QB Rating scaled to Strength of Schedule
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playit12
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This thread has really been derailed, but I thought I would try to interject a few things if anyone is really actually interested in stats.
First your strength of schedule adjustment is arbitrary. You should try to correlate it to something in order to decide how much of a coefficient should be applied. I'd suggest using wins. The idea being to rank the teams, then adjust the QB raitings by a factor, x, times the ranking. This value x can then be adjusted to show the highest coorelation with overall wins, or better yet predicted wins (wins that season and following seasons).
Finally, it's not a "normalization" to just add by 47. You should scale up the values to preserve the numerical distinction of scale.
Or you could just use DVOA (specifically the most recent second order adjustment DVOA) which has a higher coorelation to wins than QB rating, Yards, turnover ratio, or any other accepted stat.
First your strength of schedule adjustment is arbitrary. You should try to correlate it to something in order to decide how much of a coefficient should be applied. I'd suggest using wins. The idea being to rank the teams, then adjust the QB raitings by a factor, x, times the ranking. This value x can then be adjusted to show the highest coorelation with overall wins, or better yet predicted wins (wins that season and following seasons).
Finally, it's not a "normalization" to just add by 47. You should scale up the values to preserve the numerical distinction of scale.
Or you could just use DVOA (specifically the most recent second order adjustment DVOA) which has a higher coorelation to wins than QB rating, Yards, turnover ratio, or any other accepted stat.
Nors
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iceberg said:
los dumbo hedgeling.
dos amigo's in rediculous.
Yes - all the good QB's have very high Passer ratings and all those that suck have terrible ratings. Damn - just a coincidence? Geez this is skeet shoot!
Go get the shovels and start digging the hole - dirt nap time on that stupid contention.
LaTunaNostra
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One thing I recall about it, Wayne, is a QB's run yardage gets factored in.wayne_motley said:
big_neil
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The_Jackal said:
Yes, I thought if I showed Drew had a slightly higher rating during the 2005 season it would prove he was superior! Ha ha ha ha !!
Actually, I'm just pointing out that your boy Manning plays against the weakest schedule in the NFL in 8 seasons, and that if Drew played that schedule his rating would be higher, and that an average game vs. the best team is better than a good game vs. a bad team.
iceberg
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Nors said:
nors, it's not just to say who's good and who isn't. do you really need a rating system to know peyton is better than joey harrington? what does it really tell you? as a "general" guide, sure. but when comparing similiar qb's it's useless. it's just another stat like any other and ON IT'S OWN means nothing.
i'm not sure why you're hellbent on proving every minute detail of the things you say, yet you run like ted kennedy when called to an ethics committee when you hear "ty law is coming to dallas, nors says so".
you make your mistakes like the rest of us nors, yet *we* freely admit them. you just gotta go lob out a few insults that as zrin pointed out - you'd NOT do in person.
i just checked my pockets dude - no respect for ya. you're far too "all about nors" and nothing about "cowboys football" for my own tastes.
Nors
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iceberg said:
You sound like Oliver Norths secretary.
You the one foaming at the mouth and feeling a need to throw Ty Law out. Has nothing to do with this discussion.
I saw a rediculous statement and called it.
Decent day for Dallas so far. Bucs lost, Giants losing. Skins taken out.
Have a great evening!
iceberg
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Nors said:
it's to point out you make your mistakes also, nors. nothing more. and trust me, ask "several" people what i'm like when "upset" to the point of "foaming at the mouth". this ain't even close, homie.
you can't find a common ground, you gotta keep pushing your own agenda. get's old.
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http://www.bookofhook.com/Article/Football/RevisitingtheQBRating.html
Revisiting the QB Rating
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
According to the NFL, the official QB rating formula is as follows:
max( min( ( completion % - 30 ) x 0.05, 2.375 ), 0 ) +
max( min( ( yards/attempt - 3 ) x 0.25, 2.375 ), 0 ) +
min( TD% x 0.2, 2.375 ) +
max( 2.375 - INT% x 0.25, 0 )
Take the above, divide by six and multiply by 100.
Hmmmm, how do I feel about this? Tphtphtphthtt. It's crap. It's a bunch of minutiae that doesn't tell the whole story. What about sacks? Does the QB hold the ball too long? Does he fumble a lot? Does he choke on third down? According to the NFL, right now Vinny Testaverde is the 6th rated passer in the league -- but you think the Jets don't want Pennington in there? Hidden stat #1: Pennington has twice the number of TDs per attempt inside the opponent red zone over Vinny. Hidden stat #2: Pennington converts on third down on 44.4% of his attempts, whereas Vinny does so on 34% of his attempts. Other than those two stats, Vinny is technically the better QB (higher completion percentage, fewer picks).
How could we improve this? Well, the first, and most obvious approach (in fact, the one I felt was going to be the right one) is to sit down and factor in yet more variables, including fumbles, fumbles lost, sacks, third down conversion and red zone TD%. But then you just have an equation with a ton of variables and a lot of people arguing about the relative merit of each stat.
In the end, though, what everyone asks is "Is he a winner?" Now, that's a bit vague, and it doesn't take into account a team's defense and QBs that win despite their best attempts to screw things up. So what we really want to know are two things: does a QB put up points, and does he throw a lot to get those points? Of course, we also want to make sure that we factor in the number of opportunities he gets -- QBs that benefit from turn-over heavy defenses shouldn't automatically rank higher.
The two criteria then really boil down to points per possession and passing yards per possession. These two values give a gestalt view of a quarterback's capabilities without getting down into microscopic and subjective details. Interceptions and lost fumbles are automatically factored by making a possession worth zero points. Third-down conversions do likewise. A QB that can get into the end zone is going to have a higher scoring average than one that settles for field goals. And a QB on a run oriented team, or who starts with consistently good field position, may still score a lot of points per possession, but will be affected by a reduced passing yards/possession (look at Anthony Wright's stats).
The only other major item I could see factoring is opposing points allowed due to turnover, e.g. an interception or fumble return for touchdown. There is also a slight problem when a possession has very little time associated with it, such as at the end of a half or end of the game.
