Where does money ball come into play in the NFL? Salaries - running backs down, D line way up, receivers up, safety & Linebackers down . And QBs- stratosphere
The argument that qb performance is more independant of context that many imagine is not wholly without merit, but in addition to somebody like Gannon, you need to factor somebody like Favre. There is a very, very, small chance that Favre has a multiMVP, HOF, career, if he doesn't get attached, early in his career, to a team with the likes of Wolf, Holmgren, and Reid running things. I doubt if Brady, Manning, or Rodgers have the same careers if they'd been stuck with a bad organizations for their 1st decade, for the simple reason that the cumulative effect of violence, especially prior to 2010, should not be discounted. QBs on bad, poorly managed, untalented, rosters, get hit more often, and nobody is completely immune to the effect a beating has on performance.
As to playoff performance, there's still way too much implied weight given to w-l records, in evaluating qbs. Brady's GOAThood would take a huge hit, if about 5 plays, having nothing to do with Brady's actions are changed. Things like long field goals in snowstorms, or guys lining up offside, or a db failing to remember his coach's instruction to just fall down after a late game interception, or the opposing qb throwing a 3 yard pass to the receivers shoulders, instead of his knees. When our evaluation of career qb performance can be hugely affected by a small handful of plays by people at other positions, we aren't evaluating rationally, and this is not criticism of Brady. Football really is too interdependent to have strong confidence in career QB evaluations.
The 1st decade you mentioned is actually a huge caveat to any model analytics would use. We all know that experience (tenure in social science research), is correlated to performance, decision making, etc. So, a QB who starts in a favorable position, gets rewarded with the ability to gain idiosyncratic knowledge advantages over time. This is something I wrote a blog about years ago before this "Wins aren't a stat" movement lol
But the general idea is that, Tom Brady's second half of his career only exists because of the circumstances (some would say luck) in the first parts of his career. This is actually independent in many ways from his actual QB IQ, etc. Because, for example, Bledsoe won a playoff game. Those defenses were all time great (e.g., what they did to the greatest show on turf). Tom Brady was trent dilfer for those first few runs. I point to the Cassel run with the patriots where, if not for a fluke, they would have made the playoffs winning double digit games without Brady. There was also a time, before the assistant coaches left, where they were down to the 3rd string QB and they were still predicted to win all of the games Brady was suspended for. That's an implicit admission that we knew the system was strong. But as it relates to the point of my first paragraph-- the ability to have consistent gametime reps means you get more practice, more preparation, and more experience actually playing the game, seeing the signals, understanding the pace, etc. Therefore, you do become better with more experience. So, in an alternative world, he wouldn't have had those game time reps because he would have been a backup until he was traded to a worse team. Having the cushion to play on a primarily defense first time allowed him to further develop his skills which did make him great (I want to emphasize that my argument isn't that Tom Brady isn't great). But having those real game time reps is significantly different than him holding the clipboard and having mental reps all season.
Similarly, Tom Brady clearly had a favorable system in Tampa Bay. If Jameis threw 20 INTs instead of 30, he would have been 5109 yards, 33 TDs and 20 INTs... and that's without Gronk and AB. We wouldn't consider Jameis in any GOAT conversation, but high INTS is a hallmark for Bruce Arian's offenses for first time QBS (see Peyton, etc.). Which is why Tom had those initial fights with Bruce. Any way, the point is, pundits made it seem like the Tampa run was evidence that Tom Brady is independent from a good system. But, Jameis literally threw for 5k the previous year without Gronk and AB. And they also had one of the best defenses in the league. So, I'm always hesitant when I listen to people discuss these without the proper context. If you did a within group analysis controlling for coaches, players, competition, etc. from year to year... then simulate using a league average (basically saying, OK Jameis' INTs is an outlier), my guess is that there wouldn't have really been much of a statistical difference between Brady, Winston, and the dummy of average QB.
By the way, we all know this is implicitly true. Their discussion about Coaches basically being equal was actually pretty telling that their assumptions in their models are wrong. There are *clearly* better coaching staffs than others. Andy Reid, Kyle, etc. have never had bad offenses.
TL;DR - there are probably tens of Tom Brady and Brock Purdy's who were squeezed out of the league because they didn't get the right opportunities. To pretend otherwise is to basically ignore the history of QBs being replaced in the NCAA year after year under the same systems producing the same output as the pro bowlers that preceded them.
The Patriots didn't have all-time great defenses. The strongest defense Brady ever had, by some degree, was in his last season in New England. They had a good defense in '01 and excellent defenses in '03 and '04. If the 01 Patriots played the 01 Rams 20 times they would have probably lost 17-18 times; that Super Bowl was more of a case of the Rams losing it than the Patriots winning it. The 01 Patriots in general were one of the most mediocre teams to ever win the championship; the combination of a last place schedule and unusual luck played an outsized role in their run. The streaky 9-7 '02 team whose luck regressed to the mean was a more accurate representation of that roster's ability.
