Post by Reignman on Jan 22, 2017 20:33:24 GMT -6
(My QBR rant from VJ in November 2015)
Or Total BS as I like to call it. The ridiculous statistic that ESPN has invented to try to assign value to a QB's performance. Nobody outside of ESPN has accepted this measure and for good reason. Mainly because nobody can figure it out. Nobody knows how they calculate it, and they ain't telling us.
Apparently they don't fault a QB for things that aren't his fault, like dropped balls, but it also doesn't punish him for dropped INT's. Biased much? It also puts more weight on passes at different times and situations throughout the game. A 10 yard completion in the 4th quarter of a close game is more valuable than a 10 yard completion in the 1st quarter for example.
It's a BS system and I'm going to list several examples of why I think that is.
First of all, why would a 10 yard completion in the 4th quarter of a close game be more valuable than one earlier in the game? Perhaps an extra 10 yard completion or 2 earlier in the game would have put the game away sooner, so why is that not just as valuable? And why is a QB punished for having a big lead early? It reminds me of the 4th quarter comeback statistic. You have to play just bad enough for the first 3 quarters to allow a team to hang around for you to even attempt a 4th quarter comeback. Why is that rewarded? The QBR seems to be trying to do the same thing, reward you for playing better at the end. Would you rather have a QB that's always blowing teams out or one that always has to mount a 4th quarter comeback? Do you want Rodgers or Tebow?
Week 5, New England at Dallas, Brady vs Weeden. The Patriots won that game 30-6. Brady went 20/27 for 275 yards, 2 TD's, and 0 INT. Weeden went 26/39 for 187 yards, 0 TD's, and 1 INT. It doesn't take a football guru to figure out which QB had the better game, but according to ESPN's Total QBR nonsense, Weeden had the better game. His QBR was 26.9 to Brady's 24.1. Yeah try not to laugh. You can't even claim Weeden played great at the end. I don't care what formula you want to use to calculate this game, you have to do some serious twisting to make Weeden look like the better QB, and not even Ponder apologists can pull that off. 26.9 seems about right for Weeden, but in what world is Brady's performance a 24.1 (out of 100)? What could they possibly be punishing him for? The fact that he played Weeden? Was the Cowboys defense that bad? Was it a typo? We'll never know and that's one of the reasons why nobody in their right mind should accept this statistic. It's ridiculous, it's not transparent, and the average fan can't calculate it on their own at home.The traditional QB rating has Brady at 130.9 and Weeden at 66.9. That system has it's own flaws, but which rating system makes more sense?
Example #2. Peyton Manning is having an awful season statistically. He's only completing 59.9% of his passes, he only has 2180 yards and 9 TD's, while throwing 17 INT's. Ryan Tannehill is not having the best season, but I would think most sane people would agree that he's having a better season than Manning. He's completing 63.6% of his passes for 2454 yards, 15 TD's and only 9 INT's. Looks pretty clear doesn't it? Tannehill leads him in every category by a wide margin. Only ESPN's Total QBR would say Manning is having a better year than Tannehill. It gives Manning a QBR of 45.0 and Tannehill 35.2. So it's not even close. They're actually saying Manning is having a MUCH better year than Tannehill. Based on what? Because the Broncos have more wins? So the QBR basically rewards whatever QB has the better defense? What does the traditional QB rating say about these guys? Tannehill 89.3 and Manning 67.6. Again that seems to make more sense.
My favorite example for how broken this system is used to be this one from the QBR wiki page.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Quarterback_Rating
But now when I go back and check these games on ESPN, Rodgers has a QBR of 71.0 for his game, and Tebow a 55.5 for his, so they must have revamped the system since then or went back and changed some games to make it look less controversial. Originally they had Tebow at 83.2 and Rodgers 82.1.
Oh here it is, I guess that explains it. There are still plenty of examples out there that prove this system is still deeply flawed, they just need to update the wiki.
Now the best example is the game which the Total QBR says is the best rated game ever. And there's already a nicely written article about it here at NBC sports from just 2 days ago. I couldn't have ranted better about it myself lol.
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/11/19/charlie-batchs-186-yard-two-pick-game-has-espns-best-qbr-ever/
The article then goes on to point out things that happened during that game. *spoiler alert* It doesn't contain anything that helps prove Charlie Batch had one of the greatest QB performance ever lol. I know, shocking. Just another head shaking example.
The bottom line is, ESPN is acting cult-like over the QBR, and it's bad for fans. I think about Jim Jones every time I see them try to shove it down our throats. Drink up, it's our special brew muahaha. You can almost see it in the reporters face, they know it's poison but they're contractually obligated to push it anyway. Maybe if they keep playing with "the formula" eventually they'll get it right, but right now it's toxic and it should be put away until they do get it right. Until then, I'll remain skeptical and continue to cringe every time I see someone use it. Oh the QBR is the only statistic you can find to support your argument? That should tell you everything you need to know.
Or Total BS as I like to call it. The ridiculous statistic that ESPN has invented to try to assign value to a QB's performance. Nobody outside of ESPN has accepted this measure and for good reason. Mainly because nobody can figure it out. Nobody knows how they calculate it, and they ain't telling us.
Apparently they don't fault a QB for things that aren't his fault, like dropped balls, but it also doesn't punish him for dropped INT's. Biased much? It also puts more weight on passes at different times and situations throughout the game. A 10 yard completion in the 4th quarter of a close game is more valuable than a 10 yard completion in the 1st quarter for example.
It's a BS system and I'm going to list several examples of why I think that is.
