Tannehill rated the 10th best quarterback in the league

[fyo]

Bleacher Report has rated the top 1000 players in the league and released the midseason results (or at least some of them).

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2673471-nfl1000-ranking-the-top-1000-players-at-midseason

The Dolphins have two players in the top 50 (which is about what you'd expect), Reshad Jones at #16 (highest rated safety) and Ndamukong Suh at #33 (5th rated DT).

Tannehill was rated as the 10th best quarterback, which I find quite reasonable, but will probably elicit complaints from certain members of this forum...

Landry hit the #3 spot at WR (next best is Parker at #70).

Biggest surprise is perhaps Ajayi, who is only rated #37, but then he didn't really explode until the last two games included in the data - and he gets dinged for blocking and a bit for receiving.

Neither Sims nor Jordan grade out well at tight end...

The entire offensive line except Pouncey gets severely shafted, even Tunsil and Albert don't reach inside the top 20. Tunsil grades out as both the best left tackle and guard on the Dolphins. Pouncey scores a nice 8th position, which is hard to fault.

Billy Turner and Dallas Thomas ranked #101 and #102 out of 103 ranked guards, btw. How bad must Austin Blythe be at #103???

Wake is the only DE who gets even close to respectable grades (#23 our of 79 4-3 DEs).

None of our DTs other than Suh do well. At all.

Things look pretty grim at OLB, where Koa Misi is the top Dolphin at #46 among 4-3 OLBs.

Alonso receives a pretty harsh grade at ILB, which is pretty surprising IMHO.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, our best cornerback (Maxwell) resides at #86.

The honor of our defensive backfield is somewhat saved by our safeties with Reshad Jones the best strong safety and Abdul-Quddus the 10th rated free safety.

[Run Ricky Run]

I think it is funny when anybody uses bleacher report to prove a point. What a shit  site.

[Dolfanalyst]

I think it is funny when anybody uses bleacher report to prove a point. What a shit  site.

On the other hand I'm willing to give anybody a listen if they provide a clear and convincing rationale for their viewpoint, and I don't see that in the article linked in the OP.  We're left with only a personal opinion, or an authoritative opinion, at best, and even then the grounds for considering the opinion "authoritative" aren't provided.

[Baba Booey]

I think it is funny when anybody uses bleacher report to prove a point. What a shit  site.

I used to think that way but then they were bought by TBS/Turner Broadcasting for $170 mill or so. They were less of a joke then and became legit.

I'm unsure if they still let fans write for them or if they hire full time real reporters.

[fyo]

On the other hand I'm willing to give anybody a listen if they provide a clear and convincing rationale for their viewpoint, and I don't see that in the article linked in the OP.  We're left with only a personal opinion, or an authoritative opinion, at best, and even then the grounds for considering the opinion "authoritative" aren't provided.

They hired skilled people (including at least one associated with football outsiders) to look at every single play of every single player and judge what went on. That encompasses a lot more information than is possible to glean from "yards per attempt". Of course, it also (potentially) introduces more subjectivity, but don't kid yourself -- all non-raw stats are fundamentally subjective in their construction (e.g. passer rating has a subjective weighing of the components that go into it).

Personally, if someone with a good understanding of the game looks at every single play of every single quarterback and grades them according to some fixed criteria, I will certainly tend to put a lot of faith in that, even if I don't know the exact criteria used.

[Dolfanalyst]

They hired skilled people (including at least one associated with football outsiders) to look at every single play of every single player and judge what went on. That encompasses a lot more information than is possible to glean from "yards per attempt". Of course, it also (potentially) introduces more subjectivity, but don't kid yourself -- all non-raw stats are fundamentally subjective in their construction (e.g. passer rating has a subjective weighing of the components that go into it).

Personally, if someone with a good understanding of the game looks at every single play of every single quarterback and grades them according to some fixed criteria, I will certainly tend to put a lot of faith in that, even if I don't know the exact criteria used.

Then why is it so discrepant with the objective data, and what is that supposedly authoritative individual's explanation for that?

Your opinion about the validity of that person's opinion should ride on his reconciling that discrepancy (which in this case is a rather large one), not on his opinion alone.

If there is no basis provided for that reconciliation, then you're left with the strong possibility that the person's view is erroneous, and no way to reject that notion.

Tell me why Tannehill is at the bottom of the league in DVOA and QBR, despite your ranking him 10th overall.

[Spider-Dan]

You say that as if DVOA and QBR are objective data.

[Dolfanalyst]

You say that as if DVOA and QBR are objective data.

They're light years more objective than the information in the link in the OP.

