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Ryan Tannehill

Discussion in 'Other NFL' started by bbqpitlover, Oct 16, 2019.

Ryan Tannehill is...

  1. A terrible QB

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. A below average QB

    4 vote(s)
    5.7%
  3. An average QB

    7 vote(s)
    10.0%
  4. An above average QB

    39 vote(s)
    55.7%
  5. An elite QB

    16 vote(s)
    22.9%
  6. The GOAT.

    4 vote(s)
    5.7%
  1. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    Another factor on the 49ers dynasty is that the rest of the NFC West was pretty weak as a whole throughout that period. The Rams had some good years with Everett as QB, the Saints had some good years with the Dome Oatrol LB corps, the Falcons put together some good years with Jerry Granville as coach, but for the most part the rest of the NFC west were either flat out bad, or unbalanced (good at O or D, but not strong in both sides of the ball).
     
  2. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Umm.. from 1982-1992, for 11 straight years, at least one team not named SF made the playoffs from that 4-team division. And in 1991 both the Saints and Falcons went to the playoffs beating out 10-win SF who didn't make the cut. So there was at least one other good team in that division during those 11 years. In total there were 15 playoff teams not named SF out of those 18 years from that division. That's not a weak division seen from that standpoint.

    In terms of average win%, if you leave out the strike shortened 1982 season, the average number of wins for all SF's division opponents from 1981-1998 is 7, which is quite respectable for any division when leaving out its division winner.

    The way I'd describe their opponents is like this: on average one 3-5 win team, one 6-7 win team and one 10-win team (though the range there goes from 8-14 wins). So one weak opponent, one strong opponent (often a playoff team) and one slightly below average team. Overall, decent opposition for a division leader.
     
  3. Pauly

    Pauly Season Ticket Holder

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    Which is precisely why we can’t rely on memories.
     
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  4. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    You are still discounting the importance of coaching. While Seifert may not been able to re-create in Carolina what he had in San Francisco, the facts remains...

    That offense in San Francisco was conceived by Bill Walsh with Mike Holmgren as the OC. When Walsh departed, Holmgren remained and the offense remained status quo.

    Look at it this way. You “work” for me. I’m your immediate supervisor. You and your teammates that work for me are awesome at what we do. Now we also have a great boss, district manager, President...whatever title. We all love working for him. Well, he leaves and another takes his place. You still work for me. The new boss tells me to keep doing the same thing I’m doing...and I do. I have you and everyone else keep doing what we’re doing.

    It’s the same thing Walsh vs Seifert as head coach because Holmgren was constant. Again you’re bottom shelving coaching
     
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  5. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    When that system collapses once ONE player leaves, the main reason for its success is not the system, it's the players.

    Also, Holmgren departed in 1991 so no he wasn't there during almost all of Young's time as starting QB. Once again, you can't ascribe success for 7-8 years to coaches that are no longer there.
     
  6. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    But who took over for Holmgren? Mike Shannahan, whose stint at San Francisco led to his stint in Denver...which led to Elway FINALLY getting not one, but TWO Super Bowl Championships back to back. Shannahan's offense was a great transition for Steve Young and his abilities as running quarterback.

    Damn brad, it's not JUST the players for crying outloud. They are A piece of the recipe, not the entire dish itself!
     
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  7. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Who said it's JUST the players? What's clear however is that it was MOSTLY the players.

    Ignore all other arguments and focus on the one that ends the debate: ONE player leaves and the system immediately fails. Clearly, it's the player in that case.
     
  8. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    Did Steve Young play defense?

    Defensive Rank:
    1997 - points - 3rd, yards - 1st
    1998 - points - 13th, yards - 23rd
    1999 - points - 30th, yards - 28th

    It was the end of an era on offense and defense. In addition to losing Young, Rice, and Garrison Hearst were gone on the decline or gone. The backup QB was a rookie and they also had three games started by the 3rd string QB.

    The OL in 1998 had players that had played 4, 12, 5, 11, and 8 seasons. In 1999 it was 1, 13, 5, 0, and 5. They had two returning players (LG, C) to their normal position on the OL. The LT moved to RT, new LT (only 3 previous starts), and new rookie RG.

