Anytime you compare QB's (or any other position) across eras you need to adjust for the era. Statistically speaking, all you can really do is adjust to the different averages (essentially incorporates whatever changes in the game have taken place, on average). The average passer ratings from 2002-2006 are: 78.6, 76.6, 80.9, 78.2. The average passer ratings from 2012-2015 are: 83.8, 84.1, 87.1, 88.4 Brees' passer ratings from 2002-2006 are: 76.9, 67.5, 104.8, 89.2 Tannehill's passer ratings from 2012-2015 are: 76.1, 81.7, 92.8, 88.7 What you want to do is to see how many standard deviations above or below the mean those numbers are. The standard deviation has been around 9 over those periods, so you divide the differences by 9 and compare: Brees: -0.19, -1.01, +2.66, +1.22 Tannehill: -0.86, -0.27, +0.63, +0.03 So what do those numbers mean? Well, IF a QB is average, then you'd expect anything above or below 1 Std Dev to occur maybe 1 out of 3 times, while anything above or below 2 Std Dev should occur maybe 1 out of 20 times. Tannehill's numbers you'd often get assuming the QB is average, but Brees' stats you'd rarely get. Of course, that's all because of Brees' 3rd year, but you can't cherry pick that year out, so given that those are the stats yeah the QB's look different performance-wise.
You're kidding me right. Dans Records starting falling after the rule change in 2004. And they've only made it easier pass each year since then. Rt and Brees similar through the first five years? Lol lulz lol.
Why did you list 5 years and only post 4 averages? And those numbers look low to me. I'll have to check that. Glad I did... 2002-2005: 80.4, 78.3, 82.8, 80.1 In comparison, Brees posted, 76.9, 67.5, 104.8, 89.2 ratings in those respective years. That's: -0.39, -1.2, +2.44, +1.01 That's still better than RT (not as much as the numbers you posted, however), and if you ALSO factor in how the passer rating is comprised and look at all comparable QB stats Brees (in his first 4 years) was not much better than RT.
Still making jam, I see. Why not talk about RT's Y/G at 270 compared to Rodgers 205? Or RT's Y/A at 7.8 vs 6.6 for Rodgers? Or RT's comp% of 64 vs Rodgers 58%? OH! I know! You like jam! lol
The average passer rating between 2004 and 2014 was about an increase of 4-5 points. What do you eat all that jam with?
2002-2005 is what I should have written. Either way, my stats are correct according to pro-football-reference: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/passing.htm Where are you getting your stats from? What precisely are you looking at?
I used two references to make sure they were correct: http://www.footballnation.com/content/yearly-league-wide-passer-rating-passer-rating/6205/ http://bleacherreport.com/articles/222790-did-nfl-passer-ratings-spike-in-2004-or-standardly-evolve Y/G, INT%, TD%, Y/A, Total TD's, Total INT's.
Right. When Tannehill threw for 4k, people loved to denigrate it, and talk about those stats you just posted. But now, for Rodgers, will look at only td to int. Crazy.
What poster said after 4 years QB's CAN'T get better? It can happen and has, mostly with a change of scenery. I have no doubts if Ryan went to KC and Alex Smith got hurt, Ryan would look better than he ever did in Miami. We have seen him improve in some areas in the past two years alone, the deep ball is a great example of that. To me, IF he is going to make a HUGE stride it will likely be in another uniform.
I see.. yeah there's a difference between "league-wide" passer rating and average passer rating per team. League-wide just takes all components of passer rating: completion percentage, attempts, Y/A, TD% and INT%, sums them all up as if they're from a single QB, then gives you that rating. That's the one from your links. The one from pro-football-reference is the average per team. So you average the components individually then take the rating. Which you use is irrelevant for this debate since we're talking about starting QB's, but you have to be consistent. If you want to use league-wide, then make sure you adjust Tannehill's based on that - the numbers should look a bit worse for him I'm guessing. Either way, statistically speaking Brees and Tannehill's first 4 years starting aren't that similar due to Brees' 3rd year. Have to adjust all those for era too. Much of that is included in the passer rating adjustment anyway. You can use my link to do the adjustments btw, though I don't know what the standard deviations are for each. When you don't know the standard deviations, just look at percent change from mean.
Problem is, we can't compare him to accomplished QB's...makes it a lopsided argument. 2014 his best season when he was 11th in passing yards (not bad) I thought he made a jump and would stay there. After a disappointing 2015 we are off to a bad 2016 and thats not encouraging for anyone.
I see. Thanks for catching that. Either way, though, we're still talking about a few extra passing yards, very few TD's, and a little raise in the Y/A (maybe a few other stats) when going from 2002 to today. If Brees, in his first 4 years, was what he has been since, he would have never become a Saint. RT is not a bad QB. He'll never be a HoF'er, but he gets more blame than he should for this team's failings. Which I understand is the norm in today's game, but it's still not correct.
Playing around with how the differences affect the rating, it looks like the primary difference is TD%. Brees' TD% was 6.8% in 2004 and Tannehill's was 4.6% in 2014. If you give Tannehill the same TD% of 6.8% (= 40 TD's instead of 27) with all other stats remaining the same, his rating in 2014 would be 100.1 instead of 92.8. That difference of 7.3 passer rating points is about the same as the 6.2 difference when adjusting for era (from 2004 to 2014). So if you want you could argue that the primary difference between Tannehill's first 4 years and Brees' first 4 years is an abnormally high TD% in Brees' 3rd year. What that was due to I don't know, but one could whittle down the argument to one stat.
