few times with sudden moves and I don't think they're on the same page. I think Grier is fired before a single pick is made in 2020.

    4) We have no offensive/defensive line, and there's no way to compete without them. So even though the Rosen trade was smart, we will have very little opportunity to fairly evaluate Rosen this year. Likewise, how will we know if Tua is the guy on our roster next year? You can't draft a solid line in a year without heavy free agency...which means were giving away picks we just acquired. Disassembling the trenches likely cost us 5 years minimum and it blows this whole plan out of the water.

    I'm not trying to get anyone down here, but the realization is that either Grier is a superstar OR he just royally screwed over our franchise for the next decade. This isn't about football at all any more- it all comes down to Chris Grier....the guy who cut the team's sole remaining leader (Denny) a few days before the season started. That just doesn't give me faith that this is going to end well.

    I want that elite franchise QB as much as anyone and honestly, we might already have him. But because Grier went to such extremes for nothing, it will be years before we actually know what we have. Rosen is Tannehill 2.0 and Tua is RT 3.0....it's going to be wait and see mode as they run for their lives. It's just ridiculous in my opinion to consider this a strategy when we had so many solid players that were cut for no gain (except cap space).
     
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  15. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    I am being serious. We have 20 years of mediocrity with the team doing what you guys are all advocating for right now. It hasn't worked. Get your effing QB, then build around that. It's easier to replace the smaller pieces than it is to replace stud QB.
     
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  16. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    The main benefit of tanking and getting a stud quarterback is that it expands your margin for error in other areas. You can have your inevitable misses on other draft picks and free agents, and still possess the key ingredient of winning in the league.

    People talked about Detroit and Matt Stafford above, and if he would’ve been a better quarterback, obviously Detroit would’ve been a much better team over those years, even with the personnel mistakes they made.

    Said a different way, Matt Stafford, alone, if he were a better quarterback, could’ve made Detroit’s front office and coaching staff look more competent than they actually have been.
     
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  17. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    So to be clear, what do you think I'm arguing for?
     
  18. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I don't know. I have a lot of respect for Stafford. In my eyes he's a very good QB. When I watch him play he seems to have a knack for the position that many prospects do not. He was evidently a better prospect than I figured him to be. I don't remember being that excited but I suspect he's every bit the guy Matt Ryan is.

    Stafford has more gunslinger in him but I don't see that as a negative. I like my QBs to have a little moxie. I see Stafford as a guy with a big arm that plays like it.

    He's on the short list of R1 QBs I consider hits.
     
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  19. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    I think one difference between you and me (and some other posters) is that you seem to value QB's based on how they look in games even when we have lots of statistical evidence on what actual production looks like. Eyes can be deceiving and as sample size increases one should naturally gravitate towards using stats over eyes (conversely, for small sample sizes ditch the stats and go with what you see).

    Maybe this view is best exemplified by this quote of yours:
    No one looking at actual production would choose Andrew Luck over Russell Wilson. But you look at them in games and sure you see great plays by both. The actual effect on the team is very different however, and humans are notoriously bad as estimating a given play's (not even player.. just the play!) effect on win%. In-game win probability is one area where stats are clearly superior to human intuition and it's a great example of why one shouldn't estimate effect through what you see.. or what you think you see.

    Wilson > Luck no question.
     
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  20. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    To be clear, if you're agreeing with me, I'm not sure why you'd tell me to "be serious.". LOL

    I firmly believe you need at least a decent oline to be really successful. But I've come around on getting the best QB available who best is able to operate a pocket AND scramble and create if the oline is bad.
     
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  21. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Stats are great but they assume everyone holds the same job which I don't think is true. Someone like Peyton Manning didn't execute the same roles as Ryan Tannehill. They held the same title but their positional responsibilities were obviously way different. Peyton Manning was his own offensive coordinator. He was a coach on the field. And that was beginning to be the case early in his career. It's not like it took 10 years for that to slowly emerge. He was special and it was obvious to the eyes. I think it's important that we trust that kind of thing when we see it.

