Tua is not the Problem

So...This is your new theory that you're going to push?.....hmmm ... Interesting.

 

Ok, sure. We would have been better off picking Jalen Hurts in the second round, or Herbert in the first.

 

Herbert isn't good enough either. Just an above average QB that choked in the playoffs with no sign of improvement and no evidence he can play elite for sustained periods. Hurts is the only other QB we could have picked that is potentially elite, but he'll need to prove it for multiple years to be certain. Right now, Burrow is the only clear-cut elite QB from that draft.

 

Either Herbert or Hurts would have been better than Tua. At least they can stay on the field and play the whole season, and both have way more atheltic ability and arm talent than Tua.

 

Yes, but Herbert isn't good enough so we shouldn't have picked him either. Hurts might be good enough. Big difference.

 

What theory are you referring to?

 

Know what's really the problem? Forget Tua. Forget the OL. Forget the OC, Forget the HC, forget the lack of a running game....

The real problem is NFL officiating.

 

Hurts didn't play the whole year

 

I was kinda joking, but maybe it will help!

https://sports.yahoo.com/tua-tagova...all-better-avoid-head-injuries-232735401.html

It’s something we teach in the kids class on day one, but kinda hard to do a proper break fall while protecting a football. I’d be interested to see what and how they teach him!

 

I wish we would've...
I wish we would've...
I wish we would've...
I wish we would've...
I wish we would've...
I wish we would've...

Some of you are sounding like a broken record (that's a vinyl music disc for you young kids)...a bunch of stupid kids arguing who's better, Superman or Batman and all pissy that you are the one you wish you weren't.

Ya'll are driving me nuts!

 

It was holding though if you are referring to that

 

I'll tell you something that has to change. The pushing of the quarterback on a sneak. It's so cheap and annoying.

The announcer kept saying how strong Hurts was, he's being pushed by two tight ends and a running back for crying out loud!

 

If Hurts strength isn't a factor then why don't more teams do it?

 

Pretty soon teams will put an offensive lineman in the backfield on short yardage situations just for that purpose.

 

Like this?

 

I used to love watching him as a fullback- it's every lineman's dream scenario.

 

Who says Herbert isn't good enough?

 

Statistically he's never shown he can play elite over a longer period of time, he hasn't improved for 3 years straight, and he choked in his first playoff game. This is not the norm for future elite QBs. I can agree with the statement that due to availability issues Herbert > Tua right now, but both have a lot left to prove in year 4. Tua has to prove he's durable enough and can play well in the playoffs, and Herbert has to show elite production over a season and prove he can play well in the playoffs.

In any case, based on just 3 years of data we should have taken neither and opted for Hurts, though as stated before Hurts will have to prove he can play at a high level for multiple years too before saying he's elite (only Burrow clearly is from that draft).

 

Tua also has that to prove.

 

Tua had a bunch of clunkers yes, and also missed games (I included that in the durability part), but he started 13 games which is way more than enough for any kind of official "qualifying" stat for a season (usually they use 8 games started minimum) and ended up #1 in passer rating and many other key passing efficiency stats.

I think the way I phrased it is best: durability and play well in playoffs for Tua. Tua has shown he can play elite over a long period of time (e.g., a season, which doesn't imply every single game).

 

The Dolphins played 18 games including the playoffs this season. Tua started and finished only 12 of them. You can't miss a 1/3 of a season, play terrible in 3 of them, and call it an elite season.

Tua has yet to have an elite season of football in his career.

 

Well it's going down in the official records as a season whether you like that or not. Either way he's proven he can play elite for sustained periods in a way Herbert has never shown.

 

This is clearly nonsense. You can slice up Herbert's seasons and show sustained elite success. In 2021, he had an 11 game stretch of a rating of 103.3.

 

You don't slice up seasons like that. If you slice things up you need to compare N-game stretches to the distribution of all N-game stretches. I once did that with Tannehill where people were looking at his best 8-game stretch or so and claiming how elite that was, but once I compared it to all QB's best 8-game stretches in that season he was exactly where he was for the entire season: #12. I'm not going to do the same for best 11-game stretches right now, but 103.3 isn't as high as you think for 11-game stretches based on prior experience. Tua's would be 108.2 which is about half a standard deviation higher. For best 13-game stretches within a season Tua is at 105.5 compared to Herbert's 100.9, which again is close to half a standard deviation higher.