[fyo]

They're light years more objective than the information in the link in the OP.

QBR certainly isn't. The decisions underlying construction of passing DVOA are completely subjective, but at least the individual components are objective, although it suffers from the same issue as the ranking data here (or that of Pro Football Focus) in that the "formula" is not publicly available and you are forced to trust the entity that provides the answer -- there's no methodology provided and no way to reproduce the results.

[Dolfanalyst]

QBR certainly isn't. The decisions underlying construction of passing DVOA are completely subjective, but at least the individual components are objective, although it suffers from the same issue as the ranking data here (or that of Pro Football Focus) in that the "formula" is not publicly available and you are forced to trust the entity that provides the answer -- there's no methodology provided and no way to reproduce the results.

You'll have to pardon me if I find it hard to believe that one authoritative person, or even a small group of authoritative people, can watch all of the quarterbacks in the league free of inherent bias, and apply the same measurement criteria to every QB in the same way, without significant, systematic error (to say nothing of random error).  My lord, talk about non-reproducible results!

Call me a cynic.

[Spider-Dan]

You'll have to pardon me if I find it hard to believe that one authoritative person, or even a small group of authoritative people, can watch all of the quarterbacks in the league free of inherent bias, and apply the same measurement criteria to every QB in the same way, without significant, systematic error (to say nothing of random error).  My lord, talk about non-reproducible results!

You have just described QBR - a statistic you cited approvingly less than 2 hours ago.

[Dolfanalyst]

You have just described QBR - a statistic you cited approvingly less than 2 hours ago.

QBR used to have heavy subjective elements before Brian Burke was hired away from his own analytics website and onto ESPN's staff.  Now thanks to Burke's influence, the "division of credit" among teammates that used to be done completely subjectively is done in the following manner:

Division of credit

EPA provides the context for every play and also holds the key to separating the quarterback’s impact from his teammates’. For all plays in which a quarterback is involved -– passes, rushes, sacks, penalties, fumbles, etc. -– the team-level EPA is calculated and then divided among a quarterback and his teammates. In other words, was the play successful and how much of that success is a result of a quarterback’s skill?

For example, Rodgers’ longest completion against the Redskins was a 34-yarder to James Jones in the second quarter, but he could have gained those yards through the air or on a short screen that was broken for a long gain. He also could have completed the pass when under duress or thrown it from a clean pocket. In all of those scenarios, Rodgers’ level of skill differs, and the credit he receives for the 34-yard gain (or in this case, plus-2.0 EPA) should differ as well.

That means on completed passes, the EPA is divided among the quarterback, his receivers and the offensive line based on how far the ball travels in the air, what percentage of the yards were gained after the catch (compared to how many yards after catch are expected) and whether the quarterback was under pressure. This division of credit is based on statistical analysis of thousands upon thousands of NFL plays. In this sense, QBR knows that Cousins was helped by his receiver, who gained fewer yards after the catch than expected given where he caught the ball, but hurt by his offensive line.

The details of every play (air yards, drops, pressures, etc.) are charted by a team of trained analysts in the ESPN Stats & Information Group. Every play of every game is tracked by at least two different analysts to provide the most accurate representation of how each play occurred.

The result is that the only subjective element in that process is the human judgment (made by two people who must agree) of whether the QB was under pressure.

http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/123701/how-is-total-qbr-calculated-we-explain-our-quarterback-rating

[Spider-Dan]

The result is that the only subjective element in that process is the human judgment (made by two people who must agree) of whether the QB was under pressure.

That sounds to me like two authoritative people watching all of the quarterbacks in the league free of inherent bias, and applying the same measurement criteria to every QB in the same way, without significant, systematic error (to say nothing of random error).

Isn't the proper term for that "non-reproducible results"?

[Dolfanalyst]

That sounds to me like two authoritative people watching all of the quarterbacks in the league free of inherent bias, and applying the same measurement criteria to every QB in the same way, without significant, systematic error (to say nothing of random error).

Isn't the proper term for that "non-reproducible results"?

For a mere one element of the overall statistic, yes, it's subjective and subject to non-reproducibility.  However, here are the many objective components of the statistic that are reproducible, and that no human could possibly consider or apply equally across QBs when evaluating them with eyesight alone:

Context for each play includes the down, yards to go for a first down, distance to the end zone and time remaining in the half. All of these factors can be used before the ball is snapped to estimate the future net score advantage the team currently on offense can expect. This estimate is known as "expected points.” After the play, the change in those factors lead to a change (positive or negative) to the team’s net point advantage. That change in the expected points caused by the outcome of the play represents the play’s value, or its Expected Points Added (EPA), given all the context.