Brady was never close to the liability/passenger that Trent Dilfer was. He was a decent quarterback in '01, a good to very good one in '03, and an elite one from '04 (arguably from the end of '03) going forward.
The Cassel 11-5 season is a little oversold. The 07 Patriots are almost certainly the best regular season team of all time and even with the Super Bowl loss one of the three or four best teams in NFL history. They had an easier schedule in 2008 than they did in 2007, so the 11-5 campaign, while impressive with a quarterback as inexperienced as Cassel was, was actually an enormous regression from what they did the year before.
I agree completely, with the added caveat, again, that qb evaluation that doesn't attempt to factor the cumulative effect of physical beating in football is missing one of the most important elements of the game. Go ask Andrew Luck.
One hockey topic that I’m surprised didn’t come up in the hockey talk is the advantage given to low tax states. Look at how Florida, Tampa, Dallas, and Vegas have been among the best teams in the league over the past several years. They all play in no income tax states. This enables them to sign players for less money, and in a fixed salary cap league, it advantages teams in these states.
The NYC guy saying nice things about Arkansas made me realize how poor and backwards my state (Louisiana) is. I was just up there last week - and not just in the (indeed, quite prosperous) northwestern part of the state; I went all over - marveling at how well-off and well-run everything up there is compared to us.
It’s because hockey players often come from shitty little towns in the Canadian prairies and their idea of paradise is the sun belt. They don’t wanna stay in Canada. Look at anyone with money from those places
Interesting conversation, certainly wish you pushed Neil a bit more about the draft process especially as it relates to his time with the Hawks. Even though he's certainly had more prominent positions, he's still "oh the Hawks analytics guy circa the Danny Ferry era!" to me.
Legend has it, the Hawks had Giannis ranked very high that cycle and were very upset when the Bucks (and Larry effin Drew) picked him one before they were on the clock. I'm not mad about it though, please do not write in your paper that I am mad about it because I am definitely not still mad about it.
I think Favre is underrated now. Because people don't like him. I think he's a rare QB who would have been good no matter what team he played on. But he he was a menace to root against in his prime
Loved the conversation, especially the part that evaluated how some sports evaluate an individual more on postseason and others on regular season. Something that has always confounded me is how much hockey culture emphasizes an individual's career accolades on having his name on the Stanley Cup. In hockey, if you're a non-goalie, you're going to be playing the least percentage of available minutes than any other sport. In football, a qb will play 100% of offensive snaps, so 50% of the game. In baseball, if the pitcher goes a complete game, you won't need any substitutions. In basketball, you usually go to a 7 or 8 player rotation in the playoffs. An NBA star will probably play over 40 minutes. In hockey, you have to roll out all 4 forward lines and all 3 D pairings. A forward playing over 30 minutes in regulation would be insane.
Yet, so much weight is placed on an individual's career on whether his name is on the Cup. It's like they'll mention so and so is now a 3 time Stanley Cup champion when he might not have even played in the Finals or even the playoffs in this latest run. I really don't get it. No one was praising Adam Morrison as validating his NBA career when he won a championship with the Lakers
As a fan/viewer, I *percieve* Brock as generally excellent on scramble Plays. watching him figure it out on 3rd downs creates a distinct sensation of satisfaction similar to watching Montana/brady
That said
Rich madrid, a niners adjacent Twitter analyst, makes very cogent arguments for why he doesn’t think Brock Purdy is top 12. honestly I should mute him. every time he shares his thinking I get annoyed bc it’s very clear and difficult to rebut
Funny enough, I was referencing that guy’s (imo unconvincing) argument against the Manning choker narrative. Manning was a lot worse in the postseason! Some content creators have useful film clips and observe interesting things on a granular level but can’t make good holistic judgments
Haven't we long known Mr. Paine's insight about the statistical contributions of young bigs vs guards - hasn't it long been known that young big men fare better than young guards in advanced stats (and big men in general in many of them, most notably PER)?
I don't mean to be condescending with my question, as Mr. Paine is obviously quite intelligent and well-informed - so well-informed that I cannot believe he did not already know this, leaving me baffled by his description of it as a new insight...
Or am I just misremembering this being an insight we divined long ago?
