Legal Commentary

Evaluating the NFL QB's and RB's

By Tom Kirkendall

As Super Sunday approaches, check out this Dave Berri post on his final quarterback and running back ratings for the 2008 season.

A few observations:

The Texans' QB Matt Schaub had the 10th best season among QB's and rookie RB Steve Slaton had the 4th best season among running backs. Three of the seven QB's selected for the Pro Bowl rated worse than Schaub. All six of the Pro Bowl RB's rated worse than Slaton!

QB Chad Pennington, who the Jets discarded in favor of Brett Favre, finished 3rd in the rankings. Aaron Rodgers, who the Packers kept instead of Favre, finished 11th, one behind Schaub.  Favre finished 27th, which was among the worst performances in the league. Favre, not Pennington, Rodgers or Schaub, was invited to the Pro Bowl. John Madden does very good PR for Brett Favre.

One of the only five QB's who rated worse than Favre this season is the Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger, who just happens to be QB'ing the favored team in Sunday's big game. Kurt Warner, the opposing QB in the Super Bowl, finished in 9th place, one slot ahead of Schaub.

Finally, Berri makes an important distinction between the highly interdependent nature of football in comparison to baseball and basketball:

[W]e must remember that systematic analysis in football is extremely difficult.  Unlike basketball and baseball -- where player performance is largely independent of his teammates (at least for hitters in baseball) -- the performance of football players depends on the performance of the player’s teammates.  These interaction effects severely hamper the objective analysis of the game.

And that can be seen when we look at how much time I devote to discussing football.  Like I did with basketball, I also have a model to measure performance in football.  But the measurement of performance in football really only tells one story.  The interaction effects in football cause the performance statistics to be inconsistent.  So the players we see perform well today are not necessarily going to perform well tomorrow.  Although I like telling that story, it’s really about all I ever say about the NFL.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on January 28, 2009 (boomark / email).