X goes down and they immediately exploit that loss. The communication and ability to adjust to what they identified is a DIRECT result of that player going down. Now you can say it was all on the coaches but come on, stats are not the be all end all. Many of those points also later in the game were because of very short fields because we had to go for it on the opposite side of the 50. Stats and the they gave up 33 don't take that into account.
Number of starters. btw.. here are the injuries the Dolphins have had by week (but not in-game): https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/mia/2023_injuries.htm See if you can predict wins and losses looking only at that. You'll see how futile it is.
Stats tell you the probability of events occurring. That 5% variation takes all game situations during a decade of NFL play into account. For injuries to be the primary reason we lost you're talking about such an astronomically small probability it's like being hit by a meteorite. No, it's not technically impossible, but it's so improbable that the evidence has to be overwhelming to even consider it. Yes that stats argument is what you go by here until we have an accurate model of football cause and effect that you can rely on — and no one's intuition here qualifies unless they demonstrate they are very good at predicting outcomes. The best predictors (machine learning algorithms) don't weight injuries much.
So them exploiting on the next two drives and scoring touchdowns where X was playing, taking advantage of the mismatch I guess is a meteorite.
No, I'm saying giving up 33 more points than average for the team is a meteorite if you think most of that was due to injury. Want to explain a drive here or there due to injury fine, but the final outcome should be within a TD or so if you don't want to be hit with that 5% variability issue. btw.. 2 other stats regarding starters missing games due to injuries: Correlation to AFC or NFC championship appearances is -0.108 Correlation to SB win is -0.008 In the first case that's about 1% of variability explained by injury, in the second case it's that proverbial meteorite. In other words, while maybe 5% of variability in win% overall is due to injury, the probability of winning it all is essentially completely unaffected by it. That's why I said once you get into the playoffs it's harder and harder to blame injuries for not winning the SB.
What's the correlation between Duke Rilley sucks arse at covering speedy WR's and backs out of the backfield vs. X? Cause they exploited that to turn us into a one-dimensional throwing team. And how do you correlate that the defense is Fn good, Reek retweeked his ankle and your best #2 isn't playing when you needed him most? Forgot about, your 3rd string Center (according to the math it doesn't make a difference if he's a starter or not) was gutting it out and could barely move, causing pressure up the middle giving no time to throw. Whats the Z correlation factor for that? It's the difference between actually watching the game and just looking at stats to tell you what happened in the game.
Right, and one can come up with tons of other possible explanations for what happened. You think most observers of that game would blame injuries? I'm here in Baltimore. No one I talked to here was saying the Ravens won due to Dolphins injuries, but of course you could just dismiss that because they have a different opinion than yours, or possibly claim that Ravens fans don't know football. As I told resnor, if you think you understand football better, then let's put it to the test. Tell us how the Buffalo game will transpire based on the injury data prior to kickoff. Let's see how good you guys are at predicting outcomes. That's the only way to demonstrate your internal model of cause and effect in football is better than the stats or machine learning models that very few can beat. Obviously you must be predicting we have no chance given the vast disparity in injuries. That Vegas spread of +3 must be totally overestimating our chances right?
This is crazy. It is long, but you should watch it if you haven’t heard about this yet. Terron actually responded to Barry. This is crazy stuff:
I'm not predicting anything. I watched the game. I saw what happened. Throwing a strawman at it to say PREDICT THE NEXT game doesn't equate to the fact that injuries play a part in the outcome of games. Just because your stats say different I have eyes and saw what happened. The analysts after the game looking at the tap said, "Jackson just went to where X left the game and they scored quickly". Maybe they should predict the future also. Come on dude. I'm the Director of Quality for a Medical Device company. I deal with stats all the time. They can predict POSSIBLE outcomes. Not the future. And it's laughable that you're stating that the Baltimore fans aren't saying injuries were a factor. If you win YOU NEVER SAY THAT.
We all saw the game. And many neutral observers will disagree with you. So you have an opinion, nothing else. It has no more credibility than the next person's. The only way to determine whether one person has a better internal model of cause and effect in football is to see how well they can predict things. That is NOT a strawman. That is precisely how to demonstrate your understanding of what happened is better. That's how it's done in science btw. And I'll say right now that if someone does show they are better at predicting things compared to the best machine learning models I'll go with their opinion over stats. Whatever works best is what I'll go with. But you have to demonstrate this first. In any case, given the vast emphasis you and others are putting on a 37 point differential being mostly due to injuries, there's no way to argue we should win the game against Buffalo. Why is Vegas saying +3, not +20 or +37?