    In that example one guy is calling plays and leading his teammates in a manner that the other guy just isn't and it's apparent. You can talk all day to me about how Manning is technically superior from the perspective of passing statistics but does that really tell the story? Of course no one will question that Manning > Tannehill. You can argue the case in multiple ways.

    But the fact that Tannehill was never really a leader is what I'm talking about. That's important and I think it's what we see when we watch an actual game.

    And please, for the love of God do not think I'm simply talking about attitude. Yes, that's part of it, but leadership involves more than that. It's energy and the innate motivation to organize other people. It's not something every person has. To my eyes, Ryan Tannehill never had it. Yet a less talented guy like Chad Pennington did and was probably a better QB because of it.

    Cam Newton is a leader. While he's not the best in front of a post-game mic and he's certainly not the prototypical pocket passer you hope to draft #1 overall, I have no doubt that his confidence, drive to win and ridiculous talent all go a long way in an NFL locker-room. My concern is that you don't seem to understand that element of it when it's a huge part of what you're buying with the #1 pick.

    The Dolphins are unlikely to have a Peyton Manning sitting right there waiting on them if they draft a QB. What makes being a GM hard is actually pulling the trigger knowing that you can't always just go BPA. You have a team with actual needs and a living, breathing roster that is old in some spots and young in others. Drafting the "right" QB might involve saying, 'well, I wanted a Peyton Manning but the universe is presenting me a Cam Newton.'

    There's no doubt that Andrew Luck had the same qualities. Every guy who played with him believed he was special. You never saw guys on either side of the ball say bad things about him. They were happy to fight alongside him and in that way he had a sort of natural charisma that I think helps explain why some guys in the NFL "make other players better."

    I don't know that Russell Wilson has much of that TBH. I think he's smart. I think he's gifted. But he doesn't have a lot of charisma.

    With the way the Seahawks roster kind of exploded after Wilson got paid and other guys took issue I think it shows that a lot of those guys (particularly on defense) didn't feel compelled to worship Wilson as the default leader. He was a cog just like they were and they took offense to his being paid like a leader. A lot of guys on that defense felt they were just as much the reason for the team's success as the QB.

    Please note, I do not blame the Seahawks for locking up Wilson with a contract extension. That made sense. It's easier to find a new Richard Sherman than it is to replace a QB like Russell Wilson. If you have a chance to re-sign Wilson, you do it.

    But you know what? The world largely agreed with those defensive players who were irked. Russell Wilson definitely did not put that team on his back. He often made plays late in games after his defense had given him chance after chance after chance. For a stretch, that team was simply unbeatable at home. My gosh they were good.

    It's hard to believe they'd have not made a Super Bowl appearance with just that defense alone (as the 49ers did with with lesser QBs) but I'm sure Wilson definitely did in fact make them better.

    So please understand, I'm not knocking Wilson here. I'm just saying that passing stats don't paint the whole picture as to what else has to be done in order to win once you have a given QB. There's no doubt that Russell Wilson has been successful. I think he's a smart and talented QB.

    Nobody who's played with Brady or Manning or Rodgers would've ever stepped in front of them like we saw the Seahawks players do. I suspect Andrew Luck was of a similar ilk. Yes, you're right. I'm giving him a pass for being on bad teams. And yeah, I'm elevating a thing which is hard to define, let along quantify.

    This isn't a great side of the argument to be on. I'm a smart guy and it doesn't feel great to have to make this case. But I'm still taking up for it because I think it matters in football.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  22. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Stats don't assume every QB has the same responsibilities. They just tell you the effect of what each QB did, irrespective of any differences in their responsibilities or roles. And remember.. what we're interested in is the effect. In fact, the reason you have such a high bust rate in drafting QB is because you can't easily predict the effect from what you see with your eyes.
     
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  23. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    You asked whether it was better to have a bunch of mediocre years with a Super Bowl in there versus having 20 years of dominance.

    That's not a question. The latter is obviously better. That's like asking if you could get paid $20/hr versus $100/hr for the same work which would you take? That's not a question.

    If you're asking me whether Tom Brady or Cam Newton has had the better career I'd say it is obvious. Brady has obviously enjoyed more success.

