QB Advanced Stats
by hcut2k4 | 8 years ago | 1 Comments
Who's ready for some advance stats? Let's talk about how to evaluate quarterbacks. Take a look at Adjusted Yards per Attempt:
AY/A - (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown))/(passing attempts).
This stat has proven to be very indicative of quality QB play over time. Where as more common stats like yards per attempt and quarterback rating can be misleading and/or have arbitrary multipliers, AY/A tells us how valuable a QB is on a per pass basis because yards correlate to scoring. Over time, we can calculate how many points a yard is typically worth and vice versa.
For example, the top 3 for best AY/A of all time are Aaron Rogers, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady. Which they should be since they are the best 3 QB's during the best pass era in NFL history.
The top 3 from this season (IRL) are Matt Ryan, Tom Brady and Dak Prescott. One could argue that those are the top 3 MVP candidates for 2016.
One stat that tends to be a little bit better at assessing how good a QB is for a team is ANY/Y, or Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. It is essentially the same stat but penalizes QB's for sacks and lost yardage due to sacks. Unfortunately, Madden does not explicitly track lost yardage due to sacks, making it too difficult to calculate for our league.
So now let's look at the best QB's in RedZone through one quarter of the season. Some of these are pretty obvious, but others are a bit of a surprise.
Jared Goff jumps to #1, where he is #2 by QB rating. Ben Roethlisberger drops from #1 in rating to #4 in AY/A. The biggest changes though are for Aaron Rogers, who is a respectable 16th in rating but drops to a lowly 23rd in AY/A. Paxton Lynch is also getting too much love by QB rating, he drops from 14th to 20th.
The biggest improvement comes from two young QB's in New Orleans and Washington. Filipovic goes from 24th in rating to 16th in AY/A and Judie moves from 21st to 14th.
The worst QB in RedZone so far? Well it doesn't matter which stat you use, it's Joe Flacco. Coach Allen is struggling to make use of all those weapons on the Raven's roster. As long as Flacco is making that much money and producing so little, this team is going nowhere.