Just to test out my theory, I went back and looked at the Week 16 games of 2003 and computed the Hook Quarterback Value. I also threw in some of the best and worst games of the season I could find (nothing comprehensive, for this to be 100% accurate/valid I'd need full stats). I normalized the passing yards/possession and points/possession against their average values (averages were slightly biased because of the very strong out-of-week values introduced), and then combined the two with a 60% weight towards points and a 40% weight towards yards. I also clamped max points/possession at 4, since beyond that the delta between 4.5 and everything else is so high that the rest of the range compresses, and for someone with a huge scoring day because of an RB (i.e. Plummer vs. Indy when Portis did a good chunk of the work), it skews it too much in his favor. Suffice to say, that if you're doing 4 points or more per possession, you're pretty much in stratospheric levels. These are my results:
Player Hook Rating NFL Rating Yards Points Yards/Poss Points/Poss Poss Green vs. DET 95.89 158.3 341 45 34.1 4.5 10 Manning vs. NO 87.54 158.3 314 48 26.17 4 12 Favre 86.25 154.9 399 41 33.25 3.42 12 Plummer vs. KC 85.05 105.2 238 45 23.8 4.5 10 Bulger vs. MINN 83.37 106.7 222 41 22.2 4.1 10 McNair vs. HOU 82.27 146.8 421 31 38.27 2.82 11 Culpepper 79.06 117 260 45 21.67 3.75 12 B. Johnson 71.29 84.2 346 28 31.45 2.55 11 Bulger 64.61 86.4 229 27 22.9 2.7 10 Plummer 64.28 113.8 230 31 20.91 2.82 11 Maddox 56.54 129.6 160 34 13.33 2.83 12 McNabb 55.88 72.8 238 28 19.83 2.33 12 Grossman 55.59 91.8 249 27 20.75 2.25 12 Brooks 54.23 100.3 296 19 26.91 1.73 11 Garcia 50.13 100.5 225 31 16.07 2.21 14 Q. Carter 48.88 112.1 240 19 21.82 1.73 11 T. Hasselbeck 48.33 116.9 209 24 17.42 2 12 Delhomme 47.81 104.8 260 20 21.67 1.67 12 Vick 47.03 119.2 119 23 11.9 2.3 10 T. Green 44.65 44.2 224 20 18.67 1.67 12 Leftwich 43.79 58.3 131 20 13.1 2 10 Wright 42.89 64.6 90 28 7.5 2.33 12 McNair 41.58 79.4 268 20 19.14 1.43 14 Pennington 40.09 31.2 229 16 19.08 1.33 12 Carr 39.21 58.7 242 17 18.62 1.31 13 M.Hasselbeck 38.72 88.7 179 21 13.77 1.62 13 Manning 37.96 72 146 10 18.25 1.25 8 Kitna 36.26 49 202 10 20.2 1 10 McCown 33.72 91 274 10 21.08 0.77 13 Brooks vs. TB 29.63 101.2 238 7 19.83 0.58 12 T. Brady 29.61 101.8 138 14 11.5 1.17 12 Bledsoe vs. NYJ 23.42 62.7 202 3 18.36 0.27 11 Testaverde vs. DAL 23.05 93.9 219 0 21.9 0 10 Palmer 22.27 73.7 190 3 17.27 0.27 11 Fiedler 20.29 48.9 46 13 3.83 1.08 12 Carter vs. NE 18.42 38 210 0 17.5 0 12 Carter vs. TB 13.4 42.1 140 0 12.73 0 11 Bledsoe 12.69 36.2 114 3 8.77 0.23 13 Couch 12.26 53 163 0 11.64 0 14 Ragone vs. JAX 5.75 36.7 71 0 5.46 0 13 T. Hasselbeck vs.DAL 4.53 0 56 0 4.31 0 13 Fiedler vs. NE 2.18 25.1 31 0 2.07 0 15
AVERAGE 44.77
209.5 19.57 18.31 1.73 11.69
At a high level, quarterbacks that score well with NFL QB Rating also tend to do well with mine, but there are notable -- and important -- exceptions. Note: arguing about the relative jockeying of two QBs close to each other (within, say, 5 points of HQV) is kind of pointless and subjective. I'm trying to make sure we get the sweeping generalizations correct, whcih I feel the NFL QB Rating does not.
The most striking difference is Aaron Brooks vs. Tampa Bay, where his NFL QB Rating was an impressive 101.0, but his HQV was a fairly abysmal 29.63. HQV implicitly takes into account Brooks's four lost fumbles in that game, which in turn manifested as lower points per possession. When he did throw, sure, he was good, but he was screwing up too much elsewhere to be considered a good QB.
Also of note is Tom Brady's NFL QB Rating of 101.8 vs. his HQV of 29.61. Even though he was efficient when he did throw, he simply wasn't scoring very many points when he had the opportunity. He benefited from good field position -- he traveled a total of 95 combined yards for both his touchdowns -- and took advantage of the running game. So sure, he won, but he didn't really have to earn it too much. On his first TD drive, it was a single pass for 35 yards. On his second TD drive, over half the yards were from the running game. The rest of his possessions ended in zero points.
On the flip side, there were several instances of players with poor NFL QB Ratings that scored relatively well on the HQV. Brad Johnson had an NFL rating of 84.2 but an HQV of 71.29. His NFL rating is hurt by four interceptions, but amazingly enough he still manages to score around 50% more points/possession than the average. He also has a monstrous 31.45 passing yards/possession, which means that he was consistently the prime mover in that offense and dealing with poor field position -- his average TD drive was over 70 yards and he accounted for 78.6% of his team's offense. And that is why he rates well ahead of Vick in the same game, even though Vick had a 119.0 NFL Rating.
Another climber is McNabb, whose pedestrian 72.8 NFL QB rating doesn't really demonstrate how much value he provided to his team. While his HQV is only above average (55.88), it's still considerably better than eight other quarterbacks with 100+ NFL QB ratings. Once again, the reason is pretty simple --he had a higher than average passing yards/possession, and a significantly higher points/possession than, say, Tom Brady that same day.
When you look at Green's performance against Detroit, it's just mind boggling. It's better than Favre's performance against Oakland and Manning's against New Orleans, both of which stand out as some of the best of the year. Yet Green threw for more yards per possession and scored more points per possession than either of those two.
McNair's performance against Houston was awe inspiring because of the sheer number of bombs that were thrown, but while he had the most dominant passing yards/possession, he didn't score nearly as well per possession as some of the other notable performances.
Plummer was a scoring machine against KC, and while people might say that performance shouldn't be ranked so high because Portis did all the work, the numbers actually indicate otherwise -- Plummer was still averaging 23.8 passing yards per possession, well above average. Not only that, but Plummer was the key contributor on many drives. On the first touchdown drive he contributed 29 of the 74 yards, and Portis contributed 18 yards. On their second TD drive Plummer was responsible for all three first down conversions. On their third TD drive Plummer was responsible for 2 out of 4 of their first down conversions, and also threw into the end zone for their TD. The fourth TD drive was all Portis. The fifth TD drive had Plummer getting a first down twice, and Portis converting once and getting the 28 yard TD run. The sixth TD was all Portis again. The field goal was Plummer with 44 yards passing and Portis -2 rushing (but 30 of the pass yards were to Portis).
The point here isn't that Plummer was more important than Portis, it's too illustrate that even on a day when it looks like the running back may have done all the work, it's often misleading -- in this case, Portis was directly responsible for 14 points, but even if you take those away, Plummer still has an amazing 3.1 points/possession. Without Plummer, they likely would not have made several key first downs that sustained drives. The HQV demonstrates this pretty vividly (as compared to Anthony Wright's HQV, where even though he scored quite a bit, he benefited heavily from field position and a running game).
I like Vick's ranking. His passing numbers were rather mediocre, but he was still able to get 2.3 points per possession, well above average, and that puts him squarely "average" as a QB, which is probably about right for that day's work.
A lot of arguments can be had when dealing with quarterbacks that are rated near each other, but that's missing the point. The important thing, to me, is allowing the guys that carry a team on their shoulder to show up, and efficient guys that aren't scoring points ("dinkers") to get exposed for what they are. I can go either way as to who had the truly worse day -- Brooks vs. TB or Brady vs. NYJ, but the fact remains that they have nearly identical HQVs but for different reasons (Brady scored more points, Brooks had to throw for more yards).
