FiveThirtyEight: Kirk Cousins Is Not Better Than Joe Montana. So Let’s Fix Passer Rating (Mariota among biggest losers)

[Titans279]

 

We all know passer rating has been inflated over time. The article is interesting and goes into detail about how they adjusted for this inflation to put everyone on an even playing field. It covers new all-time rankings and current season stats. For example it puts Steve Young back on top for best career passer rating. Give it a read!

 

The Titans relevant part that allows Yet Another Mariota Thread (YAMT) is that Mariota is one of the biggest losers due to their adjustment. The article goes into what adjustments he made. 

 

Quote

We can rescale what performance “should” lead to a given value in each category to keep the relative league-wide distribution the same as it was when passer rating was first conceived. So while, say, Alex Smith’s 62.5 percent completion rate in 2018 was worth 1.0 point, so was Don Meredith’s 49.5 percent mark from 1962. Do this for every category in every season, and you have a stabilized version of passer rating that no longer spirals uncontrollably upward with each innovation in the passing game.

 

Mariota is not in good company. His new career rating would be a 67.5 for his career down from 89.4 (a drop of 21.9). His 2018 drops from 92.3 to 70.6 (-21.6).

 

Essentially Mariota's rating is more inflated by the league-wide trends that are improving QB stats than all but Bortles, Winston, and Keenum. The average rating is around 70, so for his career he is slightly below and for last year he was just about average rated. [Mariota's ranked the 21st QB in 2018, and his passer rating of 70 is below the average of 73. He's mostly not in good company in about the bottom 1/3 of QBs listed].

 

For comparison, Brees' rating for this year drops from 115.7 to 103.3 on the new scale. Mahomes' rating drops from 113.8 to 98.5. Everyone sees drops, but not as big since they are actually performing exceptionally compared to other QBs right now.

 

 

 

Overall though, it puts Mariota's passer rating at about average to below average and in line with Carr, Tannehill, and Newton. Which actually still makes sense. Mariota is a bubble QB which is why he's endlessly debated. In the right situation (and if healthy) he could be a decently successful QB (like Newton) or not so much like Carr or Tannehill.

 

To me injury and availability is the biggest thing (and was explicitly mentioned by Vrabel). If he's out there he's good enough to be a franchise's QB. But is he reliably available?

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/kirk-cousins-is-not-better-than-joe-montana-so-lets-fix-passer-rating/

 

[OILERMAN]

Seems very well done. Tannehill has been my comp for a while now

[OILERMAN]

I guess 538 has an anti-Mariota agenda!

[Aramis]

Very interesting. Top QBs remain top and the average/mediocre/bad QBs are reflected as such. Thanks for posting.

[japan]

Just now, OILERMAN said:

I guess 538 has an anti-Mariota agenda!

Not if they are saying he has played just average, which I think most level-headed posters would admit.  Scine is off in left field on this issue, unless you factor in that his throwing arm has been injured all season and he couldn't make some of the throws that LaFleur required.  Of course, Mariota struggled in 2017 also...

[OILERMAN]

1 minute ago, japan said:

Not if they are saying he has played just average, which I think most level-headed posters would admit. 

That's not what it had him at, he was among the lowest

[Titans279]

2 minutes ago, OILERMAN said:

That's not what it had him at, he was among the lowest

Mariota has one of the biggest changes in passer rating due to the adjustment, but his adjusted passer rating is still about league average so he's probably right around the middle of the back.

[SleepingTitan]

What's missing is also the fact that many of these QB's like Bortles get a ton of garbage TDs when neither teams actually believes anything they're doing will impact the result. 

 

Down 50 pts, Bortles suddenly turns into a HoF QB. 1st qtr, he's the MVP of the opposing team. 

[OILERMAN]

2 minutes ago, Titans279 said:

Mariota has one of the biggest changes in passer rating due to the adjustment, but his adjusted passer rating is still about league average so he's probably right around the middle of the back.

The new rating had him ranked 21st, when you look at whos below him he's among the worst starters

[japan]

13 minutes ago, OILERMAN said:

That's not what it had him at, he was among the lowest

I thought the OP said that it had him in the middle.  I just read the synopsis:

 

Essentially Mariota's rating is more inflated by the league-wide trends that are improving QB stats than all but Bortles, Winston, and Keenum. The average rating is around 70, so for his career he is slightly below and for last year he was just about average rated.

[scine09]

17 minutes ago, japan said:

Not if they are saying he has played just average, which I think most level-headed posters would admit.  Scine is off in left field on this issue, unless you factor in that his throwing arm has been injured all season and he couldn't make some of the throws that LaFleur required.  Of course, Mariota struggled in 2017 also...

Huh?  What did I say?

[BudsOilers]

Excellent job by Neil Paine and the results seem to be accurate to the eye test - way much more than the insane QBR or PFF numbers.  I like how they acknowledge dramatic changes in the passing game today versus prior eras using the statistical principles of the original system.

[japan]

Just now, scine09 said:

Huh?  What did I say?

I don't know exactly.  You seem to argue that Mariota was good this past season, which he was not.

[scine09]

Just now, japan said:

I don't know exactly.  You seem to argue that Mariota was good this past season, which he was not.

At times he was and at times he wasn't.  Not complicated.

[Titans279]

5 minutes ago, OILERMAN said:

The new rating had him ranked 21st, when you look at whos below him he's among the worst starters

Yeah I see.

 

At rank 21 he's right at the bottom edge of the middle 1/3 of the 33 QBs on the list. And then his passer rating of 70 is below the average rating of QBs in the list (which is 73).

 

I think among the worst is kind of misleading though since the 5 guys at the bottom of the list are all below 60 which is much worse than Mariota's rating. He's not really "among the worst" he's the worst of the middle of the pack at this point.