Mike Vick: Delicate Punk?

[Operation Ripper]

He's a little grrl back there. Little runs every now and then, can't pass to save his life (relevent to other QBs). Am I right? An idiot?

[Operation Ripper]

He's a little grrl back there. Little runs every now and then, can't pass to save his life (relevent to other QBs). Am I right? An idiot?

Oops, just threw another INT against NO. :wally

[ftg]

While he's not the greatest passer ever, he was one of the greatest running QBs ever. The combination made him an incredibly offensive threat.

So the opponent's strategy is clear: Take his knees out. He isn't going to last much longer in the NFL. What you are seeing today is a Vick who is still recovering from a two week old injury.

Sad to have opposing teams think destroying another player's career is a fair strategy.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

While he's not the greatest passer ever, he was one of the greatest running QBs ever. The combination made him an incredibly offensive threat.

So the opponent's strategy is clear: Take his knees out. He isn't going to last much longer in the NFL. What you are seeing today is a Vick who is still recovering from a two week old injury.

Sad to have opposing teams think destroying another player's career is a fair strategy.

Destroying his career is not the goal. Stopping him is. If he wants to prolong his career he needs to learn how to pass or stop being so fragile. Otherwise he'll be a very undersized running back playing option until he gets knocked out.

Besides, going for the knees is very fair. Why should a defense have to pussyfoot around a quarterback of limited skill because he's more fragile than a piece of china?

[Marley23]

He's always dangerous and an amazing runner, but I've never thought he was a great QB. If he incorporates the running skills into a more complete game, he could be one.

As far as beating Vick, you don't need to take his knees out. The Eagles did exactly the right thing in the NFC championship game last year: have guys on the outside, spy, and don't overpursue.

[ISiddiqui]

Vick may not be the best passer, but has a great eye for when to take off running and make big plays to keep drives going. He has a very good winning percentage as a starter. The guy just wins.

[ftg]

He is also not delicate. 300lb guys can destroy anybody's knees. He gets hurt more because he gets more dirty hits.

[Spoke]

The guy just wins.

...and he just won again today.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

He is also not delicate. 300lb guys can destroy anybody's knees. He gets hurt more because he gets more dirty hits.

That's a steaming load of crap. Every running back in the league, every wide receiver in the league, and every kick returner in the league takes hits in the legs on a regular basis. The vast majority of them get up. That Vick gets hurt a lot is entirely the fault of a) the offensive line that can't keep the opposing defense off him or b) Michael Vick. If you're going to go for the heroic 50-yard run keep in mind that at some point you have to slide or you're going to get plugged. He can't throw, he won't slide, and his line sucks. That's why he gets hurt all the time.

By your criteria the hit that Ben Roethlisberger took last week to the knee was dirty, and we all know what a mobile, scrambling quarterback he is.

[mhendo]

By your criteria the hit that Ben Roethlisberger took last week to the knee was dirty, and we all know what a mobile, scrambling quarterback he is.Well, he'd better get mobile and scramble back in the Steelers line-up pretty quick, if today's performance is any indication. Maddox should have been wearing a Jacksonville uniform, for all the good he did Pittsburgh.

[Boggette]

I gotta respect the guy, too, for going for the extra yards when he runs. None of this sissy "slide feet first so they don't get you" crap. He can take a hit with the best of em.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

I gotta respect the guy, too, for going for the extra yards when he runs. None of this sissy "slide feet first so they don't get you" crap. He can take a hit with the best of em.

No he can't. That's why he's always on the disabled list. He plays like he think he can, but he is far too valuable to the Falcons to take hits and get laid up all the time.

[unwashed brain]

No he can't. That's why he's always on the disabled list. He plays like he think he can, but he is far too valuable to the Falcons to take hits and get laid up all the time.

There is no Disabled List in the NFL. There is an injury report and a player can be placed on Injured Reserve. I've also heard mention of a PUP (Physically Unable to Perform) status but am unsure how that differs if at all from the status of a player on IR.

[Marley23]

I think players on IR are gone for the season. There are still the injury rating things, and Vick has still not played 16 games in a season.

[Trunk]

First of all. . .I wouldn't criticize Vick for running like a girl, or not being able to pass relative to other QBs. He's a QB with his own style. A style that involves running as well as passing to move the ball down the field.