With this system, scoring points matters a lot, and they don't have to be TDs. Yardage is still important, but that's mostly judging you as a passer, not your intangibles. Because of the bias towards scoring, Maddox ranks higher than McNair this week even though he had over 100 fewer yards passing, but that is as it should be in my opinion.
Revisiting the QB Rating
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
According to the NFL, the official QB rating formula is as follows:
max( min( ( completion % - 30 ) x 0.05, 2.375 ), 0 ) +
max( min( ( yards/attempt - 3 ) x 0.25, 2.375 ), 0 ) +
min( TD% x 0.2, 2.375 ) +
max( 2.375 - INT% x 0.25, 0 )
Take the above, divide by six and multiply by 100.
Hmmmm, how do I feel about this? Tphtphtphthtt. It's crap. It's a bunch of minutiae that doesn't tell the whole story. What about sacks? Does the QB hold the ball too long? Does he fumble a lot? Does he choke on third down? According to the NFL, right now Vinny Testaverde is the 6th rated passer in the league -- but you think the Jets don't want Pennington in there? Hidden stat #1: Pennington has twice the number of TDs per attempt inside the opponent red zone over Vinny. Hidden stat #2: Pennington converts on third down on 44.4% of his attempts, whereas Vinny does so on 34% of his attempts. Other than those two stats, Vinny is technically the better QB (higher completion percentage, fewer picks).
How could we improve this? Well, the first, and most obvious approach (in fact, the one I felt was going to be the right one) is to sit down and factor in yet more variables, including fumbles, fumbles lost, sacks, third down conversion and red zone TD%. But then you just have an equation with a ton of variables and a lot of people arguing about the relative merit of each stat.
In the end, though, what everyone asks is "Is he a winner?" Now, that's a bit vague, and it doesn't take into account a team's defense and QBs that win despite their best attempts to screw things up. So what we really want to know are two things: does a QB put up points, and does he throw a lot to get those points? Of course, we also want to make sure that we factor in the number of opportunities he gets -- QBs that benefit from turn-over heavy defenses shouldn't automatically rank higher.
The two criteria then really boil down to points per possession and passing yards per possession. These two values give a gestalt view of a quarterback's capabilities without getting down into microscopic and subjective details. Interceptions and lost fumbles are automatically factored by making a possession worth zero points. Third-down conversions do likewise. A QB that can get into the end zone is going to have a higher scoring average than one that settles for field goals. And a QB on a run oriented team, or who starts with consistently good field position, may still score a lot of points per possession, but will be affected by a reduced passing yards/possession (look at Anthony Wright's stats).
The only other major item I could see factoring is opposing points allowed due to turnover, e.g. an interception or fumble return for touchdown. There is also a slight problem when a possession has very little time associated with it, such as at the end of a half or end of the game.
Just to test out my theory, I went back and looked at the Week 16 games of 2003 and computed the Hook Quarterback Value. I also threw in some of the best and worst games of the season I could find (nothing comprehensive, for this to be 100% accurate/valid I'd need full stats). I normalized the passing yards/possession and points/possession against their average values (averages were slightly biased because of the very strong out-of-week values introduced), and then combined the two with a 60% weight towards points and a 40% weight towards yards. I also clamped max points/possession at 4, since beyond that the delta between 4.5 and everything else is so high that the rest of the range compresses, and for someone with a huge scoring day because of an RB (i.e. Plummer vs. Indy when Portis did a good chunk of the work), it skews it too much in his favor. Suffice to say, that if you're doing 4 points or more per possession, you're pretty much in stratospheric levels. These are my results:
Player Hook Rating NFL Rating Yards Points Yards/Poss Points/Poss Poss Green vs. DET 95.89 158.3 341 45 34.1 4.5 10 Manning vs. NO 87.54 158.3 314 48 26.17 4 12 Favre 86.25 154.9 399 41 33.25 3.42 12 Plummer vs. KC 85.05 105.2 238 45 23.8 4.5 10 Bulger vs. MINN 83.37 106.7 222 41 22.2 4.1 10 McNair vs. HOU 82.27 146.8 421 31 38.27 2.82 11 Culpepper 79.06 117 260 45 21.67 3.75 12 B. Johnson 71.29 84.2 346 28 31.45 2.55 11 Bulger 64.61 86.4 229 27 22.9 2.7 10 Plummer 64.28 113.8 230 31 20.91 2.82 11 Maddox 56.54 129.6 160 34 13.33 2.83 12 McNabb 55.88 72.8 238 28 19.83 2.33 12 Grossman 55.59 91.8 249 27 20.75 2.25 12 Brooks 54.23 100.3 296 19 26.91 1.73 11 Garcia 50.13 100.5 225 31 16.07 2.21 14 Q. Carter 48.88 112.1 240 19 21.82 1.73 11 T. Hasselbeck 48.33 116.9 209 24 17.42 2 12 Delhomme 47.81 104.8 260 20 21.67 1.67 12 Vick 47.03 119.2 119 23 11.9 2.3 10 T. Green 44.65 44.2 224 20 18.67 1.67 12 Leftwich 43.79 58.3 131 20 13.1 2 10 Wright 42.89 64.6 90 28 7.5 2.33 12 McNair 41.58 79.4 268 20 19.14 1.43 14 Pennington 40.09 31.2 229 16 19.08 1.33 12 Carr 39.21 58.7 242 17 18.62 1.31 13 M.Hasselbeck 38.72 88.7 179 21 13.77 1.62 13 Manning 37.96 72 146 10 18.25 1.25 8 Kitna 36.26 49 202 10 20.2 1 10 McCown 33.72 91 274 10 21.08 0.77 13 Brooks vs. TB 29.63 101.2 238 7 19.83 0.58 12 T. Brady 29.61 101.8 138 14 11.5 1.17 12 Bledsoe vs. NYJ 23.42 62.7 202 3 18.36 0.27 11 Testaverde vs. DAL 23.05 93.9 219 0 21.9 0 10 Palmer 22.27 73.7 190 3 17.27 0.27 11 Fiedler 20.29 48.9 46 13 3.83 1.08 12 Carter vs. NE 18.42 38 210 0 17.5 0 12 Carter vs. TB 13.4 42.1 140 0 12.73 0 11 Bledsoe 12.69 36.2 114 3 8.77 0.23 13 Couch 12.26 53 163 0 11.64 0 14 Ragone vs. JAX 5.75 36.7 71 0 5.46 0 13 T. Hasselbeck vs.DAL 4.53 0 56 0 4.31 0 13 Fiedler vs. NE 2.18 25.1 31 0 2.07 0 15
AVERAGE 44.77
209.5 19.57 18.31 1.73 11.69
At a high level, quarterbacks that score well with NFL QB Rating also tend to do well with mine, but there are notable -- and important -- exceptions. Note: arguing about the relative jockeying of two QBs close to each other (within, say, 5 points of HQV) is kind of pointless and subjective. I'm trying to make sure we get the sweeping generalizations correct, whcih I feel the NFL QB Rating does not.
