Correcting the NFL’s passer rating lie 

Great stuff! So after this segment, should we expect a future series of Scattered episodes that dissects the WAR stat in MLB or something similar?

air yards

Here's what *I* wanna see: stats showing what a QB's stat lines would look like if the plays nullified by penalties were counted. 2 straight games now Fields has had All His Long Passes discounted for penalties. Why? _He_ didn't cause those.

@@ChewsCarefully they should not count the wr after catch yards in the yards per att of the qb

@@ektran4205 I'm dyslexic so I'm having trouble finding out where, but I _know_ those stats are separated somewhere because I have heard people mention how many air yards a QB gets sometimes. Tom Brady's status as goat would _REALLY_ come into question if anyone looked at his because *yikes* he could become the top check-down merchant of all time if anyone saw them. But here's the thing: would that _really_ determine a QB's v. WR's impact? Fields set accuracy records in college. But a lot of his receivers would fall upon catching his passes. Was that the angle of the reception, or something else? & even if so, does that make what the defender did the key factor? Yeah, if it's Bo Nix it reveals a consistency. But again with Fields, all his longest air passes this past week were nullified by penalties.

Its TRUE

The REAL Uncharted we all want and deserve

Or at the very least felt inspired to use the talents they possess. Anger can serve as that inspiration.

do you have some examples? :))

@@eninn the entire of Jon Bois’ Pretty Good series

Or as my friends and I call it, the Craig Morton line, in honor of his 0.0 rating in Super Bowl XII

I was thinking of the Jets-Cardinals Sanchez vs. Lindley game that SBNation did a video on ages ago. But it seems rather cruel to have people re-visit that one (again) for our entertainment.

1973, but point taken.

That’s big ten football right there

@@whypick1_ In other words, Secret Base absolutely should do another video on that one again.

We can have a party, a party with charts!

@@DACFalloutRanger Some might even call it... a Chart Party!

My first thought was LETS OPEN THE EXCEL!

It was such a tease....

I would love to be invited to a Chart Party

Even with uncapped QB rating, you can still lower your rating by throwing a TD. If a QB throws a 99 yard TD pass his first pass of the game, he would have an uncapped rating of 831.25. If on his second pass of the game he throws a 1 yard TD pass, his rating would drop 204.2 points to 627.1.

​@BaseballsNotDead weren't expecting to see you here, but I can't say I'm surprised! Im a fan of your videos

@@BaseballsNotDeadNever have asked, but do you have a favorite MLB team?

@@fortynights1513 He's a Brewers fan, if I remember right.

​@@BaseballsNotDead Ah, I see! Thinking about it some more, I can see the logic in that. I personally felt that the fact that the fact that you threw a touchdown should matter more in that scenario, which is why I thought it didnt make any sense. But it's defintiely far more impressive to throw a longer touchdown than a shorter one. Thank you for responding! You make really great baseball videos, by the way! :D

In case you were wondering, Kyler's uncapped passer rating was 169.9.

@@hiimemily thx for doing the math

Aw, dang it.

@@hiimemily Nice.

@@a-dragon-hoarding-teacups HAHA LOL GREAT DECADE OLD MEME 🤨

A “RB” had the best game ever at QB? Interestingggggg

Not to mention 59-10 was Scorigami

Excuse me - the TWO best games at QB post-merger! Again, a Running Back!

​@@BranJ89sounds like the skill sets teams look for when trying to draft a QB need to be reevaluated

If I calculated it correctly, that puts his passer rating at 223.75. Wow

Peyton in 2015 was unfortunately washed aside from two or three decent games (including one vs the Lions of a passer rating over 100), his last AFC Championship Game was also decent enough. But the one where he broke the yardage record was an awful performance aside from that.

Peyton threw until his arm fell off.

The start of the 16-game KC-DEN streak.

Only Payton Manning. I love that man though

Peyton Manning's stats for that game: 5/20 for 35 yards (1.8 ypa), 0 TD, 4 Int.

Having to relive Ryan Lindley vs Mark Sanchez alone requires a complimentary beer from his boss.

yes, which is normal for most statistics in sports, however for some reason the creators of PR like baked in that bias to make it *literally wrong* for small samples, rather than just not very indicative of actual performance/ability like it would be otherwise

@@AliceYobbyI think this whole video is just a joke intentionally taken way too far. Best not to put too much thought into it

@@AliceYobby Fun fact. The passer rating was developed to be easily calculated using a slide rule as it predates calculators and personal computers etc. The floor and ceiling are actually the upper and lower limits of the slide rule. So the "bias" is basically just a limitation of the technology of the day.