THAT, he does well. His record speaks for itself. Atlanta wins games and makes the playoffs when they have Vick, and they don't make the playoffs when they don't.

That said, he is somewhat fragile. He's missed a lot of games over the years. I don't know if he's just been unlucky, or if he's soft. Would that broken leg the Ravens gave him have broken everyone elses leg? It didn't look that bad, but that's impossible to judge.

[Ellis Dee]

Vick is no quarterback, he is a running back. Anybody see Tomlinson's HB Pass for a TD against the Giants on Sunday Night Football? The Chargers clearly got the better deal from that trade. (Vick for Tomlinson, Brees and that return guy. [Tim Dwight?])

There was a thread a while back asking if the option is so popular (and effective) in college, why don't the pros do it? The short answer is that the pros will kill the QB. Which brings us to Vick.

There are many problems with scrambling in the NFL. It is no coincidence that only 1 QB has ever scrambled for 300+ yards in a season and managed to win the Superbowl. (Steve Young.) Scramblers make the playoffs all the time, but are simply incapable of winning the big one.

[Trunk]

Vick is no quarterback, he is a running back. Anybody see Tomlinson's HB Pass for a TD against the Giants on Sunday Night Football? The Chargers clearly got the better deal from that trade. (Vick for Tomlinson, Brees and that return guy. [Tim Dwight?])

There was a thread a while back asking if the option is so popular (and effective) in college, why don't the pros do it? The short answer is that the pros will kill the QB. Which brings us to Vick.

There are many problems with scrambling in the NFL. It is no coincidence that only 1 QB has ever scrambled for 300+ yards in a season and managed to win the Superbowl. (Steve Young.) Scramblers make the playoffs all the time, but are simply incapable of winning the big one.
I would call Elway and Favre and Steve Young scramblers.

At least more than I'd call them "Drop back passers."

None of them are scramblers in the Mike Vick/Randall Cunningham mode but those are the extremes. I don't think that you can say scrambler's are underrepresented among Superbowl winners.

Bledsoe and Marino never won superbowls either, and Peyton is still short of one, so the I don't really see the lead-legs-golden-arms there too much either.

Anyway -- Vick's first full season was 2002. They went to the playoffs, beat GB in GB and then lost to the Eagles.

2003, he's out. Atlanta doesn't sniff the playoffs.

2004, he plays another full season, Atlanta makes it to the NFC championship. He's come as close to the big one as Peyton has.

Say what you will about his toughness, but as for being a winning QB who can also win playoff games, you can't argue with Vick's numbers.

[Trunk]

Vick is no quarterback, he is a running back. Anybody see Tomlinson's HB Pass for a TD against the Giants on Sunday Night Football? The Chargers clearly got the better deal from that trade. (Vick for Tomlinson, Brees and that return guy. [Tim Dwight?])

Yeah, clearly. That's why they lost a playoff game at home against the wildcard Jets last year.

[Marley23]

Yeah, clearly. That's why they lost a playoff game at home against the wildcard Jets last year.
Tomlinson is a better RB than Vick, and Brees is a better QB. Edge: San Diego. ;)

[asterion]

Is there a difference between a scrambling quarterback and a quarterback that's better outside the pocket? I'm thinking Plummer here, where he will run at times but is generally better outside the pocket than in it.

[Ellis Dee]

Is there a difference between a scrambling quarterback and a quarterback that's better outside the pocket? I'm thinking Plummer here, where he will run at times but is generally better outside the pocket than in it.A huge difference. A rolling pocket is not detrimental; one could argue it is the best way to utilize a mobile QB, as opposed to scrambling for rushing yards. Big Ben is also very good at this, in addition to Jake.

Regarding Elway, he didn't scramble for over 300 yards in either of his winning Superbowl years. In fact, he only scrambled for 300+ yards once in his career (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/ElwaJo00.htm). That year, the Redskins smoked the Broncos in the Superbowl 42 - 10 (http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/1987.htm). His career average (remarkably consistent up through his penultimate season) was 3.3 rushes for 14.6 yards per game. Hardly a big scrambler. Perhaps Elway is a good example of a rolling pocket style of mobile QB; I wouldn't know, as I didn't see enough of his games.

