As I've said for a million billion years, sports statheads desperately need to take some graduate philosophy of science classes. It's crazy that actual research physicists are more humble about their truth claims than, like, Seth Walder. Every quantitative indicator is subject to its own corruptions, and how you choose which metrics to elevate is always a value-laden process. Which isn't an argument against statistical analysis, but it is an argument in favor of epistemological modesty, which I don't see in someone like Walder or Bill Barnwell.
And Kacsmar is a funny reference here because he's notoriously subject to the dictates of his own resentments; he has insisted for years that Josh Allen is not a good quarterback, and has only been forced to by events in the last couple of years. Why? Because he was a very loud Allen skeptic in his draft process, and he's mad that Allen proved him wrong. Lots and lots of stat guys are subject to those corrupting influences.
Kacsmar is an unhinged lunatic. He needed a new target for his derision after Brady retired. How fortunate for Josh Allen! Scott will filter and massage stats until it spits out something negative about Tom and/or Josh, no matter how convoluted he has to make the parameters to achieve that result. It's almost performance art as this point. Nick Wright pales in comparison. As intellectually dishonest a guy as you'll ever find in the sports landscape.
The problem is that much football player evaluation related data is awful—too many variables make it too context specific, and it does not capture all important things. This isn’t baseball, or even basketball. It’s not that football is in a Stone Age; it’s that smart management knows how dangerous relying on bad data is.
Re that list, you are not taking Brock Purdy (or Love) over Maye or Hebert if there is a QB draft. He’s in that next tier. List is inoffensive.
What I’d say is that the difficulty of finding signal through all the statistical football noise has led to a situation where the sport’s culture doesn’t even bother looking
…eh, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s more so that people seem to be much more skeptical of purported signals.Football analytics is much better at undermining stats. Nobody thought Brett Hundley had great accuracy because he was coming into the league completing 70% of his passes, scouts looked at those passes and saw that many of them were short area screens and the like.
Football is closer to picking stocks or running a planned economy. Many fortunes lost, or countries impoverished, through people erroneously believing they separated signal from noise. Great caution and doubt is very much warranted.
I feel like whether you look at advanced analytics or just "does the team win" or common sense, you obviously take purdy over herbert and it's not close. Purdy has better metrics; he's been to the super bowl and dragged the chiefs to overtime. Herbert is 0-3 in the playoffs. No matter what system you use, he's worse.
Football is just not the sport for these arguments.
It's so context dependent. Darnold's value clearly rocketed above Purdy by virtue of simply existing on a competent team. The eye test could have told you that 5 years ago. Outside concerns about his intangibles/poise. Darnold has always been better.
So it's not clear you should take Purdy over Herbert. It's very possible the Chargers are just a terrible franchise with so much incompetence he was never going to succeed. None of that will show up in the stats.
Brady's greatness doesn't show up in the stats as the most obvious example of them all. Outside wins and losses anyway. When the unanimous GOAT is not the GOAT in most advanced stats, you should question them.
I’m not particularly invested in any of these players, so I find the who is better conversation not that interesting. I’ll just note the same can be said in regards to Purdy if compared to Stafford‘s last three seasons in Detroit. Indeed, over those three seasons, Stafford is about in the same tier of QB via performance and outcome as Herbert over the last three.
this tracks with what i’ve heard about ben johnson as well and what i think could be football’s version of the basketball 3>2 moment.
apparently he’s obsessed with chunk plays because there seems to be data that supports a correlation between chunk plays (i think defined 8+ yards on a run or 12+ yards on a pass?) and winning. so in effect he isn’t obsessed with caleb’s completion % as long as he’s hitting chunk plays
reminds me of the fact that in basketball you would rather have a 40% 3 point shooter than a 50% 2 point shooter
He's also very good at throwing with anticipation, which probably correlates with the intermediate throw stats.
Ranking are always tough. Tiers are much better. There's a few QBs who are the offense. Then about 10-12 who are clearly good enough to win at a high level with good talent/scheme. People might quibble who is at the margins of those groups, but most reasonable people would agree on most of them.
Once a QB gets a rep, it's hard to change it. Elway and Marino were anointed as greats, and could do no wrong their entire careers, regardless of their stats or situations. Other guys didn't get the occasional excuses made for them, or the "nuanced" arguments made. It took forever for Stafford to go from good but not great, to great, and then everyone tries very hard to ignore that he didn't play very well in the playoffs and, like Purdy, now plays for an offensive genius coach. People are sheep.
Yeah but Stafford’s reputation around the league, amongst coaches and players, was always “man if this guy got with a competent organization he could really be great”. And I’d say they were ultimately proven correct. Other NFL QBs and offensive coaches talk about Stafford the same way NBA players talk about Kyrie or Kobe—which is “this guys skill level is on another planet in a way the common fan might not see”.
The polar opposite of this is Jalen Hurts, as the Eagles offense in general, and Hurts' play in particular, has been built around avoiding turnovers.
Which has also been effective -- the 49ers, Eagles, and Rams have been the most successful teams over the past several years, though I think that approach hit diminishing return for the Eagles last year.
But it goes to show that QB peformance is very dependent on team context, and I think especially so now.
As I've said for a million billion years, sports statheads desperately need to take some graduate philosophy of science classes. It's crazy that actual research physicists are more humble about their truth claims than, like, Seth Walder. Every quantitative indicator is subject to its own corruptions, and how you choose which metrics to elevate is always a value-laden process. Which isn't an argument against statistical analysis, but it is an argument in favor of epistemological modesty, which I don't see in someone like Walder or Bill Barnwell.