    But why'd you'd imply it's a choice is a mystery to me. Did the Panthers have a choice between Brady and Newton? No, fate gave them Cam Newton and IMHO they've done well with him. He's made them a relevant team again and taken them to a Super Bowl.

    If that were Miami's story I'd take it and run.

    I suspect there is a threshold of performance under which a guy will never be good enough and above which he is good enough. I want someone who's as good as possible but at a certain point, he's good enough and it's incumbent on the team around him to make up for his imperfections.

    There has never been a perfect QB and no Super Bowl-winning QB is ever perfect.
     
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  24. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    Russell Wilson was associated with one of the very few blowouts in Super Bowl history. And that was because he is so good, and they had one of the best pass defenses of all time that year. At this very moment Russell Wilson has the second highest career passer rating of all time in the league.
     
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  25. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    He’s enough of a hit to have a lengthy career as a starter in the league, but to win a Super Bowl with him you would very likely need to compile one of the best pass defenses in the league.
     
  26. Surfs Up 99

    Surfs Up 99 Team Flores & Team Tua

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    Are we evaluating college QBs correctly, or is there something else we could consider?
     
  27. djphinfan

    djphinfan Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Passer rating, combine that with what the man does with his legs..hall of fame trajectory..always was, easy projection.
     
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  28. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Once you adjust for era he's 7th among QB's with 3000+ passing attempts.

    Currently, the list is:
    1. Steve Young
    2. Joe Montana
    3. Aaron Rodgers
    4. Peyton Manning
    5. Kurt Warner
    6. Tom Brady
    7. Russell Wilson
    8. Drew Brees
    ...

    And Roger Staubach would be in 4th place after Rodgers except that he has just shy of 3000 attempts (2958). Anyway Wilson is elite.
     
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  29. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Wish I could answer that, but I never looked at college stats. Sorry about that. Good question though.
     
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  30. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Attacking Russell Wilson is about as popular as discussing politics on the first date but I'll do my best.

    Between 2012 - 2015 Wilson played 64 games. During that period he averaged 27 attempts a game and consequently his average passer rating was 102. Over those first 4 seasons the Seattle Seahawks had the #1 scoring defense ALL FOUR YEARS!!!

    So with the #1 defense Wilson threw 27 times a game and had an average passer rating that was 14 points higher than the NFL average.

    Over the next 2 years the Seahawks defense started to regress a bit and Wilson was pressed to throw more in order to pick up the slack. Between 2016 - 2017 the Seahawks defense averaged a #8 ranking. Again, Wilson played every game (48 in total) but threw an average of over 34 times per game (+27%).

    In this stretch his rating dropped from 102 (+14) down by to 94 (+6).

    Last year Wilson's rating popped back up, but again, only because the Seahawks limited his throws to <27 per game.

    So there's a clear tendency.



    You know how many times Andrew Luck threw the ball over his career? 36 times per game. EVERY. GD. SEASON. Because that was his responsibility.

    He had no #1 defense. He had no running game to rely on.

    And you know what he averaged?

    Well, it's not particularly great because he retired and 2 of his years skew the data. But if we're curious enough to remove his 2015 year where he only played 7 games and was injured we see he was +3.68. And if we get rid of his outlying rookie season as well wherein he played suspiciously worse than in every other year his average balloons up to +7.

    Over the last couple of seasons before he suddenly reitred, Luck was throwing 38 times per game and was roughly +10 with respect to the average NFL passer rating.

    So once we're past his rookie year, a healthy Andrew Luck is BETTER than a healthy Russell Wilson when they're both throwing the ball a lot.



    I'm not stupid here guys.


    Roles and responsibilities!

    On a great team, Russell Wilson looks fantastic. And he's still above average when it falls to him. But he's not better than Andrew Luck in that situation. And we never got to see what Luck could do with a team than only asked him to throw 27 times a game.


    You can sit and tell me that Andrew Luck's play style got him hurt or that Russell Wilson's team is "smart" for not having him throw it as much. You'd be wrong but you'd be welcome to those opinions. Standing tall in the pocket in the face of pressure and getting blasted is not a style-of-play problem. It's an O-line problem. And the Seahawks are not smart to have Wilson throw it less. They just don't need him to throw it more. If they did, they would. And when they have, he's regressed noticeably.