As far as getting eliminated earlier last year, the Chargers would have likely been able to do just as well as the Falcons had they been the ones in the soft NFC.

[Boggette]

No he can't. That's why he's always on the disabled list. ...

This is simply not true. He takes a lot of hits and gets back up from them. There have been a few that put him out, but he's taken more than have hurt him.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

After last night's performance I think we can agree that punk is applicable, anyway: 11 of 26 with 3 picks and a gaudy 16.3 passer rating. Dare I say he was en fuego?

No. More proof that he can't pass and is going to have a short career. If all he can do is run he's dead meat.

[bordelond]

More proof that he can't pass and is going to have a short career. If all he can do is run he's dead meat.
He may well survive the open-field hits, but Father Time will take a toll on those legs of his. Vick will either learn to pass, or be reduced to competing for a CFL slot by the time he's 32-33.

[borschevsky]

[Tim Dwight?]Yeah, that's who it was. I remember because when the trade happened I was thinking of writing a book, and my main character was also named Tim Dwight.

[BigDummy]

After last night's performance I think we can agree that punk is applicable, anyway: 11 of 26 with 3 picks and a gaudy 16.3 passer rating. Dare I say he was en fuego?

No. More proof that he can't pass and is going to have a short career. If all he can do is run he's dead meat.
Is that what it was? Dang, Dilfer's was better than that.

[Ellis Dee]

Is that what it was? Dang, Dilfer's was better than that.Well, as ridiculous as it osunds, Testaverde had a higher rating than Vick in that game. For Vick, and pretty much all QBs, I think they should include rushes in the passer rating. It would work pretty easily.

Count every dropback as an attempt, with the exception of spike plays, regardless if they run or throw. A sack would count as an incompletion, plus the minus yards. A lost fumble should count as a pick. A scramble for positive yards should count as a completion, plus the positive yards. A rushing TD should count the same as the passing TDs.

This would no longer be a passer rating, obviously, but it would effectively take into account the production gained by scrambling. I wonder what Vick and Testaverde would get as passer ratings in that game with this method compared to what their traditional passer ratings were.

[Airman Doors, USAF]

I don't think that they should include running in a quarterback's rating. The thing that distinguishes a quarterback from everybody else on the field is the ability to move his team through passing. If he can't pass he becomes a glorified running back and in that case they might as well run the option or do direct snaps to the running backs and save the trouble of scouting quarterbacks.

[Hi, Neighbor!]

I don't think that they should include running in a quarterback's rating. The thing that distinguishes a quarterback from everybody else on the field is the ability to move his team through passing. If he can't pass he becomes a glorified running back and in that case they might as well run the option or do direct snaps to the running backs and save the trouble of scouting quarterbacks.

Running is part of being a quarterback! If the offensive line breaks down, it's not the quarterback's fault. A good scrambling ability should gain some sort of recognition in the quarterback's rating.

[Hi, Neighbor!]

Tomlinson is a better RB than Vick

Tomlinson may be a better quarterback than Vick as well. He has thrown for 3 touchdowns in his career (2 already this season) for a perfect passer rating of 158.3! He's 3/3, 82 Yds and 3 TDs.

[jackelope]

In conversations like this one, I always think of the line from (I think) Vince Lombardi:

"Statistics are for losers."

When Vick plays, the Falcons win. Period.

[Marley23]

Running is part of being a quarterback! If the offensive line breaks down, it's not the quarterback's fault. A good scrambling ability should gain some sort of recognition in the quarterback's rating.
There's a reason that the thing is formally called the "passer rating." That's the only thing it's supposed to measure. It would be very interesting if they developed another measurement that includes scrambling, but that's separate.

[ftg]

The Falcons have a long history of being a seriously disfunctional organization. Really terrible drafting and such.

Once in a while they get lucky and they land a Vick.

But they still don't have an offensive line or receivers. Two weeks in a row of lots of dropped passes.

One of the most recent screw-ups was Peerless Price. More money down the tube.

Vick's passing stats don't reflect his possible ability.

The Falcon's are 5-2, so what does that make the QBs of teams with lesser records????