The most striking difference is Aaron Brooks vs. Tampa Bay, where his NFL QB Rating was an impressive 101.0, but his HQV was a fairly abysmal 29.63. HQV implicitly takes into account Brooks's four lost fumbles in that game, which in turn manifested as lower points per possession. When he did throw, sure, he was good, but he was screwing up too much elsewhere to be considered a good QB.
Also of note is Tom Brady's NFL QB Rating of 101.8 vs. his HQV of 29.61. Even though he was efficient when he did throw, he simply wasn't scoring very many points when he had the opportunity. He benefited from good field position -- he traveled a total of 95 combined yards for both his touchdowns -- and took advantage of the running game. So sure, he won, but he didn't really have to earn it too much. On his first TD drive, it was a single pass for 35 yards. On his second TD drive, over half the yards were from the running game. The rest of his possessions ended in zero points.
On the flip side, there were several instances of players with poor NFL QB Ratings that scored relatively well on the HQV. Brad Johnson had an NFL rating of 84.2 but an HQV of 71.29. His NFL rating is hurt by four interceptions, but amazingly enough he still manages to score around 50% more points/possession than the average. He also has a monstrous 31.45 passing yards/possession, which means that he was consistently the prime mover in that offense and dealing with poor field position -- his average TD drive was over 70 yards and he accounted for 78.6% of his team's offense. And that is why he rates well ahead of Vick in the same game, even though Vick had a 119.0 NFL Rating.
Another climber is McNabb, whose pedestrian 72.8 NFL QB rating doesn't really demonstrate how much value he provided to his team. While his HQV is only above average (55.88), it's still considerably better than eight other quarterbacks with 100+ NFL QB ratings. Once again, the reason is pretty simple --he had a higher than average passing yards/possession, and a significantly higher points/possession than, say, Tom Brady that same day.
When you look at Green's performance against Detroit, it's just mind boggling. It's better than Favre's performance against Oakland and Manning's against New Orleans, both of which stand out as some of the best of the year. Yet Green threw for more yards per possession and scored more points per possession than either of those two.
McNair's performance against Houston was awe inspiring because of the sheer number of bombs that were thrown, but while he had the most dominant passing yards/possession, he didn't score nearly as well per possession as some of the other notable performances.
Plummer was a scoring machine against KC, and while people might say that performance shouldn't be ranked so high because Portis did all the work, the numbers actually indicate otherwise -- Plummer was still averaging 23.8 passing yards per possession, well above average. Not only that, but Plummer was the key contributor on many drives. On the first touchdown drive he contributed 29 of the 74 yards, and Portis contributed 18 yards. On their second TD drive Plummer was responsible for all three first down conversions. On their third TD drive Plummer was responsible for 2 out of 4 of their first down conversions, and also threw into the end zone for their TD. The fourth TD drive was all Portis. The fifth TD drive had Plummer getting a first down twice, and Portis converting once and getting the 28 yard TD run. The sixth TD was all Portis again. The field goal was Plummer with 44 yards passing and Portis -2 rushing (but 30 of the pass yards were to Portis).
The point here isn't that Plummer was more important than Portis, it's too illustrate that even on a day when it looks like the running back may have done all the work, it's often misleading -- in this case, Portis was directly responsible for 14 points, but even if you take those away, Plummer still has an amazing 3.1 points/possession. Without Plummer, they likely would not have made several key first downs that sustained drives. The HQV demonstrates this pretty vividly (as compared to Anthony Wright's HQV, where even though he scored quite a bit, he benefited heavily from field position and a running game).
I like Vick's ranking. His passing numbers were rather mediocre, but he was still able to get 2.3 points per possession, well above average, and that puts him squarely "average" as a QB, which is probably about right for that day's work.
A lot of arguments can be had when dealing with quarterbacks that are rated near each other, but that's missing the point. The important thing, to me, is allowing the guys that carry a team on their shoulder to show up, and efficient guys that aren't scoring points ("dinkers") to get exposed for what they are. I can go either way as to who had the truly worse day -- Brooks vs. TB or Brady vs. NYJ, but the fact remains that they have nearly identical HQVs but for different reasons (Brady scored more points, Brooks had to throw for more yards).
With this system, scoring points matters a lot, and they don't have to be TDs. Yardage is still important, but that's mostly judging you as a passer, not your intangibles. Because of the bias towards scoring, Maddox ranks higher than McNair this week even though he had over 100 fewer yards passing, but that is as it should be in my opinion.
Hostile
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http://www.steelersfever.com/nfl_qb_rating.html
NFL QB Rating
The NFL rates its passers for statistical purposes against a fixed performance standard based on statistical achievements of all qualified pro passers since 1960. The current system replaced one that rated passers in relation to their position in a total group based on various criteria. The current system, which was adopted in 1973, removes inequities that existed in the former method and, at the same time, provides a means of comparing passing performances from one season to the next.
It is important to remember that the system is used to rate pass-ers, not quarterbacks. Statistics do not reflect leadership, play-calling, and other intangible factors that go into making a successful professional quarterback.
Four categories are used as a basis for compiling a rating:
Percentage of completions per attempt.
Average yards gained per attempt.
Percentage of touchdown passes per attempt.
Percentage of interceptions per attempt.
The average standard, is 1.000. The bottom is .000. To earn a 2.000 rating, a passer must perform at exceptional levels, i.e., 70 percent in completions, 10 percent in touchdowns, 1.5 percent in interceptions, and 11 yards average gain per pass attempt. The maximum a passer can receive in any category is 2.375.
For example, to gain a 2.375 in completion percentage, a passer would have to complete 77.5 percent of his passes. The NFL record is 70.55 by Ken Anderson (Cincinnati, 1982).
To earn a 2.375 in percentage of touchdowns, a passer would have to achieve a percentage of 11.9. The record is 13.9 by Sid Luckman (Chicago, 1943).
To gain 2.375 in percentage of interceptions, a passer would have to go the entire season without an interception. The 2.375 figure in average yards is 12.50, compared with the NFL record of 11.17 by Tommy O'Connell (Cleveland, 1957).
In order to make the rating more understandable, the point rating is then converted into a scale of 100. In rare cases, where statistical performance has been superior, it is possible for a passer to surpass a 100 rating.
For example, take Steve Young's record-setting season in 1994 when he completed 324 of 461 passes for 3,969 yards, 35 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions.
The four calculations would be:
Percentage of Completions - 324 of 461 is 70.28 percent. Subtract 30 from the completion percentage (40.28) and multiply the result by 0.05. The result is a point rating of 2.014. If the result is less than zero (Comp. Pct. less than 30.0), award zero points. If the results are greater than 2.375 (Comp. Pct. greater than 77.5), award 2.375.
Average Yards Gained Per Attempt - 3,969 yards divided by 461 attempts is 8.61. Subtract three yards from yards-per-attempt (5.61) and multiply the result by 0.25. The result is 1.403. If the result is less than zero (yards per attempt less than 3.0), award zero points. If the result is greater than 2.375 (yards per attempt greater than 12.5), award 2.375 points.
Percentage of Touchdown Passes - 35 touchdowns in 461 attempts is 7.59 percent. Multiply the touchdown percentage by 0.2. The result is 1.518. If the result is greater than 2.375 (touchdown percentage greater than 11.875), award 2.375.