Anyway, you have to decide beforehand what a "season" is, and using the operational definition commonly used to say a QB's stats qualify for a "season", Herbert has shown solid above average ability but not elite, while Tua has shown elite play.

 

"Good enough" now equates to "elite"??

 

For me it always has. Haven't we been discussing this for years? Just look at the SB winning QBs. Most of the time it's an elite QB or a QB that played elite that year (for me operationally defined as 1 standard deviation above the mean based on typical QB play for the winning team in a SB). We need an elite QB, not just a solidly above average one.

 

You are operating under the assumption that Tua will continue to have two superstar receivers on his squad.

 

Yes. It's a valid assumption for the foreseeable future. You disagree? Hill and Waddle seem like they're here to stay.

 

I'm really confused about how you support Tua while ****ting on Herbert. Herbert finished second in the league in yards, and third for completion percentage. Tua missed multiple games, and it is a distinct possibility that his overall season rating may have fallen further had he played in those games. Frankly, having some high rating games early allowed for some really bad games later, and still kept a high rating. It's kinda deceptive.

 

I already stated in the posts you quoted that after 3 years of data we probably shouldn't have taken either and that both have a ton to prove in year 4, which I think is the final year of evaluation. I just don't like this Herbert love fest. He hasn't proven he's elite either.

 

Of course you can. Would it have been better that Herbert got injured and couldn't play like Tua? A small non full season sample is a small non full season sample.

 

No it's not. It's the kind of bad statistical analysis a lot of people do, but gets research papers rejected. Again, selecting a best N-game stretch has to be compared to all best N-game stretches, which isn't the same as comparing best "season" to "season". In both cases, the definitions have to be in place before you do the analysis.

 

Comparing actual full seasons to full seasons makes sense. Not 2/3 a season to a full season. Compare apples to apples. Players needing to play through injuries and seeing performance decline as a result like with Herbert and Allen is very relevant if you want a true comparison.

 

Yeah I agree. For that you use passing attempts, and I usually set the cut-off to 3000. We'll get sufficient data over time to do that comparison, but for now I think preliminary data shows what I described.

 

They should have given the ball to the NFL’s greatest back (Emmitt Smith will never be that) on that play.

And no, I meant to push the qb forward.

 

I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that Herbert would have been a better pick than Tua, simply because, even playing through injuries, he's giving results comparable to Tua.

Saying that Herbert would have been the better pick doesn't mean he would have been the BEST pick. It doesn't even mean that I think he's a better QB. But I would take the guy who's available over the guy who isn't.

 

"Better pick" shouldn't be the standard. The standard should be at minimum "good enough" to win a SB within that QB's career, which let's say is 15 years. The best-fitting curve to passer rating z-scores for SB winning QB's is:

PR = 2.719*exp(0.8415*z)

where PR is the probability of winning a SB in any given year and z is the QB's z-score. If you put z = 1 you get a 6.3% chance of winning a SB that year. That's what an "elite" QB gives you and it comes out to one SB every 16 years, so basically you can expect 1 SB in an elite QBs career. If that sounds low it's because there's a lot of competition out there, but those are very good odds.

Herbert is just barely above z = 0.5 (his z-scores per year are 0.3975, 0.6593 and 0.5284). He gives you about a 4.2% chance of winning a SB per year. That's once in 24 years!! Sorry dude that's just not good enough. It's irrelevant whether Herbert > Tua, which is arguably true right now but we'll see if that remains true as we get more data from both. The point is that Herbert is very unlikely to win his team a SB in his career based on the stats. I put up these warning signs last year when I pointed out the statistical trajectory for Herbert didn't look right, and year 3 reinforced that. Seriously, if he doesn't put up elite numbers in year 4, then it's extremely likely he's not "good enough".

 

Well, we do disagree on what the function is of an elite QB. You contend that an elite QB turns a team into perennial playoff contenders with a Super Bowl or two, while I believe that those teams are the ones who build a complete team around a great QB.

It's kinda like which came first, the chicken or the egg?

 

Both are (mostly) true. Average z-score on defense for SB winners is 0.4 while on offense it's over 0.9. So offense > defense but on average you need an above average defense. It's relatively uncommon to see a SB winner be below average on one side of the ball.

Technically the egg. Chicken has to come from an egg, but a chicken egg doesn't have to come from a chicken given the right mutations. Even more technically, they never say "chicken egg" vs. "chicken" lol.. so definitely the egg (from any species).

 

Hahaha!