[asterion]

I think that if you are going to start tracking scrambling, then you have to start tracking pocket vs. out-of-pocket passing as well. Being able to run and pass out of the pocket is just as important as being able to run for a few yards.

[Hung Mung]

If you add scrambling statistics to the passer rating, Joey Harrington is still a grotesquely overpaid backup.

[Ellis Dee]

I don't think that they should include running in a quarterback's rating. The thing that distinguishes a quarterback from everybody else on the field is the ability to move his team through passing. If he can't pass he becomes a glorified running back and in that case they might as well run the option or do direct snaps to the running backs and save the trouble of scouting quarterbacks.Hey, as Jimmy Chitwood can attest, I'm the biggest anti-scrambler you can be. I just hate scrambling as a concept in the NFL, mainly because you simply can't win by scrambling.

But as much as I like and defend the passer rating formula -- which I do anytime it's dismissed as irrelevant -- it is clearly broken in some ways. Only a broken system would rate Testaverde's performance on MNF as anything but a disaster. Three lost fumbles!

Dropping back to pass and fumbling the ball away directly and severely impacts a quarterback's ability to move his team through passing. The fact that it is ignored questions the credibility of the passer rating formula.

Here's the numbers I mentioned, and tell me what you about how well they reflect the performance on the field Monday night.

Passing Stats
Vick: 11 of 26 for 116, 0 TD, 3 Int
Testaverde: 11 of 18 for 140, O TD, 1 Int

Rushing Stats
Vick: 6 for 21, 2 TD, 0 Fumbles lost (factors out the three kneeldowns)
Testaverde: 1 for 1, 1 TD, 0 Fumbles lost

Pocket Stats
Vick: 3 dropbacks, 3 sacks for -11, 0 Fumbles lost
Testaverde: 5 dropbacks, 4 sacks for -40, 3 Fumbles lost

Combined Stats
Vick: 17 of 35 for 126, 2 TD, 3 TO
Testaverde: 12 of 24 for 101, 1 TD, 4 TO

Passer Rating (conventional)
Vick: 16.35
Testaverde: 62.27

Quarterback Rating (my proposal)
Vick: 40.89
Testaverde: 35.59

Of note is that I used the Passer Rating Calculator (http://football.stassen.com/pass-eff/), which is a nice resource for anyone who wants to calculate a passer rating but finds the formula cumbersome.

In my opinion, the quarterback ratings I suggested much more accurately reflect the performance on the field by the two signal callers. Not only do I not think that Testaverde was leaps and bounds better than Vick, but I agree with the QB rating that Vick was a bit less sucky than Vinny.

[Ellis Dee]

I think that if you are going to start tracking scrambling, then you have to start tracking pocket vs. out-of-pocket passing as well. Being able to run and pass out of the pocket is just as important as being able to run for a few yards.I don't understand what you mean. A 10 yard completion counts the same whether it was thrown from the pocket or on a bootleg. It's not like they only tally pocket passes. Could you elaborate what you mean?

[asterion]

Well, let's say it's not a designed bootleg or rollout but a breakdown of pass protection. The quarterback leaves the pocket looking for a passing lane. That's a lot different, in my opinion, than throwing from the pocket and success depends much more on the quarterback. Or maybe I've spent too much time watching QBs like Plummer and Rothlisberger.

[Ellis Dee]

Well, let's say it's not a designed bootleg or rollout but a breakdown of pass protection. The quarterback leaves the pocket looking for a passing lane. That's a lot different, in my opinion, than throwing from the pocket and success depends much more on the quarterback. Or maybe I've spent too much time watching QBs like Plummer and Rothlisberger."Passing lanes" generally only exist in the pocket, as the term usually refers to the lanes between the linemen.

I don't know if I'd give bonus points for throwing on the run. Sure, Plummer may be one of the best ever at throwing a perfect strike (and tight spiral) while on the run, but from the pocket he's not so hot.

Six of one, half dozen of the other, IMO.

[soulmurk]

I wouldn't mind seeing a revamp of the rating system, but at what point is it just too much information to have to track and make judgement calls on? Pretty soon you'd have 63 different categories that, when matched up in a QB comparison, would be difficult to judge the overall effectiveness of the two.