I'm not comparing anyone. However, Jdang backed up his assertion that Rodgers is having a better season using td to int ratio, when other metrics for rating his season are markedly worse than Tannehill's. Metrics that have been used by him, and others, in seasons past to try to prove that Tannehill's seasons were not good.
Not a numbers guy myself. Too many people get caught up in using those things as a measuring stick. Matt Stafford is a prime example of that. One of few QB's to top 5k yards. I like Stafford more than most, but I think we all can agree he isn't even a top 6-8 QB despite his "impressive" passing stats.
I think it's probably useful to have some idea of which stats mean the most. Until some other better measure comes along, I think the best thing is to use correlation to wins. Here's a link that gives you correlations to wins of various (unadjusted) stats from 1990-2011: http://www.footballperspective.com/correlating-passing-stats-with-wins/ Basically the absolute value of the correlation should be its weight in your mind. So passer rating is at 0.51 vs. TD/A and Y/A at about 0.44 vs. comp% and INT% at about 0.32. Those weights really shouldn't change from debate to debate. So if someone points out QB 1 has a TD/A ratio that is 2 Std. Dev. above the mean while QB 2 has a INT% that is 2 Std. Dev. below the mean, the better QB (just through stats) should be QB 1, all else being equal. Thing about this 2016 Rodgers vs. 2016 Tannehill debate is small sample sizes just wreak havoc on comparisons.. I guess you can still talk about statistical differences, but whatever they are they won't mean too much.
I think, WADR, you're still missing resnor's point. He isn't pointing out or discussing how meaningful stats are (or aren't), he's pointing out the hypocrisy with which the stats are used to prove QB X is subpar or QB Y is great. Nothing more.
No you're missing my point. My post was precisely in response to that. As I said.. the weights on stats shouldn't change from debate to debate and I explained what those weights should be.
What do you mean? Tannehill's Y/A has been average, until this year (so far). Like I said.. sample size AND in this case correlation isn't deterministic (it's not a correlation of 1 = perfect correlation).
I mean, when Tannehill had good yardage total, good td and int numbers, people focused on ypa as the evidence that he wasn't good enough.
Right.. most of Tannehill's stats have been average for the better years of his career. My claim has always been he's average. I mean.. specific to your point about TD:INT ratio.. he's had average TD% and average INT%, as well as average rating. He's an average QB. So sure if someone tries to claim he's well above average I'll go after them with stats like Y/A.
Except 4k yards isn't "average." I could be wrong on this, but I don't think 2:1 ratio is average. Especially not when you're on the sort of teams he's been on.
No I understand your point. I think the part you're not understanding is that we don't really care which stats are important or not. We care more about the intent behind misusing whatever stat. Its not a mistake that a given stat is used to prove X and then ignored to prove Y. Its bias. That bias is a problem.
Average yards last year was 3901. Average TD:INT ratio for last 3 years is between 1.6-1.8. EDIT.. was 3901 not 3984.
Sooooooooo since: 3984<4208 1.8<2 Thill is above average then. Excellent. Glad that's been cleared up.
Yeah, was 3901 sorry.. Anyway, sure technically some stats are above or below average, but when you look at the distributions it's well within what an average QB would produce (statistically speaking).
This is a perfect example of what resnor was talking about. - A claim is made using X stat(s) to solidify it. - An example is then made using the same criteria to either show a different QB is "guilty" of the same claim using the same stat (X) or that stat X doesn't show really show what the claim was..... - Original person (or people who agree with original point maker) making claim changes criteria/ignores stat X/or otherwise just out of hand discounts whatever is being said. Virtually every Thill argument, on this board, has gone this way. And that is precisely what resnor's gripe is. Honestly, look at what just happened: You say: Then: But when I show you Thill's numbers in the categories YOU are talking about are, in fact, above average, you turn around and downplay them here:
The whole "average" argument is silly, imo, anyway, since we know that "average" QBs, in the right situation, are suddenly not "average" because the difference statistically, between the top few guys and the average guys, really isn't that big. Kitna, who by all accounts, was an average QB, looked awesome for at least one season. Cassel, Foles, the list goes on and on. So, complaining that a guy is "average", or just a little better than "average," when he plays on a **** team with **** coaching, seems ridiculous to me.
I'm not changing criteria. I'll go with probability of the event occurring. So in the case outlined, you look at the distribution and see how many standard deviations away from the mean it is. Tannehill's easily within 1 standard deviation of the mean. btw.. the reason for the edit kind of shows you the problem with the stat of "average yards". I ended up going with average yards per game regardless of whether it was a starting QB or not since that's cleaner, but if you just take average yards for all starting QB's that played 16 games it comes out to 4,156 yards, which is closer to what Tannehill produced (so it kind of depends on whose "average" you want to look at).
Right! It's crazy! Someone flat out says Tannehill is average, then defines what an average QB does statistically, then ignores that when faced with what Tannehill did being above average...but then reverts back to ranges instead of specifics. It's the constant moving of the goalposts that has been occurring here for almost five years that is so frustrating.
You know as well as i do this is the problem with stats. You can keep changing things/criteria/processes/whatever to fit the result you want. Remember...I took the criteria YOU gave as proof he is average. This si the same thing that has happened time an again. Its why deep ball definitions change. Its why clutch definitions change. Now we're changing average/above or below average.
I'm counting 12 guys that eclipsed 4k last season: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2015/passing.htm And I count 17 guys that started all 16 games. So 71% of all QB's that started all 16 games last season had 4k+ yards.