Sigh…the WNBA
Where does money ball come into play in the NFL? Salaries - running backs down, D line way up, receivers up, safety & Linebackers down . And QBs- stratosphere
God forbid money ball comes into the NFL. It's already ruined baseball and basketball. If the NFL was the NBA Christian McCaffrey would play 11 games
yeap
and there's like NO free agency like there is in other sports (or used to be)
Niners signed 17 free agents
The argument that qb performance is more independant of context that many imagine is not wholly without merit, but in addition to somebody like Gannon, you need to factor somebody like Favre. There is a very, very, small chance that Favre has a multiMVP, HOF, career, if he doesn't get attached, early in his career, to a team with the likes of Wolf, Holmgren, and Reid running things. I doubt if Brady, Manning, or Rodgers have the same careers if they'd been stuck with a bad organizations for their 1st decade, for the simple reason that the cumulative effect of violence, especially prior to 2010, should not be discounted. QBs on bad, poorly managed, untalented, rosters, get hit more often, and nobody is completely immune to the effect a beating has on performance.
As to playoff performance, there's still way too much implied weight given to w-l records, in evaluating qbs. Brady's GOAThood would take a huge hit, if about 5 plays, having nothing to do with Brady's actions are changed. Things like long field goals in snowstorms, or guys lining up offside, or a db failing to remember his coach's instruction to just fall down after a late game interception, or the opposing qb throwing a 3 yard pass to the receivers shoulders, instead of his knees. When our evaluation of career qb performance can be hugely affected by a small handful of plays by people at other positions, we aren't evaluating rationally, and this is not criticism of Brady. Football really is too interdependent to have strong confidence in career QB evaluations.
The 1st decade you mentioned is actually a huge caveat to any model analytics would use. We all know that experience (tenure in social science research), is correlated to performance, decision making, etc. So, a QB who starts in a favorable position, gets rewarded with the ability to gain idiosyncratic knowledge advantages over time. This is something I wrote a blog about years ago before this "Wins aren't a stat" movement lol
But the general idea is that, Tom Brady's second half of his career only exists because of the circumstances (some would say luck) in the first parts of his career. This is actually independent in many ways from his actual QB IQ, etc. Because, for example, Bledsoe won a playoff game. Those defenses were all time great (e.g., what they did to the greatest show on turf). Tom Brady was trent dilfer for those first few runs. I point to the Cassel run with the patriots where, if not for a fluke, they would have made the playoffs winning double digit games without Brady. There was also a time, before the assistant coaches left, where they were down to the 3rd string QB and they were still predicted to win all of the games Brady was suspended for. That's an implicit admission that we knew the system was strong. But as it relates to the point of my first paragraph-- the ability to have consistent gametime reps means you get more practice, more preparation, and more experience actually playing the game, seeing the signals, understanding the pace, etc. Therefore, you do become better with more experience. So, in an alternative world, he wouldn't have had those game time reps because he would have been a backup until he was traded to a worse team. Having the cushion to play on a primarily defense first time allowed him to further develop his skills which did make him great (I want to emphasize that my argument isn't that Tom Brady isn't great). But having those real game time reps is significantly different than him holding the clipboard and having mental reps all season.
Similarly, Tom Brady clearly had a favorable system in Tampa Bay. If Jameis threw 20 INTs instead of 30, he would have been 5109 yards, 33 TDs and 20 INTs... and that's without Gronk and AB. We wouldn't consider Jameis in any GOAT conversation, but high INTS is a hallmark for Bruce Arian's offenses for first time QBS (see Peyton, etc.). Which is why Tom had those initial fights with Bruce. Any way, the point is, pundits made it seem like the Tampa run was evidence that Tom Brady is independent from a good system. But, Jameis literally threw for 5k the previous year without Gronk and AB. And they also had one of the best defenses in the league. So, I'm always hesitant when I listen to people discuss these without the proper context. If you did a within group analysis controlling for coaches, players, competition, etc. from year to year... then simulate using a league average (basically saying, OK Jameis' INTs is an outlier), my guess is that there wouldn't have really been much of a statistical difference between Brady, Winston, and the dummy of average QB.
By the way, we all know this is implicitly true. Their discussion about Coaches basically being equal was actually pretty telling that their assumptions in their models are wrong. There are *clearly* better coaching staffs than others. Andy Reid, Kyle, etc. have never had bad offenses.
TL;DR - there are probably tens of Tom Brady and Brock Purdy's who were squeezed out of the league because they didn't get the right opportunities. To pretend otherwise is to basically ignore the history of QBs being replaced in the NCAA year after year under the same systems producing the same output as the pro bowlers that preceded them.
The Patriots didn't have all-time great defenses. The strongest defense Brady ever had, by some degree, was in his last season in New England. They had a good defense in '01 and excellent defenses in '03 and '04. If the 01 Patriots played the 01 Rams 20 times they would have probably lost 17-18 times; that Super Bowl was more of a case of the Rams losing it than the Patriots winning it. The 01 Patriots in general were one of the most mediocre teams to ever win the championship; the combination of a last place schedule and unusual luck played an outsized role in their run. The streaky 9-7 '02 team whose luck regressed to the mean was a more accurate representation of that roster's ability.