Percentage of Interceptions - 10 interceptions in 461 attempts is 2.17 percent. Multiply the interception percentage by 0.25 (0.542) and subtract the number from 2.375. The result is 1.833. If the result is less than zero (interception percentage greater than 9.5), award zero points.
The sum of the four steps is (2.014 + 1.403 + 1.518 + 1.833) 6.768. The sum is then divided by six (1.128) and multiplied by 100. In this case, the result is 112.8. This same formula can be used to determine a passer rating for any player who attempts at least one pass.
NFL QB Rating
The NFL rates its passers for statistical purposes against a fixed performance standard based on statistical achievements of all qualified pro passers since 1960. The current system replaced one that rated passers in relation to their position in a total group based on various criteria. The current system, which was adopted in 1973, removes inequities that existed in the former method and, at the same time, provides a means of comparing passing performances from one season to the next.
It is important to remember that the system is used to rate pass-ers, not quarterbacks. Statistics do not reflect leadership, play-calling, and other intangible factors that go into making a successful professional quarterback.
Four categories are used as a basis for compiling a rating:
The average standard, is 1.000. The bottom is .000. To earn a 2.000 rating, a passer must perform at exceptional levels, i.e., 70 percent in completions, 10 percent in touchdowns, 1.5 percent in interceptions, and 11 yards average gain per pass attempt. The maximum a passer can receive in any category is 2.375.
For example, to gain a 2.375 in completion percentage, a passer would have to complete 77.5 percent of his passes. The NFL record is 70.55 by Ken Anderson (Cincinnati, 1982).
To earn a 2.375 in percentage of touchdowns, a passer would have to achieve a percentage of 11.9. The record is 13.9 by Sid Luckman (Chicago, 1943).
To gain 2.375 in percentage of interceptions, a passer would have to go the entire season without an interception. The 2.375 figure in average yards is 12.50, compared with the NFL record of 11.17 by Tommy O'Connell (Cleveland, 1957).
In order to make the rating more understandable, the point rating is then converted into a scale of 100. In rare cases, where statistical performance has been superior, it is possible for a passer to surpass a 100 rating.
For example, take Steve Young's record-setting season in 1994 when he completed 324 of 461 passes for 3,969 yards, 35 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions.
The four calculations would be:
The sum of the four steps is (2.014 + 1.403 + 1.518 + 1.833) 6.768. The sum is then divided by six (1.128) and multiplied by 100. In this case, the result is 112.8. This same formula can be used to determine a passer rating for any player who attempts at least one pass.
Hostile
The Duke
- Messages
- 119,565
- Reaction score
- 4,544
[size=+3]http://www.bluedonut.com/qbrating.htm
How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb
[/size]A Survival Guide to the
NFL's Quarterback Rating System
By Don Steinberg
(appeared in GQ, October 2001)
The leading rusher in the National Football League is the player who carries the ball for the most yards. Last year it was Edgerrin James, with 1,709. The league's receiving champion is the guy who catches the most passes. Marvin Harrison and Mushin Muhammad tied at 102.
To learn that Denver's Brian Griese was the NFL's top passer last season, it helps if you didn't leave college early for the draft. Here's the league's official rating formula that made Griese number one:
As you can see, Griese's rating was precisely 102.9. So of course he was the top quarterback. 102.9! The guy's on fire! In fact, give the boy some ibuprofen, it looks like he's running a fever!
What the hell is the meaning of 102.9? Most sports numbers tell a story. Twelve under par. A first round knockout. A $50,000 fine for calling David Stern a wiener. Batting .300 means you got three hits every ten at bats. But 102.9? Isn't that the FM station that plays Steely Dan all day? Why do we measure the most important player on the football field using a quadratic equation so puzzling it's actually used as the opening problem in the math textbook College Algebra (8th Edition, Addison Wesley, 2000)?
"Other than one attorney in our office, I am unaware of a single human being who has the capacity to figure a quarterback rating," says agent Leigh Steinberg, who has negotiated multimillion-dollar contracts for NFL quarterbacks for 26 years.
"I know interceptions kill your rating, but if you asked me to compute it, I'd have no idea," admits Steve Young, who besides having history's highest career (96.9) and single season (112.8) passer ratings is also lawyer and the chairman of a Silicon Valley software company.
Does it help to know that, in Fermat's theorem above, A is pass attempts, C completions, Y passing yardage, T touchdown passes, and I interceptions? Uh, a little. Does it help to know that this is technically only meant to be a passing-efficiency statistic, not really a quarterback rating? It doesn't try to account for other useful quarterbacking activities, like running -- or winning.
Does it add perspective to understand that the "average" rating was designed, according to circa 1970 standards, to be precisely 66.7? Or that the maximum, "perfect" rating is a freakish 158.2 -- and that eight quarterbacks have tossed perfect games, the latest being Kurt Warner last October when he didn't actually complete every pass he threw? Does that help give meaning to 102.9? Yes, we thought so: a really, really little bit.
Few topics have done more to brings jocks and nerds together than mutual fear and disbelief of the passer rating formula.
"Their main problem was that no one tried to figure out mathematically how the formula worked," says Pete Palmer, a sports statistician whose book The Hidden Game of Football. blasts the calculus of the NFL formula. "You get what I think are unreasonable results."
"I pay attention to my rating on third down and in the red zone," says Trent Dilfer, who despite his wobbly 76.6 rating last season quarterbacked the Ravens to a Super Bowl victory. "Otherwise, it's most useful for fantasy football people who are more concerned with numbers than good old-fashioned winning."
So how did we get here?
"They asked if I had any ideas about rating passers. I did," says Don Smith, who invented the formula. "I'm the guilty guy."
It's time to go behind the jockstrap and examine the glory that is the NFL passer rating system.
The year was 1971, and the NFL had merged a year earlier with the 10-team hippie upstart American Football League. One of the issues facing commissioner Pete Rozelle -- albeit not the most burning one-- was standardizing official statistics. The leagues, and even individual teams, had been issuing a hodgepodge of stats. Grooviest sideburns? Not under the new management.
The NFL had particularly struggled with how to crown a passing king. In the mid-1930s, when the league began keeping individual player stats, the passing leader was the quarterback with the most passing yardage. From 1938 to 1940, the passer with the highest completion percentage was number one. For 1941 they invented a system ranking the league's quarterbacks in each of six separate categories -- touchdown passes, yards, interception percentage, etc. -- and if you were first-place in touchdowns you'd get one point, and if you were 10th place in yardage you'd get 10 points, and the guy with the lowest total for the six categories was the top passer. Then over the next thirty years the criteria waffled back and forth, reverting occasionally to single categories, like average-gain-per-pass-attempt, that were interesting but really didn't tell the whole story. By the time Woodstock brought the era of free love to a close, the league had returned to a rotisserie-style point system where quarterbacks received ranking numbers relative to their peers' performance in four different passing categories, and the one with lowest total got the kitty.
It was an imperfect system that made it impossible to tabulate any quarterback's standing until all the other quarterbacks were done with their Sunday business. Rozelle asked the league's statistical committee to fix it. And they called upon Smith, an executive at the Pro Football Hall of Fame who was known as a statistical whiz.
