Why do you figure the Broncos were so earnest in getting rid of him, why he couldn’t earn the starting job in New York despite the major suckitude of Mark Sanchez and Greg McElroy, and why no team is interested in signing him, let alone giving him a starting job this year?
It’s not because all of the NFL teams can’t recognize talent when they see it or that somehow they don’t want to win so they won’t sign him, it’s because he sucks as an NFL QB.
I dislike the “does not relinquish” rule. A pitcher can leave trailing 0-1, his relievers give up 15 runs to make it 0-16, then his team score 15 runs to make it 15-16, and he gets the loss. Ridiculous. The loss should go to the pitcher that gave up the decisive run (losing team’s score +1). If you lose 3-8, the losing pitcher should be the pitcher who gave up the 4th run.
There are too many reliable statistical measures of a pitcher to care too deeply about the silly won-loss record.
The Broncos would have started him had they not won the Peyton Manning sweepstakes. As for the rest of the NFL, they have a vision in their minds about what a quarterback should be, and if you don’t meet it, you don’t get a shot. Ask Doug Flutie. Heck, ask Doug Flutie AFTER he proved he was an above average NFL quarterback. He still got benched for the more prototype QB who then proceeded to embarrass himself in a playoff game.
That’s the super cynical answer, although it’s a big factor. The less cynical answer is that in order to utilize Tebow’s unique talents and cover up his deficiencies, you have to change your entire offense. Denver did that, and it worked very well. Most NFL offensive coordinators have a little something called ego. They design their system, then they stock it with the players that fit their system. They don’t usually design the offense around the players unless they have no choice.
To keep this discussion relatively on topic, stats don’t lie. Tebow scores touchdowns, and he protects the ball. Sure, it’s only over the equivalent of one season, but QBs with more traditional skill sets get 50 chances to succeed in the league even though they’ve proven again and again that they suck.
Can you think of any example in NFL history where an NFL starter for a team that won a playoff game couldn’t find a starting job anywhere in the league? If Kyle Orton had done that ,he’d have had 10 bids from NFL teams right now. If Mark Sanchez had Tebow’s QB rating, there’d be no question about Sanchez being the starter for the Jets.
They went so hard after Manning because they didn’t want Tebow as their starting QB. He may have been their desperation starter if they couldn’t get any better, but Elway clearly didn’t want Tebow as his starter.
Flutie played for 9 years and started 66 games in the NFL. Tebow isn’t even going to get close to that. Yes, it took awhile for Flutie to get a shot, but lets not pretend that he didn’t get a real one. Tebow had his shot too, and after seeing him in the NFL, nobody wants him. And Flutie’s career QB rating? 76. It’s easy to remember Flutie when he was good, but let’s not get carried away.
Complete bullshit. Denver’s offense didn’t work “very well”. Hell, it could’t find “very well” with a map of Very Wellview, a Very Well Compass and GPS, and Very Well’s guide to finding Very Well with Tebow at QB.
They went three and out way to often, they couldn’t score enough, and he couldn’t pass the ball. Tebow, and the offense built around him, was horrible.
The Redskins, 49ers, and Seahawks had great success with building their systems around the special skills of their QB’s, so this idea that it is only ego that keeps Tebow from success in the NFL is more bullshit.
I thought that was the point of this thread, yes they do “lie”. Win Loss record is a very, very bad way to measure a pitcher’s actual success. And cherry picking “TD per touch” and “lack of turnovers” as the only two stats that apparently matter to your judging a QB just shows how desperate you must be to defend a QB who is a bad NFL QB.
BECAUSE HE SUCKS!! That’s kinda my point. If it comes to recognizing QB talent (or in Tebow’s case QB suckitude), I’ll take my chances with 32 general managers and coaching staffs who want nothing to do with Tebow as a starting QB in the NFL over cherry picked stats and “he just wins” spewing fans.
Funny you mention him. You know what QB had a winning record, was a starter for his team, and barely missed the playoffs before his team decided he was expendable and traded him to another team? Kyle Orton.
Funny you should mention that too. Sanchez’s passer rating in 2011? 78.2. Tebow’s? 72.9. That’s right, during the run of amazing QB play, when Tebow had his offense playing “very well”, his QB rating was 72.9.
Outside of the “here’s two stats I like, but don’t tell me about the others” and “wins and losses are all that matter in deciding player’s value”, this is a hijack, so I’ll leave you to it.