Brady was never close to the liability/passenger that Trent Dilfer was. He was a decent quarterback in '01, a good to very good one in '03, and an elite one from '04 (arguably from the end of '03) going forward.
The Cassel 11-5 season is a little oversold. The 07 Patriots are almost certainly the best regular season team of all time and even with the Super Bowl loss one of the three or four best teams in NFL history. They had an easier schedule in 2008 than they did in 2007, so the 11-5 campaign, while impressive with a quarterback as inexperienced as Cassel was, was actually an enormous regression from what they did the year before.
I agree completely, with the added caveat, again, that qb evaluation that doesn't attempt to factor the cumulative effect of physical beating in football is missing one of the most important elements of the game. Go ask Andrew Luck.
Please excuse the spelling.
Loving that my Florida Panthers finally come up.
One hockey topic that I’m surprised didn’t come up in the hockey talk is the advantage given to low tax states. Look at how Florida, Tampa, Dallas, and Vegas have been among the best teams in the league over the past several years. They all play in no income tax states. This enables them to sign players for less money, and in a fixed salary cap league, it advantages teams in these states.
The NYC guy saying nice things about Arkansas made me realize how poor and backwards my state (Louisiana) is. I was just up there last week - and not just in the (indeed, quite prosperous) northwestern part of the state; I went all over - marveling at how well-off and well-run everything up there is compared to us.
Louisiana really is sadly the bottom rung of American functionality.
This dude is such a hack lmfao
You two have great rapport. Entertaining pod. Regular guest?
It’s because hockey players often come from shitty little towns in the Canadian prairies and their idea of paradise is the sun belt. They don’t wanna stay in Canada. Look at anyone with money from those places
Interesting conversation, certainly wish you pushed Neil a bit more about the draft process especially as it relates to his time with the Hawks. Even though he's certainly had more prominent positions, he's still "oh the Hawks analytics guy circa the Danny Ferry era!" to me.
Legend has it, the Hawks had Giannis ranked very high that cycle and were very upset when the Bucks (and Larry effin Drew) picked him one before they were on the clock. I'm not mad about it though, please do not write in your paper that I am mad about it because I am definitely not still mad about it.
Barry Bonds is a player who wasn't bad in the playoffs, he was catastrophic. Before his head grew sizes at least
The reason football drafting is such a crapshoot is you are betting on lunatics
I think Favre is underrated now. Because people don't like him. I think he's a rare QB who would have been good no matter what team he played on. But he he was a menace to root against in his prime
And Peyton is overrated because people like him. But there are simply too many playoff bed wettings
Loved the conversation, especially the part that evaluated how some sports evaluate an individual more on postseason and others on regular season. Something that has always confounded me is how much hockey culture emphasizes an individual's career accolades on having his name on the Stanley Cup. In hockey, if you're a non-goalie, you're going to be playing the least percentage of available minutes than any other sport. In football, a qb will play 100% of offensive snaps, so 50% of the game. In baseball, if the pitcher goes a complete game, you won't need any substitutions. In basketball, you usually go to a 7 or 8 player rotation in the playoffs. An NBA star will probably play over 40 minutes. In hockey, you have to roll out all 4 forward lines and all 3 D pairings. A forward playing over 30 minutes in regulation would be insane.
Yet, so much weight is placed on an individual's career on whether his name is on the Cup. It's like they'll mention so and so is now a 3 time Stanley Cup champion when he might not have even played in the Finals or even the playoffs in this latest run. I really don't get it. No one was praising Adam Morrison as validating his NBA career when he won a championship with the Lakers
Was not familiar with Neil, easy listen.
As a fan/viewer, I *percieve* Brock as generally excellent on scramble Plays. watching him figure it out on 3rd downs creates a distinct sensation of satisfaction similar to watching Montana/brady
That said
Rich madrid, a niners adjacent Twitter analyst, makes very cogent arguments for why he doesn’t think Brock Purdy is top 12. honestly I should mute him. every time he shares his thinking I get annoyed bc it’s very clear and difficult to rebut
Funny enough, I was referencing that guy’s (imo unconvincing) argument against the Manning choker narrative. Manning was a lot worse in the postseason! Some content creators have useful film clips and observe interesting things on a granular level but can’t make good holistic judgments
Haven't we long known Mr. Paine's insight about the statistical contributions of young bigs vs guards - hasn't it long been known that young big men fare better than young guards in advanced stats (and big men in general in many of them, most notably PER)?
I don't mean to be condescending with my question, as Mr. Paine is obviously quite intelligent and well-informed - so well-informed that I cannot believe he did not already know this, leaving me baffled by his description of it as a new insight...
Or am I just misremembering this being an insight we divined long ago?