Is QBR the worst stat ever created?

Among the QBs with a higher QBR than Russell Wilson right now: Matt Ryan, Colin Kaepernick, and Josh McCown (McCown is #1). Just barely behind Wilson? Cutler, Luck, Vick, FitzPatrick, Jake Locker. According to QBR, Russell Wilson has been just a touch better than either of Tennessee's QBs, and worse than the sum of Chicago's QBs. The 6-5 Chicago Bears have two QBs in the top 10. I'm not joking.

Wilson's not the only QB with a ridiculously low score. Mike Glennon is ranked 22nd and Carson Palmer is ranked 26th.

What is it going to take for this stat to go back to the drawing board?

The QBR tells barley anything about a quarterback. I've noticed that completion percentage is a very big part of QBR. So yes I believe it is a very dumb stat to create and base arguments off of.

Wilson is hurt bad by all the sacks in QBR.

And yes, it is a dumb stat.

Kip, my new favorite stat is Toxic Differential. Mostly because it's fun to say.

Blaming a QB for all sacks is dumb as hell. QBR is worthless for many reasons, but that is the biggest one.

Time of possession is the worst stat ever created. QBR is #2.

QBR was better last year when it still included a clutch factor. Back then, I used to think it did a pretty good job of capturing Wilson's contribution when passer rating failed. Now it seems to have no meaningful correlation with performance to my particular eye test.

kearly":2jb0yow2 said:

Among the QBs with a higher QBR than Russell Wilson right now: Matt Ryan, Colin Kaepernick, and Josh McCown (McCown is #1). Just barely behind Wilson? Cutler, Luck, Vick, FitzPatrick, Jake Locker. According to QBR, Russell Wilson has been just a touch better than either of Tennessee's QBs, and worse than the sum of Chicago's QBs. The 6-5 Chicago Bears have two QBs in the top 10. I'm not Ijoking.

Wilson's not the only QB with a ridiculously low score. Mike Glennon is ranked 22nd and Carson Palmer is ranked 26th.

What is it going to take for this stat to go back to the drawing board?

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Immediately? Oh, you said WHAT....ESPN dying would be my guess.

kearly":1yy21r43 said:

Among the QBs with a higher QBR than Russell Wilson right now: Matt Ryan, Colin Kaepernick, and Josh McCown (McCown is #1). Just barely behind Wilson? Cutler, Luck, Vick, FitzPatrick, Jake Locker. According to QBR, Russell Wilson has been just a touch better than either of Tennessee's QBs, and worse than the sum of Chicago's QBs. The 6-5 Chicago Bears have two QBs in the top 10. I'm not joking.

Wilson's not the only QB with a ridiculously low score. Mike Glennon is ranked 22nd and Carson Palmer is ranked 26th.

What is it going to take for this stat to go back to the drawing board?

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I don't remember if it was you or someone else, but at one point someone posted a similar listing of QBRs about week 6-7 or so, with similar results. The number that spits out seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the actual performance of the QB. No human being has watched Matt Ryan, Colin Kaepernick, and Russell Wilson this year and concluded that RW is the worst of those three.

And yet, ESPN articles quote it religiously.

Completely agree, something is very wrong with their model.

jkitsune":1k5o4egc said:

And yet, ESPN articles quote it religiously.

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Kind of comes across like the bible's self-references to miracles. :lol:

I dunno what to make of it. All of the following were achieved in blowout victories.

Squidward vs Jax (99.0 QBR/93.2) 13-21, 199 yards and 0 TD, 63 yards rushing and 1 TD

P Manning vs Balt (83.6 QBR/141.1) 27-42, 462 yards and 7 TDs

N Foles vs Oak (99.1 QBR/158.3) 22-28, 406 yards and 7 TDs

D Brees vs Buf (70.0 QBR/146.1) 26-34, 322 yards and 5 TDs

R Wilson vs Min (98.5 QBR/151.4) 13-18, 230 yards and 2 TDs

What does it all mean??

CaptBennett":r6yuwcj4 said:

The QBR tells barley

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Didn't that genius Dilfer create it?

Argh...don't get me started on this garbage stat. They attempted to come up with an all encompassing QB metric that emphasizes all the right stuff in the right amount. They then ruined it by by letting people's OPINIONS contribute to the numbers... That's why we see a QB that throws ZERO touchdowns in a game but runs for a lot of yards having the highest QBR ever. No one beside a niner fan would rank that among the top 50 QB performances THIS SEASON, yet that performance is ranked as one of the best of all time...according to espn.

It's time to blow QBR up and start over...something just ain't right there.

What the heck happened to Troy Aikmans QB rating system? He had a great thing going but espn for jealous and used their garbage stat to eliminate Troys.

They should have tested it in the background for several years before pushing this on the public because now they look foolish.

RolandDeschain":27zu0zh3 said:

Time of possession is the worst stat ever created. QBR is #2.

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Time of possession is at least a purely objective stat, either you possessed the ball or you didn't. It's of considerable value to teams that play a certain type of ball and of less to others, but as a stat it's as good as most.

QBR, like the QB rating it was intended to replace is a mess, it tries to do too many things and too much of it is subjective.

c_hawkbob":sx9lvuca said:

RolandDeschain":sx9lvuca said:

Time of possession is the worst stat ever created. QBR is #2.

Click to expand...

Time of possession is at least a purely objective stat, either you possessed the ball or you didn't. It's of considerable value to teams that play a certain type of ball and of less to others, but as a stat it's as good as most.

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The ToP comment is a reference to a rather lengthy thread a month ago.

My thoughts on this, not related to the quote, is that QBR introduces a huge element of bias into the ranking. So when you have the threads of stupidity running through a company concerning who's good and who's not (obviously Kaepernick needs to get pushed because of his ESPY, and so on), it shows up in their evaluations. Wilson gets the shaft in QBR because he's not part of the groupthink. So yes, it's worthless.

Scottemojo":2z0prjnu said:

my new favorite stat is Toxic Differential. Mostly because it's fun to say.

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There seems to be lots of that around here anytime some bad Seahawks news comes across the wire.

Interesting Sando story here comparing Russell vs. Luck over the last 22 or so games, using QBR extensively. Some of his conclusions just don't make sense and show me how bad QBR is as a comparative rating system. They just don't meet the eye test to me. Note, this is an Insider story (I know some of you hate Insider and would never pay for it, yada, yada, yada, so please save the bitching for a different thread).

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/mike-sando/post?id=4223

Anyway, I'm gonna post his closing half paragraph. Note he is summarizing the thoughts of the people he has spoken to in the league. To me there is still the height bias that is killing Wilson.

They still see Luck as a nearly perfect prospect, a once-in-a-generation talent making the best of an imperfect situation. They love what they see from Wilson as well, but given a choice between two smart players with all the intangibles and dynamic running ability, they'll take the 6-foot-4 version over the 5-foot-11 one, even though the gap is much smaller than anyone could have reasonably expected it to be.

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(Mods, if this is not allowed, please let me know and I'll delete the quote.)

Funny how I rolled my eyes at the thread title, until I saw the author.

Toxic differential does seem interesting. Pete's model of efficient football on the back of explosive plays seems legit and is loved by DVOA.