    So, no.... ONE player was not near the only difference.

    To bring it back to the thread topic.....

    Ignore all other arguments and focus on the one that ends the debate: if ONE player enters and the system immediately succeeds...... Clearly it is the player in that case.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2020
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  9. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You're not following the debate. Go back to my original post #10184 and you can see throughout this debate with TDK that I've said MANY times it was "the personnel", as in "players" plural (under Seifert's reign, not Walsh). In fact, in the post you quoted I even said that.

    The one sentence you're taking out of context is referring to TDK's repeated unwillingness to accept that a win% change immediately following a personnel change is actually evidence of the personnel being the main reason for the system's success. That's a principle I'm illustrating, it doesn't matter if it's technically one player or two or three. TDK will say it's "all the HC". He argued that even for the immediate changes in win% with/without Peyton Manning most recently.

    So understand something here: TDK would argue that all the stats you just posted are the result of the HC and NOT the players. THAT is the context.
     
  10. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    What about the flip side argument:

    Ignore all other arguments and focus on the one that ends the debate: if ONE player (Tannehill) enters and the system immediately succeeds...... Clearly it is the player (Tannehill) in that case.

    Some have spent a year arguing against this.
     
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  11. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No, the general statement is that if one player enters the system and the system suddenly sees success expected with that player, or leaves the system and suddenly sees failure beyond expected with that player, THEN it is the player.

    Manning had similar success with many different coaches. So when he went to a new team and you saw the success he typically had, it suggests it's the QB not the coach. Tannehill did NOT have that kind of success in Miami, and 2019 was totally unexpected, at least statistically.

    With Tannehill the expectation based on Miami was that he'd be average. That he was elite in 2019 begs the question as to how much was due to him actually playing to his potential within a favorable system vs. how much of this was an anomaly. Compounding the difficulty is that the Titans didn't have similar success without Tannehill, which is why we have to wait for more data before having a better handle on the situation, at least statistically.
     
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2020
  12. FinFaninBuffalo

    FinFaninBuffalo Well-Known Member

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    That wasn't my expectation.
     
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  13. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    There's always the possibility that Tannehill was better than people thought, and the team was competitive BECAUSE of him, not being held back because of him.
     
  14. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    Sure that's possible. What we need to realize however is that his 11 games in 2019 can't determine anything definitively either way. His 11 games in 2019 are neither the confirmation of the hypothesis that he was better than people thought nor of the hypothesis that his 2019 performance was elevated by his surroundings.
     
  15. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    See, all of this chatter about the 49ers steers right back to what we have all been saying about Tannehill. The ONE player the Titans needed...quarterback. And they got that in Tannehill.

    As you pointed out, players in San Francisco were dropping off like flies and the team as a whole degraded. It was never JUST Joe Montana nor Steve Young. It was the collective of players that made the 49ers great. But these statisticians would have you believe it was the ONE player, Steve Young and his departure that caused the team to fail when in fact it was many many others than that.
     
  16. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    lol nice try, but fail. You've been arguing the whole time that personnel (plural) were NOT the reason and instead it was the HC, GM, owner, business executives.. basically everyone EXCEPT the players. Don't act like you were fine with the argument that after Welch left it was mostly the players (plural). You repeatedly gave a resounding NO to that.

    Having said that, it's still the case that by FAR the most important player (singular) that left was Young.
     
  17. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    See, all of this chatter about the 49ers steers right back to what we have all been saying about Tannehill. The ONE player the Titans needed...quarterback. And they got that in Tannehill.

    As you pointed out, players in San Francisco were dropping off like flies and the team as a whole degraded. It was never JUST Joe Montana nor Steve Young. It was the collective of players that made the 49ers great. But these statisticians would have you believe it was the ONE player, Steve Young and his departure that caused the team to fail when in fact it was many many others than that.
     
  18. The_Dark_Knight

    The_Dark_Knight Defender of the Truth

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    [​IMG]
     
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  19. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Sum Ting Wong?? Nah.

    lol.. remember this?