And Kacsmar is a funny reference here because he's notoriously subject to the dictates of his own resentments; he has insisted for years that Josh Allen is not a good quarterback, and has only been forced to by events in the last couple of years. Why? Because he was a very loud Allen skeptic in his draft process, and he's mad that Allen proved him wrong. Lots and lots of stat guys are subject to those corrupting influences.
Kacsmar is an unhinged lunatic. He needed a new target for his derision after Brady retired. How fortunate for Josh Allen! Scott will filter and massage stats until it spits out something negative about Tom and/or Josh, no matter how convoluted he has to make the parameters to achieve that result. It's almost performance art as this point. Nick Wright pales in comparison. As intellectually dishonest a guy as you'll ever find in the sports landscape.
The only stat is wins
The problem is that much football player evaluation related data is awful—too many variables make it too context specific, and it does not capture all important things. This isn’t baseball, or even basketball. It’s not that football is in a Stone Age; it’s that smart management knows how dangerous relying on bad data is.
Re that list, you are not taking Brock Purdy (or Love) over Maye or Hebert if there is a QB draft. He’s in that next tier. List is inoffensive.
What I’d say is that the difficulty of finding signal through all the statistical football noise has led to a situation where the sport’s culture doesn’t even bother looking
…eh, I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s more so that people seem to be much more skeptical of purported signals.Football analytics is much better at undermining stats. Nobody thought Brett Hundley had great accuracy because he was coming into the league completing 70% of his passes, scouts looked at those passes and saw that many of them were short area screens and the like.
Football is closer to picking stocks or running a planned economy. Many fortunes lost, or countries impoverished, through people erroneously believing they separated signal from noise. Great caution and doubt is very much warranted.
I feel like whether you look at advanced analytics or just "does the team win" or common sense, you obviously take purdy over herbert and it's not close. Purdy has better metrics; he's been to the super bowl and dragged the chiefs to overtime. Herbert is 0-3 in the playoffs. No matter what system you use, he's worse.
Football is just not the sport for these arguments.
It's so context dependent. Darnold's value clearly rocketed above Purdy by virtue of simply existing on a competent team. The eye test could have told you that 5 years ago. Outside concerns about his intangibles/poise. Darnold has always been better.
So it's not clear you should take Purdy over Herbert. It's very possible the Chargers are just a terrible franchise with so much incompetence he was never going to succeed. None of that will show up in the stats.
Brady's greatness doesn't show up in the stats as the most obvious example of them all. Outside wins and losses anyway. When the unanimous GOAT is not the GOAT in most advanced stats, you should question them.
I’m not particularly invested in any of these players, so I find the who is better conversation not that interesting. I’ll just note the same can be said in regards to Purdy if compared to Stafford‘s last three seasons in Detroit. Indeed, over those three seasons, Stafford is about in the same tier of QB via performance and outcome as Herbert over the last three.
this tracks with what i’ve heard about ben johnson as well and what i think could be football’s version of the basketball 3>2 moment.
apparently he’s obsessed with chunk plays because there seems to be data that supports a correlation between chunk plays (i think defined 8+ yards on a run or 12+ yards on a pass?) and winning. so in effect he isn’t obsessed with caleb’s completion % as long as he’s hitting chunk plays
reminds me of the fact that in basketball you would rather have a 40% 3 point shooter than a 50% 2 point shooter
He's also very good at throwing with anticipation, which probably correlates with the intermediate throw stats.
Ranking are always tough. Tiers are much better. There's a few QBs who are the offense. Then about 10-12 who are clearly good enough to win at a high level with good talent/scheme. People might quibble who is at the margins of those groups, but most reasonable people would agree on most of them.
For some reason this takes me back to the great Elvis Grbac vs Rich Gannon debate
The Sexiest Athlete Alive vs the guy who was supposed to be The Sexiest Athlete Alive.
Brock’s ability illustrates how QB scouting remains a sinkhole. Too much focus on arm strength and less on touch.
too little on decision making, pocket confidence, anticipation, etc
imo scouts and fans love to assume the cannon arm will easily develop pocket awareness touch and sharp decision making despite little precedent
Once a QB gets a rep, it's hard to change it. Elway and Marino were anointed as greats, and could do no wrong their entire careers, regardless of their stats or situations. Other guys didn't get the occasional excuses made for them, or the "nuanced" arguments made. It took forever for Stafford to go from good but not great, to great, and then everyone tries very hard to ignore that he didn't play very well in the playoffs and, like Purdy, now plays for an offensive genius coach. People are sheep.
Yeah but Stafford’s reputation around the league, amongst coaches and players, was always “man if this guy got with a competent organization he could really be great”. And I’d say they were ultimately proven correct. Other NFL QBs and offensive coaches talk about Stafford the same way NBA players talk about Kyrie or Kobe—which is “this guys skill level is on another planet in a way the common fan might not see”.
The polar opposite of this is Jalen Hurts, as the Eagles offense in general, and Hurts' play in particular, has been built around avoiding turnovers.
Which has also been effective -- the 49ers, Eagles, and Rams have been the most successful teams over the past several years, though I think that approach hit diminishing return for the Eagles last year.
But it goes to show that QB peformance is very dependent on team context, and I think especially so now.
Triples McGee was one ugly mofo