The Great Eight Debate: Are Wins a QB Stat?

W/L's are absolutely a QB stat. If not why are they added to their official stats? Coaches and QB's have W/L count next to their names for a reason. On game day they have the most control over an outcome. The real world understands it's not always as simple as he's a good coach stuck with bad players or he's a great QB with bad teammates. I doubt Kirk will ever pull off what Stafford just did and he was given a very similar chance in 2018.

we used to have similar arguments in baseball about 5-10 years ago. People used to think wins and losses were important to a pitcher and their value. There are some differences obviously, but both the QB and pitcher hold the ball most of the game. The main difference to me is that most starting pitcher barely pitch 6 innings these day. It'd be like bringing in a relief QB lol.

I'm not saying the QB isn't the most important guy on the field that day. But lets say you won a game 9-6. Your QB had great field position off a few turnovers from the other side and you kicked three field goals. And let's say your QB had 2 pick in the red zone. Are you giving the QB a win? Teams win individual games in spite of poor QB play. Teams lose individual games in spite of excellent QB play. Good teams do the former more often. Bad teams do the latter more often.

Wins and losses are a team stat unless you're playing singles tennis.




was doing a little research on correlation coefficients for various stats and accumulated numbers for the nfl.

Nextgens theories are pretty interesting here:
www.nfl.com/news/next-gen-stats-intro-to-passing-score-metric

NFL seems well behind baseball and rightly so due to all the variables involved.

I also thought this was interesting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/osoe6t/stats_with_stronger_correlation_to_winning/

the main thing it reminded me though, is that correlation does not equal causation.

and that might be a good parting statement for my post.  Really good or even great QB play likely has a decently high correlation to winning.  But it doesn't cause it.  

don't disagree with the last part about Kirk.  

And I think broadcasts etc promoting that sort of stuff do it because they know their audience.  It's a stat because it was a stat.  Just like pitcher wins.  But players used to wear leather helmets too.  You threw in 4th quarter comebacks.  That's something I'd consider as part of a QB's value.  I would bet that most GM's and front offices aren't factoring in raw w/l record to a QB's overall value.  My guess is that they've got a string of other metrics that correlate much more strongly to that individual players performance.  WAR is evolving for football.  We, as fans, think we see all these subjective factors because we're essentially told to.  Our perspective is loaded with a ton of bias.  And team perspectives are loaded with years of tradition.   The point is for teams to pare down the variables into allowing them to make decisions under uncertainty.  Does that sound familiar? 

Kwesi has clearly shied away from embracing being called the 'analytics' guy because he knows it's not mainstream enough to be embraced by others in the industry.  In this day and age, you are going to be wrong a lot if you heavily weigh a d-line guys value on number of sacks or a running back's value on touchdowns or a QB's value on W/L record.  There are better ways for teams to isolate individual performance. 

and FYI, don't go by ERA.  Use things like FIP, xFIP and SIERA.  Or if you really want to go down a rabbit hole, check out XwOBA and some of the other metrics on statcast.  Fangraphs is great for baseball if you're into stats.  Kinda the PFF of baseball.  Although baseball is a much simpler sport to quantify with metric in my opinion.  A pitchers pitches, a hitter hits and a fielder fields.  And coaches barely impact the game.