In either case, I'd like to see non-intercepted passes not marked as intercepted passes and count against the QB; that is, a pass that a receiver should have caught but loses due to no fault of the QB (like a tip into the CB's hands or a ball bouncing off the receivers chest and into the hands of the S). No reason that should count as an interception, as it wasn't intercepted, but rather redirected.

[Hi, Neighbor!]

I also think the cap should be taken out of the current passer rating formula. Sure, there may be no one that completes 77.5% (or whatever the upper limit is) of their passes, but why the cap to begin with? Not just the upper limits, but the lower ones as well. This goes for comp. %, Yds/Att., etc.

[Ellis Dee]

a pass that a receiver should have caught but loses due to no fault of the QB (like a tip into the CB's hands or a ball bouncing off the receivers chest and into the hands of the S). No reason that should count as an interception, as it wasn't intercepted, but rather redirected.Well, I think you've stumbled into the "too much information" and "subjective" areas you were talking about. While I tend to agree with you, one could argue that a tipped pick would have been a catch if it were a better throw.

I don't see a need for a total retooling of anything. Keep the passer rating as is. Simply create a new QB rating that adds in all the other quantifiable activities of the QB: getting sacked, scrambling, and fumbling.

If done, I think most people would rapidly marginalize the passer rating and focus on the QB rating, as it is simply not possible to judge guys like Vick with the passer rating. It's not misleading, or a bit off. It's fundamentally irrelevant when it comes to measuring his performance as a QB. On the flip side, the QB rating would end up being basically identical to the passer rating for the pocket passers.

A win win!

[Talon Karrde]

I have to say, when I first saw the first post I thought the OP must have been drunk or something because it didn't make sense.
Then I realized that this thread is about a football player and not punk rock.

[The Big Cheese]

The Falcons have a long history of being a seriously disfunctional organization. Really terrible drafting and such.

What are you talking about, they drafted Favre, right? ;)

[Mullinator]

I wouldn't mind seeing a revamp of the rating system, but at what point is it just too much information to have to track and make judgement calls on? Pretty soon you'd have 63 different categories that, when matched up in a QB comparison, would be difficult to judge the overall effectiveness of the two.

In either case, I'd like to see non-intercepted passes not marked as intercepted passes and count against the QB; that is, a pass that a receiver should have caught but loses due to no fault of the QB (like a tip into the CB's hands or a ball bouncing off the receivers chest and into the hands of the S). No reason that should count as an interception, as it wasn't intercepted, but rather redirected.

As a rabid fan of seriously in-depth baseball statistics that track mind-numbingly small minutae, I tend to think there is no such thing as too much information. If the data exists and can be used in a way to lead to more accurate, timely, and useful decisions than there should be formulas and processes that aid in those decisions. Baseball is the sport most associated with this, but in reading and looking at a lot of the metrics that are starting to show up in basketball and football, I think those sports are really closing the gap in amount of data looked at. It's just that at this point, very few people have adopted the new statistics so a big leap to general acceptance is still necessary.

[Hi, Neighbor!]

Tomlinson may be a better quarterback than Vick as well. He has thrown for 3 touchdowns in his career (2 already this season) for a perfect passer rating of 158.3! He's 3/3, 82 Yds and 3 TDs.

He's done it again. From Yahoo! Sports: LaDainian Tomlinson passed to Eric Parker to the right for 17 yard gain

That was from the game today (10/30) against the Chiefs. Tomlinson is simply the most disgusting player in the game today.

[RickJay]

As a rabid fan of seriously in-depth baseball statistics that track mind-numbingly small minutae, I tend to think there is no such thing as too much information. If the data exists and can be used in a way to lead to more accurate, timely, and useful decisions than there should be formulas and processes that aid in those decisions. Baseball is the sport most associated with this, but in reading and looking at a lot of the metrics that are starting to show up in basketball and football, I think those sports are really closing the gap in amount of data looked at. It's just that at this point, very few people have adopted the new statistics so a big leap to general acceptance is still necessary.
I was thinking that very same thing.