When a team fails to convert on third down, struggles in the red zone, takes a lot of sacks or turns the ball over, it generally registers as negative EPA for the offense. But not all turnovers are created equal: A Hail Mary interception at the end of the half is not as impactful as one in the middle of the second quarter –- and EPA knows that.

EPA provides the context for every play and also holds the key to separating the quarterback’s impact from his teammates’. For all plays in which a quarterback is involved -– passes, rushes, sacks, penalties, fumbles, etc. -– the team-level EPA is calculated and then divided among a quarterback and his teammates. In other words, was the play successful and how much of that success is a result of a quarterback’s skill?

For example, Rodgers’ longest completion against the Redskins was a 34-yarder to James Jones in the second quarter, but he could have gained those yards through the air or on a short screen that was broken for a long gain. He also could have completed the pass when under duress or thrown it from a clean pocket. In all of those scenarios, Rodgers’ level of skill differs, and the credit he receives for the 34-yard gain (or in this case, plus-2.0 EPA) should differ as well.

That means on completed passes, the EPA is divided among the quarterback, his receivers and the offensive line based on how far the ball travels in the air, what percentage of the yards were gained after the catch (compared to how many yards after catch are expected)...

Before moving on to the next play, QBR asks one more question: Did this play come in garbage time?

As we know, amassing yards and points in a blowout does not tell you too much about a quarterback’s true skill. When the game is out of reach, which is measured by a team’s win probability at the start of the play, a quarterback receives less credit than on an otherwise “normal” play. Unlike the initial version of QBR released in 2011, plays are no longer up-weighted for “clutch situations,” but we felt it was important to keep the down-weighting feature.

This process of determining the EPA, dividing credit among the QB and his teammates and then determining the weight of play occurs for every play in which a quarterback is involved. All of these plays are then added together and divided by the total number of clutch-weighted plays to produce a per-play measure of QB efficiency.

That last piece is important! QBR is an efficiency stat similar to yards per play or yards per attempt. Therefore, Cousins might have provided more total value than Rodgers because he was involved in more plays, but on a per-play basis, Rodgers was significantly more efficient.

And when it comes to DVOA, all of that sort of analysis is done, and the strength of the opposing defense is accounted for and applied to the measurement of the quarterback's performance.  No human could come anywhere close to that sophisticated an analysis.

[Dolfanalyst]

They hired skilled people (including at least one associated with football outsiders) to look at every single play of every single player and judge what went on. That encompasses a lot more information than is possible to glean from "yards per attempt". Of course, it also (potentially) introduces more subjectivity, but don't kid yourself -- all non-raw stats are fundamentally subjective in their construction (e.g. passer rating has a subjective weighing of the components that go into it).

Personally, if someone with a good understanding of the game looks at every single play of every single quarterback and grades them according to some fixed criteria, I will certainly tend to put a lot of faith in that, even if I don't know the exact criteria used.

One other point about the bolded portion above -- a statistic can be considered "objective" even if some of its components are weighted on subjective grounds, as long as those subjective weights are applied across all QBs.

QB rating for example has subjectively weighted components, but QB rating is calculated in the same manner for all QBs, which then lets us compare QBs to each other objectively, using QB rating.

Again, I find it very hard to believe that we can ascribe a sufficient degree of reliability and validity to the QB rankings made by an individual or a group of individuals (a la the link in the OP) when there is no way of knowing whether the criteria used to evaluate QBs were applied equally among them.

In other words, a subjective evaluator could indeed bear down and generate a lot of information about just one QB (via film study), but that doesn't allow us to compare QBs to each other with any reliability or validity unless all QBs were evaluated by that evaluator with the same subjective criteria and rigor, free of bias or significant error.  And if we can't determine how or whether that was done, how can any league-wide ranking of them (i.e., the link in the OP) possibly be considered valid?  Its validity is simply unknown and unable to be determined.

This of course is the glaring weakness of the entirely subjective approach, and when the alternatives are statistics as sophisticated as DVOA and QBR, that involve the objective application of so many relevant variables, the choice is a no-brainer in my opinion.

My motive here is simply to know what's accurate and valid about the team, so I don't set myself up for disappointment.  Obviously the best and most rigorous information available is going to facilitate that knowledge as well as possible.

If DVOA and QBR indicated that Tannehill was one of the league's best, I'd consider him such, and go ahead and get my hopes up.  But I'm not getting my hopes up on a false premise so I can be let down later on, when I should've known better.