No I was not surprised. I don't care what your stats tell you. If they are telling you that there it's no drop off with second stringers, then there's something missing. Not being surprised by something is by no means the same as predicting something.
Further, this idea that injuries are NOT the reason you lose by 37 doesn't ring true to me. The Dolphins are an NFL team, with 11 wins. When you lose by that much, that screams injuries to me. If you lose by a TD, you don't blame players being out because you still had a chance. When you lose by 30+ points, you never had a chance. You're really struggling to maintain a narrative.
Your intuition is wrong. Let's take that 70-20 drubbing by the Dolphins over Denver. According to your intuition, this would have only been possible if Denver had massive injuries in that one game. That's a 50 point deficit. The second worst deficit they had was 25 points against the Lions. They had a few other losses with 10+ point differential, while the majority of their games have been quite close: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/den/2023.htm Yet their injuries have been fairly stable throughout the year: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/den/2023_injuries.htm No huge injury spike with the Dolphins game or any other game. Stats are more accurate here. There IS an effect of injury, but it's fairly small, accounting for just about 5% variation in win%.
I'm going to say the timing of injuries definitely has an effect on the outcome. Tyreek went down against Tennessee and things went south fast. The offense was stuck in the mud until Hill came back in the game. When they had a week of practice to prepare a game plan without Hill we were fine and win by 30 points. The Ravens game was more or less tied until Howard went down. After that the Ravens exposed Howard's side of the field and blow us out. It's hard to overcome injuries when it happens in the middle of a game.
Yeah I have no issue with people saying injuries have an effect, even specific to certain drives, i.e., timing. But the evidence is pretty strong that the overall effect of injuries on win% is relatively small. That's my only argument. And Vegas seems to know this too. We've been +3 (or +2.5) against Buffalo the whole time despite a huge discrepancy in injuries. Vegas isn't stupid.
Right THIS is the argument I've been having with cbrad since he started posting on here. I'M NOT INTERESTED IN PREDICTING. I'm interested in the actual results. I don't have to be able to predict anything. Humans are not robots. They are not algorithms.
Where did I say injuries are the ONLY option? This is what you love to do. Take something I say, slightly change it, so that it makes it unreasonable, then argue the unreasonable thing. The Denver Broncos do not have 11 wins, they were not doing the things the Dolphins were doing. I was SPECIFICALLY speaking about the Dolphins vs Ravens, and in that game, injuries were the biggest factor. I don't care about any other games or teams. When you lose the number of STARTERS that this team has, injuries are a legitimate reason that you lose. You should see players playing with intensity, but they should not be expected to perform as the starters. If they could perform as well as starters, THEY WOULD BE STARTERS. Again, you act like this is Madden or the players are robots. They aren't.
Also, INCREDIBLY disingenuous to bring up that game, when the Broncos were 0-3, Miami was 3-0, and were not decimated by injuries. It's laughable that you bring that up. This is why I continue to ask about playing sports. You really don't seem to understand the dynamics of team sports.
Sorry resnor your intuition is wrong and that example proves it. Everyone can see that based on your post. That you can’t admit it and instead try to act like I’m the one misrepresenting you is disingenuous. Not surprised though. You have a long history of that. At least everyone else thus far is interested in an honest debate, not you.
Dude, we hung with the Ravens until X went down...and immediately the Ravens threw the ball to where X used to be over and over again. We don't need stats to see what happened- that's what happened! The problem here is that your statistical analysis is built over a period of time...I think you said 10 years for this one. In other cases, you want to see x number of games to evaluate a QB. You do that so the random high or low points are averaged out. And that's great for long-term statistical probabilities, but this is the opposite of that. Here we want to look at the blip on the radar, one very specific instance in time, and stats can't explain that because they're not made to. In fact, you'd probably say that one game is statistically irrelevant because there's not enough data...we've heard you say that hundreds of times over the years, to ignore small sample sizes. Our defense is built around two lock-down corners. Take one away and everything changes because a replacement can't do what Ramsey or X does. Now you have to align the entire defense differently to compensate, which we didn't do when X went down. Baltimore rattled off 4 TD's throwing to where X used to be.
