QBR Ratings

[BlindFaith]

The problem with football stats is and always will be sample size. Baseball stats are more meaningful because they have such a huge range of data. Football has only 16 games a year when a given player will only be on the field half the time.

But when you look at something like this QBR rating for 1 season and Josh McCown is better than Payton Manning, even though, and precisely because, he only played 8 games and happened to play way above his talent for a few games, you know its all pretty much bunk.

Oh, and by the way, crappy relievers are sent into blowout baseball games too. Then there's September games when teams are out of it and playing AAA prospects etc too. Its not like there isn't "garbage time" stats in baseball.

All baseball is garbage time, but I digress.

QBR is no different than any other ranking formula. If you want to look at 8 games and decide McCown is a all pro, go ahead. But during those 8 games he did play very, very well. Doesn't mean he can do it year in and year out. Obviously he hadn't been that good up to this point. Try looking at the top seasons. The names are very familiar. The only outliers being those with less than 325 ACT plays. I would say that any QBR for a QB that has only played half a season should be evaluated carefully.