     
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  20. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Really pushing the meta-level side of this debate. Of course, it's possible to go higher still and point out that all of this is an attempt to try to get to the 'truth' about an individual player as measured against some sort of common standard of goodness/quality/ability. That requires an assumption that such a value or standard exists. It might not exist. There may not be such a thing as a single standard of quality amongst QB's - or other players. Instead, one could visualise all players as a unique contribution of attributes which, when placed into different environments, produces different effects within that system. From this perspective the question isn't so much about how good a given player might be but what sort of effect that player will have in a given environment and what sort of effect that environment will have on that player. It will likely be possible to evaluate the different attributes a given player has, for example, arm strength, running speed, etc. and therefore rate all such players to a common standard, sort of like a combine - who is the fastest, strongest, most agile etc., and that could expand to mental agility tests too, theoretically. But those measurements likely wouldn't be able to explain the totality of the player.

    Whatever the case, from this perspective, the question about whether or not Tannehill is 'good', 'average', or 'bad', is meaningless, because that would require an ability to measure him against a common standard. Instead, the question would be whether Tannehill is good/bad/average in the Titans system, or Miami system etc. and/or to ask whether he has the attributes to make enough of a contribution as a QB for the Titans, or Miami, to be able to win a Superbowl. Even that will be difficult to assess because of all the variables.

    Bottom line for me? Saying that Tannehill can't play QB and shouldn't be a starter is clearly not a tenable position. He is clearly capable of being an NFL starter and winning games within at least one NFL system. Whether you like that system or not is a matter of personal preference.

    Your rating system for QB's that allows you to put them against a common standard? It's probably crap.
     
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  21. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    This (above) is a great post because it's well thought out and internally consistent. However, what we're talking about above is the quarterback-system interaction, and as soon as we venture into that area, questions arise regarding the likelihood that the system necessary for a quarterback can be assembled and sustained, and how competitive the necessary system is in the present-day NFL. One quarterback can be regarded as better than another to the degree that 1) the system he requires is more likely to be assembled, 2) the system he requires is more likely to be sustained, and 3) the system he requires makes his team highly competitive in the league.

    So in contrast to what's said above, we can indeed determine whether quarterback X is better than quarterback Y. If quarterback X, more so than quarterback Y, requires a system that is more likely to be assembled and sustained, and the system makes his team more competitive than other teams in the league, he is indeed a better player than quarterback Y.

    Apply this to Ryan Tannehill, for example. Hypothetically, if Ryan Tannehill, to play at a sufficient level individually, requires a player like Derrick Henry alongside him, then 1) he requires a system that's difficult to assemble (i.e., there is perhaps only one Derrick Henry), 2) he requires a system that's difficult to sustain (i.e., Derrick Henry can be easily injured), and 3) he requires a system that is less competitive in the present-day NFL (i.e., featuring the run game inherently scores fewer points than featuring the passing game, with all else equal).

    This is why I've centered my posts here on the replicability of Ryan Tannehill's performance. The replicability of his performance itself will determine how good a player he is. If his performance isn't replicable (more or less), then it suggests he was an 11-game product of a system, and that the system either wasn't sustainable or wasn't competitive in the league.

    Jim Harbaugh was apparently an 11-game product of a system in 1995, within an otherwise average career. The fact that the system wasn't sustainable and his performance wasn't replicable tells us he was a career average player, however.
     
  22. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Nope.

    You said, "One quarterback can be regarded as better than another to the degree that 1) the system he requires is more likely to be assembled, 2) the system he requires is more likely to be sustained, and 3) the system he requires makes his team highly competitive in the league."

    Instead of seeing QB's as unique sets of variables that produce different results in different environments, this approach attempts to group QB's according to a supposed ability to play well or not in different 'types' of systems. It might allow that each QB is unique but suggests that each team is not, and that they can be grouped based on common standards or groupings.

    At a distance this is true in the sense of run-heavy vs. air-raid etc. etc. However, my post suggested that each QB might better be seen as a unique set of variables that produces different results in difference environments. If that's true for a QB then it is also true for whole teams. This means that teams cannot necessarily be grouped either. It is certain that there are so many variables from team to team and year to year that it may be more accurate to see each iteration of a single team as actually unique (and perhaps also each year of a QB's career may be seen unique - although to a lesser extent).