lol Xavien Howard suffered his injury on the first pass play with the Ravens. We have NO data on how good or bad this defense would have been with him, so your "we hung with the Ravens until X went down" is like saying "we hung with the Ravens until the game started (i.e., until the Ravens were allowed to have the ball)". The main reason a statistical analysis over 10 years is relevant for a single game is because you get a probability distribution of possible outcomes, and as I told Finatik, saying that something that on average affects 5% of the variation in win% is responsible for 33 extra points allowed than what we on average give up is the statistical equivalent of being hit by a meteorite. Again, to not be hit with this argument you need to make sure the final score is relatively close. One starting corner, even an elite one, isn't worth 33 extra points allowed. The worst defense in the league is currently giving up 30 points per game. You think ONE corner explains 33 points, or much of that? No.
Wish we had a rule were this guys videos weren’t allowed to be posted. It’s obvious he just posts stuff for clicks now, he realised the “bash Tua and the Dolphins” gets you more clicks and he jumped right on it. He’s not even a Dolphins fan, he’s a Cowboys fan.
That’s ridiculous. He has better content than most, if not all the national media people. It’s not about what he thinks, he posts good content with film breakdowns and player and coach commentary, etc. Terron Armstead responded to him and his content. That’s what was interesting and the clips he posted were very interesting: …whatever:
What's your point? I think the injury stats I'm making people aware of are quite unfamiliar to them. As I said right at the outset when this debate began most fans have an intuition about how injuries affect win% that's not supported by the data. A lot of posters will therefore have similar arguments to yours. Doesn't mean they're right. This is usually how the influence of stats begins. People are made aware of certain stats, but there's often lots of initial resistance because it doesn't fit their intuition, and then over time it becomes accepted. However, it is worth pointing out that crowd intelligence — Vegas — already incorporates such stats as evidenced by our odds hardly changing despite huge changes in the injury report (fluctuations were +2.5 to +3 and back to +2.5).
1. I'm not sure if you have, but others have mocked my position that there isn't as big a difference between an elite QB and the worst QB in the league. But your stats on win % and injuries would seem to actually back up that thought. The dropoff in performance doesn't seem to be supported by win%. However... 2. If there isn't a significant drop off between starters and second string, why would teams pay starters significantly more? And... 3. Does position at all matter? I could see on many teams that an injury to a starting wide receiver wouldn't be as big an issue as an injury to a starting olineman or cornerback. And in that vein, do better teams have better backups do they aren't as affected by injuries as worse trans that struggle to get talent?
Lots of good questions. Some I can answer, some I can try to answer. If you're willing to use a stat like passer rating to quantify QB performance over time, then we can estimate the difference in win% between an elite QB and the worst QB in the league. Here's a graph that looks at win% vs. adjusted passer rating (adjusted to 2019 ratings) from 2002-2019 (haven't updated the graph to 2023 but the relationship is pretty stable over time): That equation tells you that for one passer rating point improvement you can expect 1.08% increase in win%. Generally an elite QB is on average about 1 standard deviation above the mean (not necessarily each year), so let's say the "worst" is on average about 1 standard deviation below the mean. That will translate to about 20-22% change in win%, which over a 17 game season is 3.5 wins. That's pretty big. But remember that this is only if both QBs (both elite and the worst) start all 17 games. So how does such a huge effect on win% jibe with an average 5% variation in win% explained by injuries? First, starting QBs on average miss very few games per year despite this year being a bit of an anomaly. I know that in 2015 they started 14.9 out of 16 games, which means that the 3.5 wins average difference between elite and worst QBs is expected to cost you only 0.25 extra losses on average per season. That's "expected" losses though, so averaged across the league. Obviously, some teams will be hit a ton worse than others because their elite QB is out for many games. The second reason you get that 5% variation in win% is because other position players are far less influential than the QB (individual players, not units). That's why in some posts on this injury topic I made an exception for QBs. As to your second question of why teams pay starters way more, I think it's important to first understand the likely mechanism at work here behind why key injuries outside of QB don't matter that much. The reason is because teams have many compensatory strategies if something goes wrong. Imagine for example replacing one after another device you rely on in daily life, such as an appliance, furniture, computer, car, etc. Replace a few with far inferior products and you might be able to compensate, but replace too many and it will seriously affect things. I can give you examples with diseases too. In glaucoma you can keep losing lots of retinal ganglion cells (output neurons of the retina) and it has nearly no effect on your vision. But lose too many and you fall off a cliff so to say, going blind in parts of your visual field. Same principle here. That explains why starters are paid way more. If you have too many starters lost while your competition doesn't you do fall off a cliff, which is why you need to do what you can to not reach that cliff. Finally, yes position matters because the effect of different positions on win% differs a lot. In general, in this passing era win% is affected most by what makes a great passing offense and great passing defense, with offense statistically slightly more important. So QB, WR group, DB group, OT and DE are the most important positions. This tends to be borne out in the salaries too. Of course, it's not as easy as just saying go get top players at those positions because there's competition from other teams and a salary cap. That last question about what strategy is best for backups on your team is a great question but one I don't have a good intuition for.