That’s why this analysis makes the problem worse. It’s taking the exact problem qbr was trying to solve and ham fodting it back into the equation

Fun Drew Brees fact: Everyone talks about the record streak of games with a touchdown pass. If not for one dreadful game in Atlanta in 2012, he would’ve had 100 straight games with a touchdown pass going into 2015.

I would go as far to say that outliers are the entire reason for the stats

I'd argue the limits were implemented to ensure certain games players werent overpowered. should they have been? maybe. but they were making a game not modelling the world

They made the metric to align with 1960s era football to decide the “best” quarterback. The upper limit was seen as really out there, and the fact interceptions are incorporated require some limits. The original stat was supposed to be a season long stat, so outliers aren’t intended to impact the stat. It wasn’t meant to compare individual games, although you can use it that way, but that’s why there are limits. Like all stats, it will have limitations and uses, the issue is that this stat hasn’t been updated to reflect the reality of what it’s trying to represent. It no longer accurately reflects qb play or even passing play.

@@bradenculver7457 To your last point "issue is that this stat hasn’t been updated to reflect the reality of what it’s trying to represent" not having artificial boundaries in the first place would eliminate that issue entirely. It really makes no sense to have them at all.

@@n0tthemessiah the issue is that doesn't actually solve the whole problem. For starters, the initial choices in variables are completely arbitrary. And that would also partially defeat the original intent of the stat, to try and compare qb's without some outlier impacting the stat. I really think the issues with passer rating are 1. people use it wrong, and 2. it does not reflect the modern NFL. And that's all ignoring that it focuses exclusively on... passing. Nothing else.

Was he throwing to Jesse Owens?

Luckman is still the best quarterback the Bears have ever had. Other guys since have more volume obviously, but none were as good for as long.

​@@fortynights1513 No doubt about that. P.S. I didn't mention he capped off that season by throwing *5 TDs in the title game* (those days version of the SB). 15/26 for 286 yards, 5 TDs and no picks. His adjusted passer rating for this game was 160.2 (compared to a mere 135.6 by the traditional flawed metrics). That must be one of the earliest over 158.3 games, done in the equivalent of a SB!

hi emily

I see you everywhere

Yeah I recall how when QBR came out the talking heads at ESPN were talking about how Passer Rating was an inherently flawed stat. Why fix the first thing when you can offer up Value Meal #2 with a Large Cola.

@@conorjohn490The ESPN stat essentially operates as a an average win probability added stat. They take a look at the team’s situation at the start of every single play the quarterback was a part of and determine what the maximum win probability that could be added is, and take note of the result of every play that the player is involved in relative to what could have happened, and essentially determine the average gain relative to what could have happened on each play. It may have its uses and factors in aspects that box score stats don’t typically with its win expectancy factors, but ESPN Total QBR is an arbitrary statistic that can’t be retracted by most observers. I have one rule of every statistic I try and calculate: If I can’t write it out to people for them to check my work, then I’m not using it.

It weights things seemingly arbitrarily and was invented by nfl execs and pro football hall of fame employees. It's a bad stat that people blindly accept. A flaw you didn't mention: completions feed into 3 of the 4 weights: completions, yards, and TD percentages. So it really overrates high completion, low yardage players like Vikings era Sam Bradford.

@@KeystoneHeavy58Ergo: Players who are primarily passing to move the chains?

@@KeystoneHeavy58 Completions negatively feed into Yards Per Attempt and TD percentages unless they are long touchdown passes. If you throw a screen pass that goes for -2 yards, you may have increased your completion percentage but you have negatively impacted the other two metrics. It's also silly to complain that an all-in-one stat about passing counts the things involved in passing. You're going to have to count completions in multiple areas because every pass play is either a completion, an incompletion, or an interception. There are obviously problems, the scaling should be changed to fit our new understanding of the passing game. Yards/Attempt should probably be changed to air-yards per attempt, avoiding sacks should probably be addressed as well. The complaint that completions are double and triple-counted seems silly to me considering it only positively effects one measure, and the Sam Bradford year you're complaining about was a near-4,000 yard season with a 4:1 TD to INT ratio which was only 6th best in the NFL that year. I don't see the problem, Bradford was very good that year but clearly not on the level of MVP Matt Ryan or Tom Brady, both of whom ended up with much higher passer ratings because they threw the ball downfield.