    If it's true that different teams are truly unique then it becomes meaningless to attempt to talk about 'types' of system because even between similar looking teams there may be enough difference that comparisons don't work. Similarities in terms of X's and O's or personnel are only a superficial comparison.

    On top of this, the idea of being able to replicate performances is also meaningless. Partially because if performance is a result of a unique combination of elements then it may be impossible to assert what individual or few elements were the most important in terms of success. In addition, however, and first of all, we rarely get enough data in terms of QB's playing for different systems and teams to be able to make that evaluation. Second, it looks at football from a purely theoretical perspective that a QB is good if they can perform in multiple systems, but that can't be proven, because those QB's that look great usually don't play for multiple teams, and if they do move they usually have their pick of great teams to join, and lastly, a QB only needs to have success with one team to be considered a success. Were team selection randomised them perhaps one might talk about QBs more or less likely to find success. However, since GMs are supposed to put pieces together intentionally, the challenge is to find the best combination of all the moveable parts. A team only needs to find the best QB for them, in conjunction with all the other players and coaches, not for anyone else.

    What I'm saying, essentially, is that our impulse to analyse, understand and group things might be frustrated by the very nature of football - they're beyond neat classifications.

    One piece of evidence suggesting that's the truth:
    Predicting player performance from the draft and from trade to trade, is not even close to accurate. The professionals consistently get it wrong. History shows that it's impossible to accurately predict performance. Of course, that's a challenge for those who are analytically minded - if we can just get enough information, enough detail, then we can boil everything down to the data and predict accurately! (May be, but perhaps that level of granularity will never be possible...).
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2020
  23. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    Even if that's true, then some "unique" systems are going to be more easily assembled, more sustainable, and more competitive than others, and then we're back to what I was talking about -- i.e., differences among QBs in terms of their needs in that regard, and what that says about their individual ability. The "type" of system doesn't matter -- it's how easily assembled, easily sustained, and competitive it is.

    JaMarcus Russell might've succeeded with the "unique" system "type" consisting of the 10 best players in history at all the other offensive positions on the field, coupled with Don Shula at head coach and Bill Walsh at offensive coordinator. However, the fact that his needs were for such an impossible assemblage of surroundings (hypothetically) means he was a poor QB.
     
  24. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Nope.

    There are two things going on here.

    1 - The specifics of any one element or system.
    2 - Our ability to talk about those things in a meaningful way.

    The reality is we struggle with both.

    Suggesting that a QB who would see individual performance at a high level in a wide variety of teams is therefore a better QB than one who doesn't is hugely problematic. It might seem like a 'gimme' but it's not. You can't measure it, for one. Secondly, no one cares, it's not a 'stat' or 'achievement' that anyone looks for or measures. Are all the great QB's who only played for one team by that fact scrubs? Is it only the QB who were good or great with multiple teams the truly good QBs? If so, how many different teams are required? What if one QB plays with only one coach, or multiple coaches, or how about roster variation? And how do we categorise different types of teams - maybe that same QB played in different teams with similar systems but another QB sees success on one team with different systems? And how do we manage success? Individual QB stats? Superbowl wins?

    ... The whole thing is a minefield, and as certain as some people are that they have the "true" way of looking at things the reality is that no-one can produce an approach that can't be asked unanswerable questions. It's an attempt to simplify things too far. That's our tendency, to simplify, to boil things down to an equation, but the nature of football defies that simplification. It cannot be done.

    All we can reliably do is measure the measurables and then see how that unique individual, and the others on the team, perform and what they produce. Then we can look and see whether it worked or didn't work. Then we can ask whether a QB, or any other player, performed well in that system. Players that are repeatedly dumped from systems may be, and often are, labelled as poor players at their position.

    Is Tannehill a crap QB? Well, he's performing well in this system, so no. He's not crap. Is he a QB that can perform well on most teams? We don't know, he hasn't played for most teams. Do the Titans or their fans or the opponents care if he can play well elsewhere? No. Perhaps more importantly for us, do we care that Tannehill is having success now? Apparently. Why? Because if he is it might mean that the problem was with some other aspect of Miami during his tenure - but then we already know there were other problems. Would Tannehill have performed better at Miami if some of those other problems had been corrected? Probably. Would that have been enough for Miami to win a superbowl? We don't know, because we don't know what those fixes would have been.