So here are some of my thoughts on those questions... 1. When it comes to QB, let's use Mike White as an example. Compared to 99.99999999999% of the population, the dude is an elite QB. Put the guy on a field throwing at targets and dropping balls into trash cans, he's be just as impressive as Rodgers. That's why they made the NFL. They're elite. But you put a bunch of elite guys together and suddenly some of them "suck." I think it's mental. They can't maintain peak performance. 2. Win% can be misleading also, as there is so much variance in teams. Are QBs who get injured more likely to get injured on a bad team than a good team? Do good teams stay away from injury prone players? There are many facets to win%. 3. I think that there is a significant dropoff between starters and backups. I think that good teams are able to mitigate it better. I think the dropoff isn't due to physical limitations, but mental, and teams pay a premium for the most consistent/reliable players.
A note on this comment. While I agree that the mental component is very important (if for no other reason than how you respond to stress matters in a stressful situation), I'd argue that the differences between "elite" and "suck" are more real than you're making it out to be. Small differences in talent (small seen from the vantage point of average Joes like us) can mean huge differences when you get NFL caliber players playing against each other. Think of the marketplace for any high tech product. From the point of view of a typical consumer what is really the difference between a high tech product that made it in the marketplace versus one that was good but not quite good enough? iPhone vs. Blackberry. Blackberry was fantastic compared to a telephone from the 1950's (the "average Joe" here), but not as good as iPhone. Seen from the perspective of all the different telephones in the 1950's, both were "elite", but the "small" difference between iPhone and Blackberry was real, and very consequential. In the case of NFL QBs, consistently faster decision making, or throwing accurately when DBs are covering the WRs, are real differences (i.e., peak performance is different). From our perspective they're all very good, but those small differences can mean huge differences in win%. So I think that's the primary factor. How you respond under stress is important too, but I'd go for the more easy to measure differences first.
Oh yeah I agree. What I'm saying is, processing, decision making, those things I look at as mental. So these QBs, from a physical standpoint, don't differentiate a ton. So when you look at them physically, they all look good. It's how they operate under pressure, etc.
Look at the Ravens game yesterday against the Steelers. Lamar and a bunch of starters don’t play (kinda like if you had a bunch of significant injuries). Offense looks totally different. So did the defense. Eye ball test sometimes is more telling then predictive stats in looking at a game after the fact.
Yep. Also, my issue with that loss was not necessarily the loss. It was how they lost...it was that they looked like they didn't care and they weren't playing with intensity.
Yeah but I explicitly made an exception with QBs and the defense only gave up 17 so if anything that supports what I said.
Of course it does. As you’re never wrong. The perfect quote for you is “those of you who think you’re perfect are bothering those of us that are”. lol.
lol.. I’ve been wrong before and have pointed it out when it happens. But given the argument I’ve consistently made in this debate, clearly that Ravens Steelers game is not inconsistent with what I said. If anything it supports it. Wait for a different kind of game before saying that’s an exception to the rule.
Yeah that's a better example, at least for the Browns defense. Both don't have their starting QBs but the Browns are resting key players on defense going up against a backup QB. EDIT: so actually it turned out not to be that great an example. When I replied they were in the 3rd quarter and it was 31-0, which suggested maybe the Browns defense would give up over 40. Game ended with 31 points allowed, which is 10 points above expected. So it's a bit beyond where I'd say there's little issue solely blaming backups, but 10 points above expected isn't a statistical meteorite.