Thank God we got another Tebow discussion in here. Maybe we can get a gun control side conversation going too?
I conceded his deficiencies, I was just explaining why he won, since it wasn’t a great mystery to anyone but 32 NFL GMs. Kinda like Buddy Ryan’s diss of Cris Carter, “All he does is score touchdowns!”
And I don’t really consider GMs to be some kind of ultimate authority given how many players keep on getting chances who are terrible, usually because of their physical size or arm strength or running speed, whereas a guy like Jerry Rice, there are at least 15 teams who if they’d drafted him at all, would have rarely put him in a game because he didn’t excel in any single combine attribute. He was just a great wide receiver.
Baseball tends to be less stupid because players advance up through the minor leagues and even players who lack tools will eventually get a chance if they keep on putting up good numbers. But as in the Storm Davis example, sometimes teams get carried away with W-L.
For an extra $5, I can give you gay marriage, Michelle Bachmann, and maybe throw in a side of Obama for free.
Hey, nate Silver has brought sabermetrics to politics, why not?
Denver didn’t score more points after the switch to Tebow. Now, despite the “Tebow Sucks” meme, they didn’t score noticeably fewer points, or have fewer offensive yards, but they didn’t exactly turn into a scoring machine.
You’re right about having to change your entire offense, though. Tebow’s problem is that after making those changes, the offense doesn’t turn into a juggernaut, it just manages to be passable. You don’t change your entire philosophy to incorporate a guy who is, at best, OK.
I like the concept of quality starts, but I’d probably go 7 innings 3 runs instead of 6 innings as the bar. You regularly give a team 7 and 3, that’s a 3.85ERA, only slightly better than league average ERA, but I bet most teams would be thrilled to get that day in and day out from anyone but their #1 pitcher.
I hear the com;plaint about “Quality Starts” a lot. I don’t get it.
Yes, 6 innings with 3 earned runs is a 4.50 ERA. In theory a pitcher could start 35 games and pitch six innings and give up 3 earned runs in every single game and be credited with 35 quality starts despite having season numbers that would look mediocre.
But that’s the minimum expectation, and there is no credit given in quality starts for exceeding it. A pitcher with 23 quality starts did NOT pitch 23 games in which he pitched exactly six innings an gave up exactly three earned runs; nothing like that has ever happened and it never will. Instead, he pitched one game where he went 6 innings for 3 runs, but then in another he went 8 innings and gave up just one run. And you don’t get credit for a “Super Duper Quality Start” for that.
Quality Starts is meant solely to indicate starts in which the pitcher gave his team a reasonably good shot at winning the game. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and 6IP/3ER seems like as good a minimum standard to me as any.
I’m really sorry guys.
Right. Mostly because the next higher level, 2 runs or less in 6 innings, is too high an expectation, and the next lower level, 4 runs or less in 6 innings, is too low an expectation, at least IMO.
Well, you could bump it to 3 runs in 7 IP. That’s a 3.85 ERA.
Pitchers so rarely throw nine innings that something I think ERA should be recalculated based on six innings.
That sounds good except that there is going to be a lot strong pitching efforts that won’t get a quality start awarded because the pitcher was pulled prior to 7 innings for reasons other than ineffectiveness (pitch count, controlling seasonal IPs, being careful with rookies…). I think 6 innings is the best standard because most starts go at least 6 but less than 7.
As I understand it, the ERA isn’t based on 9 innings pitched, it’s based on the actual number of innings pitched, but projected to 9 innings because they want to measure a pitcher’s effectiveness over the length of a standard game. Otherwise, ERA would be Earned Runs Allowed x 6/(approximately 6, or the average innings pitched per game), which would always just return Earned Runs Allowed, roughly. I get you, why project ERs over 9 innings when pitchers never play an entire game. If you get rid of the projection though, you’d have to restructure the ERA formula (and philosophy), not just adjust a value.
That’s at least how I understand it.
I don’t want a “quality” start to be what most starts are. It should be, if not exceptional, notably better than the norm. Whatever reason a guy gets pulled before 7 innings, that’s less impact he has on the game, and more of a load for the other pitchers to carry.
6 vs 7 innings isn’t a particularly important distinction, it’s just a function of what I think of as a good start vs. an ordinary start.
Right, I’m proposing it be calculated based on six innings instead of nine. But if I were really making up a new measurement I’d want it to also reward the Verlanders and Hernandezes of the world who can actually throw nine innings.
Why not per inning?