    It boggles my mind that in Andrew Luck we had a guy who could throw it darn near 40 times a game a la Dan the Man, be virtually the only good thing about his ENTIRE FRANCHISE and yet fans in THIS FORUM of all places want to tell me he's over-rated in favor of a guy who has basically always had the upper hand.

    No offense but that's like picking Brady over Marino. I get it. You're welcome to. I just wouldn't expect people HERE to do it, let alone be so flippant about it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
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  31. AGuyNamedAlex

    AGuyNamedAlex Well-Known Member

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    I think what you are saying is sort of how I feel.

    I love statistics but they actually dont tell the whole story. For example you need a passer rating of X to be competitive. The problem is that X is highly dependent on the players around the QB.

    It's easy to tell Peyton Manning from Ryan Leaf with no added context. However, when you're talking about two similar caliber players I do feel actually watching their play for context matters.
     
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  32. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    There's a better way to do this. You can actually adjust passer ratings for defense. Specifically, once passer ratings are transformed into z-scores so that everything is relative to league average that year, you find that the correlation between z-score passer rating and z-score for points allowed is 0.3043. Since the units are the same (both are z-scores) this means that 0.3043 is the slope of the best fitting line (the regression line) with intercept 0.

    That information can be used to adjust z-score passer ratings for defense. You just multiply the z-score for the defense by 0.3043 and subtract that from the z-score for offense.

    So compare unadjusted vs. adjusted z-scores for the two QB's:

    Unadjusted z-scores for Luck
    2012: -0.7911
    2013: 0.0844
    2014: 0.7678
    2015: -1.7321
    2016: 0.6320
    2018: 0.4838

    Defense adjusted z-scores for Luck
    2012: -0.6725
    2013: -0.0952
    2014: 0.8112
    2015: -1.4995
    2016: 0.7871
    2018: 0.3118

    So Luck's defense adjusted z-scores are slightly better for all except 2 years, 2013 and 2018, and that jibes with the rankings:
    https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/clt/index.htm

    Unadjusted z-scores for Russell Wilson
    2012: 1.2518
    2013: 1.2830
    2014: 0.6162
    2015: 2.2528
    2016: 0.2937
    2017: 0.8600
    2018: 1.5014

    Defense adjusted z-scores for Russell Wilson
    2012: 0.6354
    2013: 0.6149
    2014: 0.0022
    2015: 1.7769
    2016: -0.1134
    2017: 0.7545
    2018: 1.3469

    MUCH bigger adjustment for Wilson. That's the effect of having a #1 defense from 2012-2015. Still.. you notice something?

    Wilson > Luck even after adjusting for defense.

    Also, that thing about number of times passing won't matter here as we're talking about efficiency and there's no evidence efficiency decreases by passing more per game.

    Summary is this: after adjusting for defense, the attempt-weighted career z-score rating for Wilson is 0.7020 while for Luck it's 0.0646. And given that z-score = 0 is precisely average, that's about as good statistical evidence Luck's performance (the effect) was average. With Wilson that puts at top 25th percentile when compared to all unadjusted scores. BIG difference.
     
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  33. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I certainly appreciate the work but that seems tangential to my point which is more about passer rating vs attempts.

    I'm not saying that a team's defensive prowess affects their QB's performance. I don't really care what the Seahawks defense ranked. I'm not claiming that the defense in Seattle is responsible for the passer rating.

    I hope that's not what you're reading in my above post!

    I'm saying that Wilson is best when he throws it less and that the data shows he regresses when he's asked to do more. Unfortunately for Luck, he only existed in a world where he had to do more (WAY MORE).

    What I'm trying to show is that when we isolate Wilson during the brief stretch wherein Seattle asked him to be more like Andrew Luck, Wilson's numbers came way down and were right on the level with Luck.

    To me, that's what the data shows. I don't see how one can debate it.

    So please don't miss (or undermine) my original point which I think is legit. Forget the defensive stats entirely. The only reason I posted that was to show a possible reason as to why Wilson didn't have to throw as much on average.