Smith's goal was to build a system where each quarterbacking performance could get a fixed rating that wouldn't depend on how other quarterbacks did. "A rusher's record isn't affected by what anybody else does. Why should a passer's?" he asked. He knew that if he came up with a good formula, it could be applied to all past and future stats, allowing the world, someday, to compare Norm Van Brocklin's career passing proficiency (75.1) with, say, Steve Beuerlein's (74.3).
Smith liked the numerical cocktail, mixing what were essentially the only the passing stats tracked -- completion percentage, passing yardage, touchdowns and interceptions. He was in a plane flying over Kansas when the eureka moment hit. What if "average" performance in each of those four categories would score one point? And record-level performance would score two points. And for playing really poorly, you'd get zero. Simple! There would be a sliding scale in between. With data supplied by Elias Sports Bureau, the league's statistician, Smith determined that the average pass completion rate for the 1970 season was around 50 percent. Equaling that would be good for one point toward a passer's rating total. The record completion rate for a season was just over 70 percent, so from then on anybody hitting at a 70 percent rate would get two points in that category. Completing 30 percent (or less) of your passes would score a big zero.
.Here comes the college algebra. What's the magical formula that turns 50 into 1, 70 into 2, and 30 into zero? You subtract 30 and divide by 20 . That's the first leg of the formula above.
Smith then got league averages for yards-per-pass-attempt (7), percentage of passes scoring touchdowns (5%), and percentage of passes intercepted (5.5%). For each of these he devised a conversion formula to give a player one point for working at that average rate, two points for a record level, and as low as zero points for really eating it. Since records are made to be broken, a score above 2 in any category -- up to 2.375 -- is possible. Every quarterback in history would receive ratings relative to those 1970 standards.
So how in the name of Garo Yepremian does this get Brian Griese 102.9? Well, Griese actually got 1.71 points for completing 216 passes in 336 attempts, 1.25 points for his 2,688 passing yards, 1.13 points for throwing 19 touchdowns, and a remarkable 2.01 points for tossing just 4 interceptions all season. "Using those figures, you add it up," Smith explains (thereby giving Griese a raw total of 6.174) "and get something that means absolutely nothing."
[size=-1]
Smith thought it would be more meaningful if an excellent score came to around 100, just like in school. "I think our attitude was that 100 was an A," he recalls. "And anything above 100, that was an A-plus." So, in a move that made sense at the time and has had everyone else confused for three decades, he multiplied the raw total by 100 and divided by 6, turning a statistically average performance -- 1s across the board -- into 66.7. It also made the maximum rating a ridiculous 158.2.
The NFL statistical squad applied this formula to every quarterback's data since the 1930s, and the results didn't seem ludicrous. They showed the proposed Passer Rating System to Rozelle, and he said, more or less, "If this is what you guys want to recommend, if you think it'll work, let's do it," according to Don Weiss, who headed the statistical committee.
"It could have been that it was so complicated, people didn't understand it, so they accepted it," Weiss says. It went official for the 1973 season.
On its face, it has worked. Only the excellent have had ratings over 100 for a full season. Last year only Griese and Trent Green did. In 1999, only Warner did - his 109.2 was the fifth best passing season ever, topped by:
Steve Young 1984 112.8 Joe Montana 1989 112.4 Milt Plum 1960 110.4 Sammy Baugh 1945 109.9
And nobody with more than 1,500 pass attempts has maintained a rating above 100. History's leader, Young, retired at 96.8. Behind him are Montana, Dan Marino, Bret Favre and Peyton Manning. You can look at that list and ask: how screwed up can the formula be? It's not like you feed in the data, and -- surprise -- out of the cake pops Neil Lomax as number one QB of all time (actually, he's 10th).
But what gives with the 49ers? Sure, Young and Montana were studs -- but come on. Here's what gives. It started in the late 1970s, when the NFL began bending the rules to favor passers.
The "illegal chuck" rule forced defenders to back off receivers, and refs lightened up on holding calls against offensive linemen. By 1979 the league completion average hit 54.1 percent, and it has never been below that since. Then came the "clearly in the grasp rule" to protect quarterbacks from brutality by would-be sackers. And receivers started wearing sticky gloves. And wind-free indoor stadiums with fast fake turf turned teams like the St. Louis Rams into passing factories. There's much more pass offense today, and that explains why the all-time top five looks like a list made by somebody born after John Belushi died.
But most influential of all was Bill Walsh, the QB-nurturing 49ers coach. The West Coast Offense he pioneered in the 1980s turned precisely timed, high-percentage short passes into catch-and-run long gains. You couldn't invent a better scheme to juice QB rating numbers. Because, it turns out, the formula mathematically whacks guys who try to throw long.
Imagine two quarterbacks -- Super Joe and Broadway Joe -- who both drive their teams 30 yards to a touchdown in three plays. Super Joe does it with three 10-yard passes. His completion percentage is 100, and for the drive his rating is 147.9. Broadway Joe throws two incomplete passes, then on a clutch third and long he finds a receiver in the end zone -- touchdown! For the exact same result, his rating is 111.1.
Young and Montana -- and Griese last year -- surely benefited from quarterbacking in West Coast schemes. The authors of The Hidden Game of Football calculate that even complete passes that lose yardage can, in some weirdball situations, boost a quarterback's rating. "There's something wrong with that," says co-author and football historian Bob Carroll. His book proposes a New Improved Rating System, which ignores completion percentage but counts sacks. (Still, when the book applies this even more complicated formula to 1997 data, Young comes out number one anyway.)
"I guess I'm a little defensive when people talk that way about the West Coast offense," says Young, who, just for the record, happened to run the ball like hell too. "Because in the end the West Coast works. It wins games. The truth is, if you're playing decent football, your rating's high. I never got the sense that I could take a game and manipulate my ratings. I don't think you can go out and dink and dunk and beat the system."
Is there a perfect way to enumerate the performance of one man on the field with 21 others? What about perfectly thrown, dropped passes? What about John Elway, who ended his career with a saggy rating of 79.9, even though he had the most career wins by a quarterback and a record 41 fourth-quarter game-saving drives. What about Troy Aikman (81.6), who had Emmitt Smith running behind him, so he didn't throw a lot of four-yard touchdown passes, "even if he made the pass that got the ball to the four," says his agent, Leigh Steinberg.
Sonny Jurgensen said the real measure of a quarterback's greatness is how he does on third and long, when everybody and his bookie knows a pass is coming. Many consider Jurgensen the best pure passer of all time, but his rating of 82.6 would embarrass Jeff Garcia. What about Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick and the new generation of quarterbacks who use the threat of a pass to open up rushing lanes for themselves?
Football is a team game, a game of drives and momentum. Individual numbers struggle to describe it. Still, numbers are all we have. Statistics are what separate sports from just playing around in the yard. Coach Lombardi said it: if you're not keeping score, you're just practicing. So you calculate what you can. If you wanted to keep it really simple, you could just do what golf does and list who gets the most money (Warner, $11.8 million, Manning $11 million, Vick $10.3 million). Or you could be like boxing and figure skating, where unless somebody gets knocked out it's two guys in bow-ties and a lady from the New Jersey State Athletic Commission making up numbers for how you did.