    So is Tannehill rubbish? No? Can the Titans win with him? Time will tell. There is certainly more to it than just Tannehill though. Let's see what they do.

    Are people here somehow personally tied to their opinions about evaluating QBs and football even when it evident that such evaluations are impossible, or at best, unreliable? Apparenly.

    :D
     
  25. resnor

    resnor Derp Sherpa

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    Question, cbrad has done a great job researching through play action and it's function as related to running the ball. Since he has discovered running effectively isn't what makes play action work, why is it that you work so hard to credit Tannehill's success with play action to Henry?
     
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  26. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    Sure we can measure it. The fact that great QBs vary throughout their careers at a level significantly higher than lesser QBs suggests that great QBs perform at a significantly higher level indivdually than lesser QBs, despite year-to-year variation in their surroundings.
     
  27. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    It goes beyond play-action:
    https://www.sharpfootballanalysis.com/analysis/slow-down-derrick-henry-titans-stacked-box/
     
  28. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    Mathematically, such a measure always exists. No matter how many variables you use to describe something (N variables puts you in N dimensional space), you can always project that N dimensional space onto a single dimension. Which dimension do you project to? The 1st principal component, the one that explains the most variance.

    So mathematically, there is always a common measure you can use. Having said that, the more the other dimensions matter (i.e, the less variance in the data the 1st principal component explains), the less useful the measure is.

    With enough variables you can explain anything. You can perfectly explain N data points with N-1 variables for example. So the question in practice is how much you can explain with how little. That is, there's a trade-off between accuracy and simplicity. Simplicity matters because people using and further developing the model can do so better the simpler it is.

    Some have proposed precise relations between the two, such as the Akaike information criterion (an information theory based trade-off), but in general the trade-off is hard to formulate precisely and is done intuitively.

    With football, and with sports in general, there is a justifiable starting point for all such measures: correlation to win%. The goal is to win, so any measure that has higher correlation to win% and can be argued to be a causal factor (i.e., it's not something that occurs after the fact) is a better measure than one with a lower correlation to win%.

    Problem with individual player measures is that it's not just correlation to win%, but also what percentage of the variance explained by the correlation is due to that player. That's where we get stuck. We can't directly estimate the contribution of the player. But aside from that, there are many passing metrics (technically, passing offense metrics) that are only defined for a single QB that have high correlation to win%.

    So no, these measures are not "crap". They actually do explain a decent percentage of the variance in what is observed. The problem — the proper criticism here — is that we can't reliably estimate the contribution of a given player.
     
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  29. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    ...until we get to the career level, where I'd say we can determine that the level at which a player's performance varied is very likely indicative of his individual ability.
     
  30. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You still have the problem that everything else has to randomly vary, which we know doesn't for coaching (at minimum). I think I once estimated from changes in win% over 5-year periods that about half the variation is likely NOT due to the QB in passer rating. That's still pretty good of course, to be able to say maybe half the variation IS the QB once sample size isn't an issue, but the problem in principle remains.
     
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  31. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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  32. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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  33. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    And all if these replies prove my point.
    I'm not saying that aren't solid efforts to try to evaluate what's going on. I'm stating what cbrad stated at the end. The big, colossal, 'but' is what makes it futile. There is no guaranteed way to identify everything going on. It's impossible to gather all that data.

    Oh, and I didn't didn't say the measurements used were crap. I said that any individual's system for rating a QB against a common standard is crap.

    It can't be done. There are too many variables, too many unknowns.

    Try it. Make some sort of clear, visible, incontrovertible statement about Tannehill. It can be done, just not with the sort of statements you want to make.
     
  34. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    You're missing the most important point in all this: whether statistical analysis improves our understanding or not.

    If we went with your view that because there are too many variables, too many unknowns, the system for rating a QB against a common standard is "crap", then see what happens to the world when you're consistent with that view in other fields.

    For example, the same criticism applies to almost everything in medical research because statistical analysis cannot take into account the specifics of an individual patient. You go back 50+ years and clinicians would stand up at conferences saying you don't need stats, etc. and that they were more of an expert than the next clinician because they had seen 10k cases instead of the guy that saw 5k cases. You know.. the same kind of "I watched more film than you" type of attitude.