    Nonetheless, the why isn't that important. That's a theory for another day.


    But you and I began this by talking about whether passer rating is all there is and I made the case that not all QB's fall into the same job. Andrew Luck went to a team that was asking him for throw it darn near 40 times a game. That's WAY different than what Wilson's been asked to do.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
  34. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Dude.. the only possible argument in your post that would have made sense as a counter-argument is the one I gave a response to.

    If all you're talking about is number of passing attempts and nothing else, then that's easy to dismiss. It's well known that the primary difference in run/pass ratio between winning and losing teams is due to point differential in the 4th quarter where the team that's leading tries to kill the clock (and does more of that the more they lead). In other words, you pass more when you are losing and pass less when you are winning. Couple that with the well known relation that passer rating is higher when leading and you get the result you found.

    Otherwise for quarters 1-3, it doesn't matter how much you pass in terms of passing efficiency. So it doesn't matter if Luck's role was different from that perspective. Either way, none of this argues for Luck being somehow on par with Wilson. Adjusting for defense theoretically could have done that, but as you can see it doesn't. Really.. there's no comparison between the two in terms of performance: Wilson > Luck.
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019
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  35. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    Can you show me that Wilson's teams are getting a big lead and then running out the clock?

    Somehow I just don't buy that. You say this theory is a given. IDK.

    Peyton Manning's teams should've fallen into that category but I'm pretty sure they tended to be pretty pass-happy, no? Peyton had a lot of leads and yet he still threw it a TON compared with the rest of the NFL.

    If Wilson is throwing 27 times and Luck is pushing 40 you're basically telling me that Russell Wilson takes the entire 4th quarter off.
     
  36. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    I can show it's true in general, but no I don't have the results specifically for Seattle. Not sure if I can modify my code to get that data for Seattle only but I can look at that later today (no guarantees it will work.. depends on the nature of the database that program is calling and I wrote that program 2 years ago lol). Anyway, for the league as a whole this is the result:
    [​IMG]
     
  37. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    But what if that is in part because Wilson is better than Luck at helping his team get a lead by that time in the game sufficient to enable that kind of play?
     
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  38. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Looking purely at athleticism and playmaking, I'd take Newton over Brady every time. Look at the Pats win percentage when Brady throws a below average rating.
     
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  39. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    I get the point dude but when we apply that narrative to the data and the results are so absurd as to suggest that Wilson is taking the entire 4th quarter off a la Tua at Alabama it gives one reason to question the narrative because...spoiler alert...he's not, LOL.
     
  40. DolphinGreg

    DolphinGreg Season Ticket Holder Club Member

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    The data is right here:

    http://www.nfl.com/player/russellwilson/2532975/situationalstats?season=2018

    Let's look at his completions and attempts in 2018 by quarter:

    1st Quarter: 55 of 87
    2nd Quarter: 94 of 133
    3rd Quarter: 59 of 96
    4th Quarter: 89 of137


    So no, absolutely not. Russell Wilson is not taking his foot off the gas late in games. If you look at other years it's the same thing. It's very consistent with the above.

    There is an interesting trend looking at both Wilson and Luck. It may hold for all QB's but they tend to throw the most in the 2nd and 4th quarters. And it's not by just a little either. The 4th quarter I get but the 2nd quarter surprises me, even with 2 minute drills before the half often being pass-heavy.

    I will say however that according to that "situational stats" page, the notion that Wilson is worse as he passes more (31+ attempts) seems to be true some years and maybe not so true others.

    Here are Wilson's 2018 passer ratings sorted by throw:

    Throws 1-10: 113 rating
    Throws 11-20: 115 rating
    Throws 21-30: 103 rating
    Throws 31+: 86 rating

    So his efficiency tended to start well in the first half then taper off.

    Then again, if you look at the year prior (2017) he did the exact opposite. He started poorly and finished strong the more he threw it:

    Throws 1-10: 69 rating
    Throws 11-20: 93 rating
    Throws 21-30: 113 rating
    Throws 31+: 118 rating

    So I may have undermined my own theory to a degree. ;)
     
    Last edited: Sep 11, 2019

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