yep, just like a baseball player who homers on first plate appearance has an ops of 5.000 at that point in time, and just like a basketball player who makes first 3 has a 3-point % of 100 at that point in time. if a qb throws a 99-yard td on first pass, it should be depicted no differently

​@@SecretBaseSBN But for OPS and 3 point percentage you're not trying to weigh 4 different stats equally (OPS does have 2, but they have their own built in barriers... still, some statisticians will criticize OPS for this). For uncapped, you could have a QB go 1/2 with a 99 yard TD pass and a pick 6 and his uncapped QB rating would be 208.3 because that TD pass is worth way way more than the pick 6 because the yards per attempt doesn't scale the same, but his normal QB rating would only be 95.8.

idk, 208.3 sounds closer to what i think a 99-yard td & an int (how successful the int return is shouldnt and doesnt matter) should yield than 95.8, but reasonable minds can disagree as to that potential 2-pass sample

Another extreme example. A player could go 1/4 with a 99 yard TD pass. Uncapped his QB rating would be 209.4 despite having a 25% completion percentage. The high yards per attempt and TD% scale way way higher than the terrible completion percentage.

@@SecretBaseSBN Frankly that's actually a huge problem with OPS and why the runs/wins attribution stats exist. The name implies OBP and slugging are equal, the actual formula counts slugging up to 4 times as much (mostly about double) as OBP, but OBP is actually the significantly more important of the two components.

I was about to say that's not possible but with the ghost runner it technically is now (although no pitcher has ever completed a perfect game that went beyond 9 innings so it *probably* won't ever come up)

tinyurl.com/2wfyfbjb 228.9, not a bad day at the office (though yes unfortunately he's omitted)

A passer rating of 228.9 - incredible.

Oh hey, the man himself did the calculation haha, didn't see that - well, it gave me something to do to kill some time on the train at least :)

@@SecretBaseSBNNot a bad day at the office at all, and possibly one of the best days at the office for a player against a pass defense that good. Most performances of passer rating that get as high as that are against defenses that are below average.

@@AliceYobbyHow was the train ride, and from where to where?

Just like the kickoff

@@warderjack I just rewatched that one last night.

I would like to know the formula college football uses. It irritates me to no end that nobody ever gives the formula. At least give me a footnote, a link, something!

@@entropy2k196 [(8.4 x Passing Yards) + (330 x Touchdown Passes) + (100 x Number of Completions) - (200 x Interceptions)] / Number of Passing Attempts As you can see, weights are built in without artificial caps, and they of course can spawn their own debates. The possible rating range is -731.6 to 1,261.6.

Saints first 11 seasons were as bad as anyone’s

x.com/secretbase/status/1741570417905779050

It's too variable. If a pass hits a wide open receiver in the chest in the open field and he drops it, you hate to see that reflect poorly on the QB. Most drops are not the best thrown balls and sometimes hitting the receiver in the perfect spot to catch the ball could still be a bad throw because it leads the receiver straight into a vulnerable position to get lit up

this is actually why they created the 2.375 limit in the first place. You basically have to choose how valuable a zero interception game is, and then find the average numbers each of the other variables produces per game, and then choose a number for the INT% variable thats weighted in comparison to those other averages in a way that lines up with how valuable you think 0 interceptions is. They said let's make everything equally valuable - which means creating a "perfect game" number for each variable equal to the perfect INT% game number. Anyway, yeah I think in ideal world the 0 INT game should be worth somewhere between 1.5 and 2, but changing that would change the scale completely, so you wouldn't be comparing the corrected Passer Rating to the old arbitrary Passer Rating, you'd just be looking at a new stat entirely.

Interception percentage is the biggest one, and it goes hand in hand with completion percentage, as quarterbacking has evolved to evaluate risks and rewards better. I think a couple years ago we reached the point where nobody had thrown even an interception per game, and that would've been unthinkable back when QBs just slung the rock wherever their heart desired and hoped their guy came down with it.