First of all, why would a 10 yard completion in the 4th quarter of a close game be more valuable than one earlier in the game? Perhaps an extra 10 yard completion or 2 earlier in the game would have put the game away sooner, so why is that not just as valuable? And why is a QB punished for having a big lead early? It reminds me of the 4th quarter comeback statistic. You have to play just bad enough for the first 3 quarters to allow a team to hang around for you to even attempt a 4th quarter comeback. Why is that rewarded? The QBR seems to be trying to do the same thing, reward you for playing better at the end. Would you rather have a QB that's always blowing teams out or one that always has to mount a 4th quarter comeback? Do you want Rodgers or Tebow?
Week 5, New England at Dallas, Brady vs Weeden. The Patriots won that game 30-6. Brady went 20/27 for 275 yards, 2 TD's, and 0 INT. Weeden went 26/39 for 187 yards, 0 TD's, and 1 INT. It doesn't take a football guru to figure out which QB had the better game, but according to ESPN's Total QBR nonsense, Weeden had the better game. His QBR was 26.9 to Brady's 24.1. Yeah try not to laugh. You can't even claim Weeden played great at the end. I don't care what formula you want to use to calculate this game, you have to do some serious twisting to make Weeden look like the better QB, and not even Ponder apologists can pull that off. 26.9 seems about right for Weeden, but in what world is Brady's performance a 24.1 (out of 100)? What could they possibly be punishing him for? The fact that he played Weeden? Was the Cowboys defense that bad? Was it a typo? We'll never know and that's one of the reasons why nobody in their right mind should accept this statistic. It's ridiculous, it's not transparent, and the average fan can't calculate it on their own at home.The traditional QB rating has Brady at 130.9 and Weeden at 66.9. That system has it's own flaws, but which rating system makes more sense?
Example #2. Peyton Manning is having an awful season statistically. He's only completing 59.9% of his passes, he only has 2180 yards and 9 TD's, while throwing 17 INT's. Ryan Tannehill is not having the best season, but I would think most sane people would agree that he's having a better season than Manning. He's completing 63.6% of his passes for 2454 yards, 15 TD's and only 9 INT's. Looks pretty clear doesn't it? Tannehill leads him in every category by a wide margin. Only ESPN's Total QBR would say Manning is having a better year than Tannehill. It gives Manning a QBR of 45.0 and Tannehill 35.2. So it's not even close. They're actually saying Manning is having a MUCH better year than Tannehill. Based on what? Because the Broncos have more wins? So the QBR basically rewards whatever QB has the better defense? What does the traditional QB rating say about these guys? Tannehill 89.3 and Manning 67.6. Again that seems to make more sense.
My favorite example for how broken this system is used to be this one from the QBR wiki page.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Quarterback_Rating
Further controversy erupted when the Total QBR system gave the Denver Broncos' Tim Tebow a higher rating than the Green Bay Packers' Aaron Rodgers in their respective Week 5 contests in 2011. Noting that Rodgers completed 26 of 39 passes for 396 yards and two touchdowns in a win over the Atlanta Falcons, while Tebow completed four of 10 passes for 79 yards and a touchdown, and six rushes for 38 yards and a touchdown, in a loss to the San Diego Chargers, Mike Florio of Profootballtalk.com wrote that he'll "continue to ignore ESPN’s Total QBR stat."[12] Rodgers himself was surprised: "I saw the [QBR stats] and chuckled to myself. I played a full game, [Tebow] played the half.
But now when I go back and check these games on ESPN, Rodgers has a QBR of 71.0 for his game, and Tebow a 55.5 for his, so they must have revamped the system since then or went back and changed some games to make it look less controversial. Originally they had Tebow at 83.2 and Rodgers 82.1.
The formula was modified in 2012 and again in 2013.
Oh here it is, I guess that explains it. There are still plenty of examples out there that prove this system is still deeply flawed, they just need to update the wiki.
Now the best example is the game which the Total QBR says is the best rated game ever. And there's already a nicely written article about it here at NBC sports from just 2 days ago. I couldn't have ranted better about it myself lol.
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/11/19/charlie-batchs-186-yard-two-pick-game-has-espns-best-qbr-ever/
Really. Under “All-Time Best Games” on ESPN.com’s QBR page, the top game on the list is an utterly forgettable game that Batch played in place of the suspended Ben Roethlisberger in 2010. I couldn’t comprehend how 186 yards and two interceptions could add up to the greatest game ever played, with a 99.9 QBR on a scale of 0-100, but then again I didn’t remember exactly what Batch did in that game, and I know ESPN claims that QBR benefits from tape analysis that includes dropped passes and performance under pressure and other things that the traditional stats overlook. So I decided to re-watch Batch’s game and see how it looked.
The article then goes on to point out things that happened during that game. *spoiler alert* It doesn't contain anything that helps prove Charlie Batch had one of the greatest QB performance ever lol. I know, shocking. Just another head shaking example.
The bottom line is, ESPN is acting cult-like over the QBR, and it's bad for fans. I think about Jim Jones every time I see them try to shove it down our throats. Drink up, it's our special brew muahaha. You can almost see it in the reporters face, they know it's poison but they're contractually obligated to push it anyway. Maybe if they keep playing with "the formula" eventually they'll get it right, but right now it's toxic and it should be put away until they do get it right. Until then, I'll remain skeptical and continue to cringe every time I see someone use it. Oh the QBR is the only statistic you can find to support your argument? That should tell you everything you need to know.
You ever notice how nobody outside of ESPN uses the QBR? I mean not without getting laughed at anyway. They're like a cult. They even have cult like terminology, like "action plays". My skin crawled just reading that. After I giggled. And when do these plays with no action occur ESPN? They're called plays from scrimmage for crying out loud. They even have to keep adjusting their formula to have it makes sense.
... and neither is this Chris guy.