It has flaws, yeah, but the passer rating system achieves its goal: it establishes a standard, so we can compare today's quarterbacks with one another easily, and with yesterday's to see how the game has changed. The key is using the same yardstick for everyone, never moving the goalposts. "If a guy has a lifetime passing rating of 89.9, that's what it is. It's not gonna change a decade from now," Smith says.
Of course, the NFL did move the goal posts in 1974, screwing up field goal statistics forever. But who the hell cares about kickers?
[/size]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb
[/size]A Survival Guide to the
NFL's Quarterback Rating System
By Don Steinberg
(appeared in GQ, October 2001)
The leading rusher in the National Football League is the player who carries the ball for the most yards. Last year it was Edgerrin James, with 1,709. The league's receiving champion is the guy who catches the most passes. Marvin Harrison and Mushin Muhammad tied at 102.
To learn that Denver's Brian Griese was the NFL's top passer last season, it helps if you didn't leave college early for the draft. Here's the league's official rating formula that made Griese number one:
As you can see, Griese's rating was precisely 102.9. So of course he was the top quarterback. 102.9! The guy's on fire! In fact, give the boy some ibuprofen, it looks like he's running a fever!
What the hell is the meaning of 102.9? Most sports numbers tell a story. Twelve under par. A first round knockout. A $50,000 fine for calling David Stern a wiener. Batting .300 means you got three hits every ten at bats. But 102.9? Isn't that the FM station that plays Steely Dan all day? Why do we measure the most important player on the football field using a quadratic equation so puzzling it's actually used as the opening problem in the math textbook College Algebra (8th Edition, Addison Wesley, 2000)?
"Other than one attorney in our office, I am unaware of a single human being who has the capacity to figure a quarterback rating," says agent Leigh Steinberg, who has negotiated multimillion-dollar contracts for NFL quarterbacks for 26 years.
"I know interceptions kill your rating, but if you asked me to compute it, I'd have no idea," admits Steve Young, who besides having history's highest career (96.9) and single season (112.8) passer ratings is also lawyer and the chairman of a Silicon Valley software company.
Does it help to know that, in Fermat's theorem above, A is pass attempts, C completions, Y passing yardage, T touchdown passes, and I interceptions? Uh, a little. Does it help to know that this is technically only meant to be a passing-efficiency statistic, not really a quarterback rating? It doesn't try to account for other useful quarterbacking activities, like running -- or winning.
Does it add perspective to understand that the "average" rating was designed, according to circa 1970 standards, to be precisely 66.7? Or that the maximum, "perfect" rating is a freakish 158.2 -- and that eight quarterbacks have tossed perfect games, the latest being Kurt Warner last October when he didn't actually complete every pass he threw? Does that help give meaning to 102.9? Yes, we thought so: a really, really little bit.
Few topics have done more to brings jocks and nerds together than mutual fear and disbelief of the passer rating formula.
"Their main problem was that no one tried to figure out mathematically how the formula worked," says Pete Palmer, a sports statistician whose book The Hidden Game of Football. blasts the calculus of the NFL formula. "You get what I think are unreasonable results."
"I pay attention to my rating on third down and in the red zone," says Trent Dilfer, who despite his wobbly 76.6 rating last season quarterbacked the Ravens to a Super Bowl victory. "Otherwise, it's most useful for fantasy football people who are more concerned with numbers than good old-fashioned winning."
So how did we get here?
"They asked if I had any ideas about rating passers. I did," says Don Smith, who invented the formula. "I'm the guilty guy."
It's time to go behind the jockstrap and examine the glory that is the NFL passer rating system.
The year was 1971, and the NFL had merged a year earlier with the 10-team hippie upstart American Football League. One of the issues facing commissioner Pete Rozelle -- albeit not the most burning one-- was standardizing official statistics. The leagues, and even individual teams, had been issuing a hodgepodge of stats. Grooviest sideburns? Not under the new management.
The NFL had particularly struggled with how to crown a passing king. In the mid-1930s, when the league began keeping individual player stats, the passing leader was the quarterback with the most passing yardage. From 1938 to 1940, the passer with the highest completion percentage was number one. For 1941 they invented a system ranking the league's quarterbacks in each of six separate categories -- touchdown passes, yards, interception percentage, etc. -- and if you were first-place in touchdowns you'd get one point, and if you were 10th place in yardage you'd get 10 points, and the guy with the lowest total for the six categories was the top passer. Then over the next thirty years the criteria waffled back and forth, reverting occasionally to single categories, like average-gain-per-pass-attempt, that were interesting but really didn't tell the whole story. By the time Woodstock brought the era of free love to a close, the league had returned to a rotisserie-style point system where quarterbacks received ranking numbers relative to their peers' performance in four different passing categories, and the one with lowest total got the kitty.
It was an imperfect system that made it impossible to tabulate any quarterback's standing until all the other quarterbacks were done with their Sunday business. Rozelle asked the league's statistical committee to fix it. And they called upon Smith, an executive at the Pro Football Hall of Fame who was known as a statistical whiz.
Smith's goal was to build a system where each quarterbacking performance could get a fixed rating that wouldn't depend on how other quarterbacks did. "A rusher's record isn't affected by what anybody else does. Why should a passer's?" he asked. He knew that if he came up with a good formula, it could be applied to all past and future stats, allowing the world, someday, to compare Norm Van Brocklin's career passing proficiency (75.1) with, say, Steve Beuerlein's (74.3).
Smith liked the numerical cocktail, mixing what were essentially the only the passing stats tracked -- completion percentage, passing yardage, touchdowns and interceptions. He was in a plane flying over Kansas when the eureka moment hit. What if "average" performance in each of those four categories would score one point? And record-level performance would score two points. And for playing really poorly, you'd get zero. Simple! There would be a sliding scale in between. With data supplied by Elias Sports Bureau, the league's statistician, Smith determined that the average pass completion rate for the 1970 season was around 50 percent. Equaling that would be good for one point toward a passer's rating total. The record completion rate for a season was just over 70 percent, so from then on anybody hitting at a 70 percent rate would get two points in that category. Completing 30 percent (or less) of your passes would score a big zero.
.Here comes the college algebra. What's the magical formula that turns 50 into 1, 70 into 2, and 30 into zero? You subtract 30 and divide by 20 . That's the first leg of the formula above.
Smith then got league averages for yards-per-pass-attempt (7), percentage of passes scoring touchdowns (5%), and percentage of passes intercepted (5.5%). For each of these he devised a conversion formula to give a player one point for working at that average rate, two points for a record level, and as low as zero points for really eating it. Since records are made to be broken, a score above 2 in any category -- up to 2.375 -- is possible. Every quarterback in history would receive ratings relative to those 1970 standards.
So how in the name of Garo Yepremian does this get Brian Griese 102.9? Well, Griese actually got 1.71 points for completing 216 passes in 336 attempts, 1.25 points for his 2,688 passing yards, 1.13 points for throwing 19 touchdowns, and a remarkable 2.01 points for tossing just 4 interceptions all season. "Using those figures, you add it up," Smith explains (thereby giving Griese a raw total of 6.174) "and get something that means absolutely nothing."