    Well.. fast forward today and you can hardly get anything published in medical journals without a battery of statistical tests. NONE of the criticisms of "too many variables, too many unknowns" have been fully addressed. That's still the case today. What no one disagrees with however is the utility of such measures. They've vastly improved our ability to determine the probability of different cause and effect mechanisms, and of course to diagnose different disorders.

    Point is, what matters is whether you're improving on things, not whether you can know everything that matters precisely. And it's clear statistical analysis improves our understanding of the game. Teams are vastly increasing the use of analytics for a reason. It's revolutionized baseball, and it's slowly doing the same for football. That's the future, precisely because statistical analysis is useful.
     
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  35. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    Consider making the same kind of statement about the average QB who's been inducted into the HoF. Would you say there are too many variables and too many unknowns to make such a statement about them as well?
     
  36. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    Apples and oranges.

    And to be clear, I'm not arguing against statistical analysis or data gathering done properly.

    It's important.

    I'm making my points in a public Dolphins forum to fans.

    In the medical and scientific community such analyses are done by means of a professional gathering of empirical data. As you know, the sample size needs to be significant before the stats are useful. The tests can be multiple and even adjusted to measure different things of interest.

    Here, some of the data can't be measured empirically. We're attempting to evaluate behaviour perhaps even more than anything else. We don't have access to what the intention was behind each play.

    Then we're attempting to evaluate specific individuals in varied scenarios where we can't account for the variables. The sample size of data for those individuals is going to be small. They only play 16 games a year, and not necessarily all of those. Then we would need to gather data on all the other players and in ways that probably aren't even measured.

    Almost always statistics are most useful when used at the highest level to measure trends. The more detailed you go the more robust your data need to be and in the NFL it's just not going to be that robust because the metrics aren't that good.

    So yes, stats done properly can help. But then, what sort of statement do we want to make? Because if we're talking about coming up with some sort of Madden score for QBs where we rank them all... then it's crap.
     
    resnor likes this.
  37. Galant

    Galant Love - Unity - Sacrifice - Eternity

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    What does the HOF have to do with anything I've said?

    Are we talking about the evaluation methods of whoever decides entry into the HOF?

    Do we even know what those are?

    Are the HOF players ranked?

    We can have our own perceptions about which players are the best. Great. I do too.
    What I'm saying is that there is no magic metric for determining a player's ability or quality overall or in any given scenario.
     
  38. cbrad

    cbrad .

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    No you don't get it. This is EXACTLY the same type of situation as in medical research.

    There are tons of patient-specific variables you can't measure directly — a great example is "quality of life" which is only addressed through questionnaires that, when analyzed, tend NOT to be unidimensional (i.e., that 1st principal component I talked about is not explaining much variance) because people value different things — as well as variables where you only know their effect in controlled situations for a sample population, but not in real life scenarios for a specific patient.

    And in many cases you have fewer data points than in football. How many exams for a particular disorder do you have from an average patient? Sometimes only a few. Worse, the "measure" used is often not recorded in a standard way (because different clinicians do things "their own way"). But, like in football, you have a larger population to compare to. Many studies only use sample sizes less than 100, or maybe only several hundred, similar to football stats.

    Why? Correlating changes in win% to changes in different stats is useful for pointing out what the team needs to do to help it win, including estimating the value of upgrading the QB position to one more likely to produce a given stat change.

    Furthermore, even with all the evaluation failures at the QB position, stats improve evaluation ability (try doing an eval without looking at any stats and compare that to an eval while taking stats into consideration), and 1st rounders still pan out more often than 2nd rounders. So such "rankings" also help in the inexact science of QB evals.

    It's certainly not "crap". And yes it's apples to apples from a statistical point of view with many other fields, like medicine.
     
    Pauly and Irishman like this.
  39. The Guy

    The Guy Well-Known Member

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    What if the HoF QBs' career passer ratings (for example) were significantly higher than those of other QBs? What then does career passer rating mean in terms of QBs' ability?
     
  40. Sceeto

    Sceeto Well-Known Member

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    New York
    :sidelol::cry:
     

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