"Quarterback rating" is a garbage stat; it's a wholly arbitrary formula that produces a number that does not actually refer to anything that happened on the field. It's the height of insanity to attribute meaning to small differences in QB rating, or to attribute any meaning at all to QB rating over a small data sample (like one game.) Over the course of a season you can fairly assume that a guy with a 72.5 rating is way worse than a guy with a 99.8 rating, but frankly, a glance at the major stats will tell you that anyway. There's no real justification for the way QB rating is put together. Should TD pass rate and interception rate be of the same weight? Gosh, I don't think so - it seems to me that avoiding interceptions is vastly more important - but has anyone done any sort of stody to see if it should be that way?

The problem with QB rating isn't that it's commonly adopted, it's that it's shit. Football is now where baseball was about 25 years ago, when statistical analysis was just getting started and the Baseball Digests were full of nonsensical stats like "runs produced" and "Game-winning RBI" and this or that average. Most of them were crap, but you had to go through that to produce the useful stuff.

[astorian]

I was thinking that very same thing.

"Quarterback rating" is a garbage stat; it's a wholly arbitrary formula that produces a number that does not actually refer to anything that happened on the field. It's the height of insanity to attribute meaning to small differences in QB rating, or to attribute any meaning at all to QB rating over a small data sample (like one game.) Over the course of a season you can fairly assume that a guy with a 72.5 rating is way worse than a guy with a 99.8 rating, but frankly, a glance at the major stats will tell you that anyway. There's no real justification for the way QB rating is put together. Should TD pass rate and interception rate be of the same weight? Gosh, I don't think so - it seems to me that avoiding interceptions is vastly more important - but has anyone done any sort of stody to see if it should be that way?

The problem with QB rating isn't that it's commonly adopted, it's that it's shit. Football is now where baseball was about 25 years ago, when statistical analysis was just getting started and the Baseball Digests were full of nonsensical stats like "runs produced" and "Game-winning RBI" and this or that average. Most of them were crap, but you had to go through that to produce the useful stuff.


While I agree with you about the worthlessness of QB ratings (in my opinion, they put WAY too high a value on completion percentage, which mean dink quarterbacks in a system that requires only safe, short passes are unduly rewarded), there are numerous differences between baseball and football, and those differences can make statistical comparisons close to meaningless.

Football teams can and do run vastly different systems. A mediocre QB on a pass-happy team (pretty much anybody at Texas Tech or BYU, for instance) can put up phenomenal numbers, while a superb quarterback in a grind-it-out, run-oriented system (Bob Griese, for instance) may pass very little, and may put up underwhelming numbers.

In baseball, a guy with 49 homers, 110 runs scored, 149 RBIs and a .356 batting average is good. He's definitely more productive than a guy with 8 homers. 40 runs scored, 36 RBIs and a .238 average. End of story. But a quarterback who throws for 4000 yards and 20 touchdowns in a season is NOT necessarily better than one who throws for 2500 yards and 12 touchdowns. It's possible that the latter quarterback is doing EXACTLY what his team's system requires, and is much better than the former. It's also possible that the former quarterback plays for a lousy team, one that's always trailing by wide margins, which in turn means he HAS to throw the ball a lot more than the latter QB.

I'm hardly the first to say this, but the single most telling stat in football is one that gets very little attention from TV color analysts: yards per attempt. If you show me that stat, and that stat alone for the two quarterbacks in a football game, I can probably tell you the winning team about 90% of the time.

If quarterback A was 10 of 18 for 196 yards, while quarterback B was 34 of 51 for 300 yards, I'd bet almost anything that A's team won the game. The fact that B's completion percentage was higher is utterly irrelevant. The stats suggest that, since A averaged nearly 11 yards per attempt, he burned the defense, built up a big lead, and didn't have to throw much in the second half. Meanwhile, B was passing constantly in a futile attempt to catch up... but could never find anybody deep, and piled up a lot of meaningless yards.

[RickJay]

While I agree with you about the worthlessness of QB ratings (in my opinion, they put WAY too high a value on completion percentage, which mean dink quarterbacks in a system that requires only safe, short passes are unduly rewarded), there are numerous differences between baseball and football, and those differences can make statistical comparisons close to meaningless.
Which is precisely the problem.

The baseball equivalent to football statistics is fielding statistics, which are so heavily team-dependent that they independently mean almost nothing except in the most extreme circumstances.