[size=-1]
Smith thought it would be more meaningful if an excellent score came to around 100, just like in school. "I think our attitude was that 100 was an A," he recalls. "And anything above 100, that was an A-plus." So, in a move that made sense at the time and has had everyone else confused for three decades, he multiplied the raw total by 100 and divided by 6, turning a statistically average performance -- 1s across the board -- into 66.7. It also made the maximum rating a ridiculous 158.2.
The NFL statistical squad applied this formula to every quarterback's data since the 1930s, and the results didn't seem ludicrous. They showed the proposed Passer Rating System to Rozelle, and he said, more or less, "If this is what you guys want to recommend, if you think it'll work, let's do it," according to Don Weiss, who headed the statistical committee.
"It could have been that it was so complicated, people didn't understand it, so they accepted it," Weiss says. It went official for the 1973 season.
On its face, it has worked. Only the excellent have had ratings over 100 for a full season. Last year only Griese and Trent Green did. In 1999, only Warner did - his 109.2 was the fifth best passing season ever, topped by:
Steve Young 1984 112.8 Joe Montana 1989 112.4 Milt Plum 1960 110.4 Sammy Baugh 1945 109.9
And nobody with more than 1,500 pass attempts has maintained a rating above 100. History's leader, Young, retired at 96.8. Behind him are Montana, Dan Marino, Bret Favre and Peyton Manning. You can look at that list and ask: how screwed up can the formula be? It's not like you feed in the data, and -- surprise -- out of the cake pops Neil Lomax as number one QB of all time (actually, he's 10th).
But what gives with the 49ers? Sure, Young and Montana were studs -- but come on. Here's what gives. It started in the late 1970s, when the NFL began bending the rules to favor passers.
The "illegal chuck" rule forced defenders to back off receivers, and refs lightened up on holding calls against offensive linemen. By 1979 the league completion average hit 54.1 percent, and it has never been below that since. Then came the "clearly in the grasp rule" to protect quarterbacks from brutality by would-be sackers. And receivers started wearing sticky gloves. And wind-free indoor stadiums with fast fake turf turned teams like the St. Louis Rams into passing factories. There's much more pass offense today, and that explains why the all-time top five looks like a list made by somebody born after John Belushi died.
But most influential of all was Bill Walsh, the QB-nurturing 49ers coach. The West Coast Offense he pioneered in the 1980s turned precisely timed, high-percentage short passes into catch-and-run long gains. You couldn't invent a better scheme to juice QB rating numbers. Because, it turns out, the formula mathematically whacks guys who try to throw long.
Imagine two quarterbacks -- Super Joe and Broadway Joe -- who both drive their teams 30 yards to a touchdown in three plays. Super Joe does it with three 10-yard passes. His completion percentage is 100, and for the drive his rating is 147.9. Broadway Joe throws two incomplete passes, then on a clutch third and long he finds a receiver in the end zone -- touchdown! For the exact same result, his rating is 111.1.
Young and Montana -- and Griese last year -- surely benefited from quarterbacking in West Coast schemes. The authors of The Hidden Game of Football calculate that even complete passes that lose yardage can, in some weirdball situations, boost a quarterback's rating. "There's something wrong with that," says co-author and football historian Bob Carroll. His book proposes a New Improved Rating System, which ignores completion percentage but counts sacks. (Still, when the book applies this even more complicated formula to 1997 data, Young comes out number one anyway.)
"I guess I'm a little defensive when people talk that way about the West Coast offense," says Young, who, just for the record, happened to run the ball like hell too. "Because in the end the West Coast works. It wins games. The truth is, if you're playing decent football, your rating's high. I never got the sense that I could take a game and manipulate my ratings. I don't think you can go out and dink and dunk and beat the system."
Is there a perfect way to enumerate the performance of one man on the field with 21 others? What about perfectly thrown, dropped passes? What about John Elway, who ended his career with a saggy rating of 79.9, even though he had the most career wins by a quarterback and a record 41 fourth-quarter game-saving drives. What about Troy Aikman (81.6), who had Emmitt Smith running behind him, so he didn't throw a lot of four-yard touchdown passes, "even if he made the pass that got the ball to the four," says his agent, Leigh Steinberg.
Sonny Jurgensen said the real measure of a quarterback's greatness is how he does on third and long, when everybody and his bookie knows a pass is coming. Many consider Jurgensen the best pure passer of all time, but his rating of 82.6 would embarrass Jeff Garcia. What about Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick and the new generation of quarterbacks who use the threat of a pass to open up rushing lanes for themselves?
Football is a team game, a game of drives and momentum. Individual numbers struggle to describe it. Still, numbers are all we have. Statistics are what separate sports from just playing around in the yard. Coach Lombardi said it: if you're not keeping score, you're just practicing. So you calculate what you can. If you wanted to keep it really simple, you could just do what golf does and list who gets the most money (Warner, $11.8 million, Manning $11 million, Vick $10.3 million). Or you could be like boxing and figure skating, where unless somebody gets knocked out it's two guys in bow-ties and a lady from the New Jersey State Athletic Commission making up numbers for how you did.
It has flaws, yeah, but the passer rating system achieves its goal: it establishes a standard, so we can compare today's quarterbacks with one another easily, and with yesterday's to see how the game has changed. The key is using the same yardstick for everyone, never moving the goalposts. "If a guy has a lifetime passing rating of 89.9, that's what it is. It's not gonna change a decade from now," Smith says.
Of course, the NFL did move the goal posts in 1974, screwing up field goal statistics forever. But who the hell cares about kickers?
[/size]
Hostile
The Duke
- Messages
- 119,565
- Reaction score
- 4,544
Nors, find me 3 articles that refute those 3. Find me 3 articles saying the QB rating is the best indicator of how good a QB is.
Hell, find me 1.
All I said, and I stand by it, is that QB rating is the single most useless individual stat.
It fails to factor in too much. Is it worthless? No, but it isn't good enough either. Like I said and is clearly supported in article #3, the WCO artificailly puffs that stat. For a system to be truly useful it should not have a built in cheat factor.
Once you find 3 articles to back up your claim I'll find you some more.
You see the choice is real simple. Your opinion vs. the mountain of evidence that supports the contention there is a flaw in the QB rating?
As much as you want your opinion to be the be all, end all of every discussion, it just isn't.
Have a good evening as you try and spin control this.
Once again, when the topic is football, you won't answer the questions. It was a simple "yes" or "no." Scary huh?
Hell, find me 1.
All I said, and I stand by it, is that QB rating is the single most useless individual stat.
It fails to factor in too much. Is it worthless? No, but it isn't good enough either. Like I said and is clearly supported in article #3, the WCO artificailly puffs that stat. For a system to be truly useful it should not have a built in cheat factor.
Once you find 3 articles to back up your claim I'll find you some more.
You see the choice is real simple. Your opinion vs. the mountain of evidence that supports the contention there is a flaw in the QB rating?
As much as you want your opinion to be the be all, end all of every discussion, it just isn't.
Have a good evening as you try and spin control this.
Once again, when the topic is football, you won't answer the questions. It was a simple "yes" or "no." Scary huh?