Nerds on Sports

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I have a mission for you: revise the QB rating.

The QB rating (technically called the “passer rating,” as that’s all it’s meant to evaluate) is an arcane formula devised when the NFL and the AFL merged in order to standardize statistics. Rather than compare quarterbacks to each other - which provided no metric for season-to-season growth, statistician Don Smith devised a way to measure their progress objectively.

The problem is that (A) it’s not very objective and (B) it’s cryptic.

(A) The rating system is great, in theory. Take the four key areas of a passer’s performance: completion percentage, yards gained per pass, number of touchdowns and number of interceptions. Normalize them against some industry-standard benchmarks (50% pass completion, 55 interceptions per 1000 passes, etc). Total these numbers and voila.

The problem is, those benchmarks were set in 1971 and have not been revised since. The “yards per pass” metric, which figures an average of 7, punishes QBs whose coaches use the fire-and-forget “West Coast Offense.” Is a 5.5% interception percentage still average? Look at the numbers yourself and tell me: as of the end of the 2006 season, Dallas’s Tony Romo and the Saints’ Drew Brees led the league in passer rating (89.6, 88.3, respectively), while those jackasses Tom brady and Peyton Manning couldn’t even crack the top 5.

(Cold Hard Football Facts agrees with me, and has some pictures of Pamela Anderson to boot. No, for serious)

(B) In order to normalize against those aforementioned benchmarks, you have to go through some weird hoops. Nothing terribly complicated - just lots of division.

({[(Comp / Att) x 100 - 30]/20 + [(Yards / Att) - 3 x 0.25] + [(TD / Att) x20] + [2.375 - (INT / Att) x 25]} / 6) x 100

Remember your order of operations and show all work.

There has to be a better way - and this wouldn’t be “Harebrained Schemes Tuesday” if I didn’t come up with one.
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Two crucial posts from elsewhere in Internovia:

1. From Fire Joe Morgan, the blog that wants ESPN to fire, well, inept baseball commentator Joe Morgan:

[sez Morgan] “but that’s how people compare statistics. My point is you can’t compare things with statistics.”

Think about that, people. “You can’t compare things with statistics.”

Exactly what, one might be tempted to ask, as one’s hands were shaking so badly one would think one had just survived an assassination attempt, might one use to compare things? Metaphor? How about the infallible human memory? Or perhaps poesy?

Much have I traveled, in realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen
Round many Western Islands have I been,
And I have observed some stuff about some shortstops
Bill Hall did not have a monster year
Derek Jeter has a calmer set of eyes
David Eckstein is super clutch
Please don’t show me statistics that disprove my observations

2. Via Mahalanobis (which I typically don’t even read for sports), the following:

Watching the NFL (ie, real football for non-Americans) draft last weekend, they would often mention some prospect “has a good bubble”. I didn’t know exactly what they were talking about, but got confirmation on the radio today. It means they have a good–big–butt. As the gluteus maximus, or buttock muscle, is the largest muscle in the human body, it is useful signal of overall musculature.