Football teams can and do run vastly different systems. A mediocre QB on a pass-happy team (pretty much anybody at Texas Tech or BYU, for instance) can put up phenomenal numbers
But that depends what you mean by "phenomenal numbers."

A QB in a pass-crazy system will post monster raw numbers - 4000 yards, 30 TD passes. But you would not expect his interception rate to be lower than a quarterback in a rush-heavy offense, would you?

If you wanted to start to really crunch QB numbers, here's what you have to do;

1. Run some genuine analysis to determine how important the critical numbers are. Is pass completion percentage as important as yards per attempt? What's more important, interception rate or TD rate? How do these measurables relate, in real terms, to offensive success? What about variables not presently part of QB rating, like first downs, scrambling stats, 3rd down conversions, red zone figures?

2. Determine the right measurement of opportunity. Should we be measuring QBs by attempts (which QB rating does) or by total downs of offense, to determine the value of a team's passing game as an overall percentage of its offense? Or should passing offense be measured by time of possession? Or not?

3. Figure the overall context. How do you account for teammate skill?


while a superb quarterback in a grind-it-out, run-oriented system (Bob Griese, for instance) may pass very little, and may put up underwhelming numbers.

In baseball, a guy with 49 homers, 110 runs scored, 149 RBIs and a .356 batting average is good. He's definitely more productive than a guy with 8 homers. 40 runs scored, 36 RBIs and a .238 average. End of story. But a quarterback who throws for 4000 yards and 20 touchdowns in a season is NOT necessarily better than one who throws for 2500 yards and 12 touchdowns. It's possible that the latter quarterback is doing EXACTLY what his team's system requires, and is much better than the former. It's also possible that the former quarterback plays for a lousy team, one that's always trailing by wide margins, which in turn means he HAS to throw the ball a lot more than the latter QB.

I'm hardly the first to say this, but the single most telling stat in football is one that gets very little attention from TV color analysts: yards per attempt. If you show me that stat, and that stat alone for the two quarterbacks in a football game, I can probably tell you the winning team about 90% of the time.

If quarterback A was 10 of 18 for 196 yards, while quarterback B was 34 of 51 for 300 yards, I'd bet almost anything that A's team won the game. The fact that B's completion percentage was higher is utterly irrelevant. The stats suggest that, since A averaged nearly 11 yards per attempt, he burned the defense, built up a big lead, and didn't have to throw much in the second half. Meanwhile, B was passing constantly in a futile attempt to catch up... but could never find anybody deep, and piled up a lot of meaningless yards.[/QUOTE]

[Operation Ripper]

... with his 63.0, Vick has worst QB rating in the entire NFL, link. (http://www.nfl.com/stats/leaders/NFL/PRAT/2005/regular)

[Ellis Dee]

If you wanted to start to really crunch QB numbers, here's what you have to do;

1. Run some genuine analysis to determine how important the critical numbers are. Is pass completion percentage as important as yards per attempt? What's more important, interception rate or TD rate? How do these measurables relate, in real terms, to offensive success? What about variables not presently part of QB rating, like first downs, scrambling stats, 3rd down conversions, red zone figures?

2. Determine the right measurement of opportunity. Should we be measuring QBs by attempts (which QB rating does) or by total downs of offense, to determine the value of a team's passing game as an overall percentage of its offense? Or should passing offense be measured by time of possession? Or not?

3. Figure the overall context. How do you account for teammate skill?Well, #1 may be impossible due to #3. But you're definitely on to something with #2. Not sure where, (maybe in this very thread), but I clicked a link recently that brought me to an interesting QB rating website.

Unlike all other measures, which are founded on a "per attempt" basis, this site rated QBs on a "per drive" basis. That seemed like the ideal way to go. Yards per drive, points per drive, etc... The idea was that a QB who passes up and down the field and then hands off to a bruising back on the 1 gets discredited in any "per attempt" system simply by virtue of playing on a team with a bruising goal line back on the roster.

The site also factored in down and distance situations, but the "per drive" basis of the stats really stood out as relevant and meaningful, at least IMO.

[unwashed brain]

Regarding statistical analysis of players, please see www.footballoutsiders.com