Agree or Disagree: Wins and Losses Should Be A QB Stat

[CKSteeler]

6 hours ago, Tk3 said:

 

If wins aren't a stat for QBs, then I need someone to explain Terry Bradshaw's inclusion in the HoF

It's the Hall of Fame. Not the Hall of Statistical Output. You can't tell the story of the NFL in the 70's without talking about Terry Bradshaw. This also isn't baseball.

I find it funny how much people try and pretend that wins doesn't matter for QB's when pretty much all of the top QB's of all time, no matter who is making the list, closely resembles the winningest QB's of all time. I'm not saying anything new in this thread, I know. Just throwing my two cents in. The correlation isn't perfect. That's the best you could argue. But to claim that QB play isn't one of the most significant factors in a teams success is asinine. And that becomes even more true as the league continues to create rules that favor the passing game.

No stat, or even group of stats is an individual stat in a sport where there are 22 guys on the field at once and like a dozen or more coaches on each sidelines. But there's always this persistently whiny group of fans who want to discount wins for QB's. There are just as many outside factors at play in a QB winning the MVP as there are in him winning a Super Bowl.

[MWil23]

8 hours ago, Tk3 said:

If wins aren't a stat for QBs, then I need someone to explain Terry Bradshaw's inclusion in the HoF

Yep. Same with Aikman, future Eli Manning, etc.

[BobbyPhil1781]

12 hours ago, AlexGreen#20 said:

I think it can be a stat, but it's a stat we should all be mostly ignoring. 

Does anybody really care about Tom Brady's rushing yards? There's all sorts of stupid stats we ignore. 

That's the thing though; it's not being ignored and is literally used on a daily basis. I wouldn't have a problem if people changed the wording like "Team X has a W/L record w/ Player Y as their QB" as I feel that's a very accurate statement but when you say "Player Y is W/L" then you take away every aspect of the game. I just find that corny ergo asking for people's opinions.

[BobbyPhil1781]

9 hours ago, Tk3 said:

If wins aren't a stat for QBs, then I need someone to explain Terry Bradshaw's inclusion in the HoF

He QBd a lot of teams that won a lot of games and SBs. He was the most important player on offense for those teams. Was he the reason the team won all those games? Not gonna pretend I watched them all b/c I wasn't even alive but my guess, "no". I'd bet they could've plugged you in on those teams and won a lot of games. This also is a separate thread for the most overrated people to be in the HoF and he would be the tops of my list, more than likely. That's a different thread though.

[Tk3]

49 minutes ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

He QBd a lot of teams that won a lot of games and SBs. He was the most important player on offense for those teams. Was he the reason the team won all those games? Not gonna pretend I watched them all b/c I wasn't even alive but my guess, "no". I'd bet they could've plugged you in on those teams and won a lot of games. This also is a separate thread for the most overrated people to be in the HoF and he would be the tops of my list, more than likely. That's a different thread though.

I actually don't think my comments were for a different thread though - the broader point I was trying to make is that in practice, we ARE using team success as a metric of a QB's quality. It's a sort of "proof" that wins/team success ARE broadly used as a QB stat

[VigilantZombie]

I think i get the logic with some comparison to 'premier' positions in other sports but ultimately, no, I don't think it should be a stat. There are times where a QB plays out of his mind and the defense is so bad they just can't stop anyone from scoring. You're dealing with a lot more players, a lot more complexity to the game, etc.. While perhaps sometimes you can say , this player cost said team the game and maybe it's a QB, no I don't think you can attribute that to a QB 100% of the time, good or bad.

[FrantikRam]

Good players usually end up winning more games.

Saying the top QBs list closely resembles the list of winningest QBs is sort of common sense.

Go do that for every position and I'd wager the only outliers will be guys who played with other all time greats.

I'm sure Jerry Rice is near the top of WR wins, Jim Brown and Emmit Smith near the top of RB wins, Deacon Jones, Bruce Smith and Reggie White near the top of EDGE wins.

 

And the when you provide some context to other guys - like JJ Watt for example. Not going to be near the top, but he represents the best period of Texans football (albeit in just 20 years).

Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson, and on down each position.

Great players are usually the first requirement to have sustained success. QBs might have more influence, but everyone plays a role - if we make W/L a stat for everyone, that'd make more sense than just QB

[childofpudding]

4 hours ago, FrantikRam said:

Good players usually end up winning more games.

Saying the top QBs list closely resembles the list of winningest QBs is sort of common sense.

Go do that for every position and I'd wager the only outliers will be guys who played with other all time greats.

I'm sure Jerry Rice is near the top of WR wins, Jim Brown and Emmit Smith near the top of RB wins, Deacon Jones, Bruce Smith and Reggie White near the top of EDGE wins.

 

And the when you provide some context to other guys - like JJ Watt for example. Not going to be near the top, but he represents the best period of Texans football (albeit in just 20 years).

Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson, and on down each position.

Great players are usually the first requirement to have sustained success. QBs might have more influence, but everyone plays a role - if we make W/L a stat for everyone, that'd make more sense than just QB

Here's a list of running backs with the most wins, per https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/ask/rb-wins-leaders-since-1800: Tony Richardson, Marcus Allen, Lorenzo Neal, Emmitt Smith, Franco Harris, Robert Newhouse, Thurman Thomas, Pete Banaszack, William Henderson, Brian Mitchell

The QB list: Brady, Favre, Manning, Brees, Roethlisberger, Elway, Marino, Rivers, Rodgers, Tarkenton

 

Edited July 29, 2021 by childofpudding

[Malfatron]

yeah it should factor in.

Especially when they win at a high level. typically (not always) the qb has most control over Ws and Ls

[pwny]

It's 2021. We have advanced passing games that aren't just sending someone on a go route and chucking it deep, 20 different camera angles so we can break down the specifics of every play and a thousand metrics to quantifiably measure what those plays mean. We don't need to rely on win totals and bulk yards to tell us who is a good Quarterback anymore.

[Jakuvious]

6 hours ago, FrantikRam said:

Good players usually end up winning more games.

Saying the top QBs list closely resembles the list of winningest QBs is sort of common sense.

Go do that for every position and I'd wager the only outliers will be guys who played with other all time greats.

I'm sure Jerry Rice is near the top of WR wins, Jim Brown and Emmit Smith near the top of RB wins, Deacon Jones, Bruce Smith and Reggie White near the top of EDGE wins.

 

And the when you provide some context to other guys - like JJ Watt for example. Not going to be near the top, but he represents the best period of Texans football (albeit in just 20 years).

Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson, and on down each position.

Great players are usually the first requirement to have sustained success. QBs might have more influence, but everyone plays a role - if we make W/L a stat for everyone, that'd make more sense than just QB

This is not true at all. This exercise fails horribly with other positions. Barry Sanders, Anthony Munoz, Joe Thomas, Tony Gonzalez, Steve Smith, Calvin Johnson, Ladainian Tomlinson, Walter Payton, Lee Roy Selmon, Khalil Mack, Larry Fitzgerald, Aeneus Williams, Andre Johnson, O.J. Simpson, etc. There are tons of guys at non-QB positions that either spent their entire careers on crap teams, or at least had really long stretches with a lack of success for their teams. Like, Walter Payton's Bears got it together at the tail end of his career, but most of the time he was their they were bad to okay. Gonzalez probably has the most wins of any TE, but purely through longevity as KC sucked like 80% of his time here. There are two QBs in the hall of fame with a losing career record, in Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Namath. And Namath is one of the most debated hall of famers ever. You don't see great QBs have prolonged periods of losing. You just don't. The worst we've seen in ages is what, Drew Brees going 7-9 a few times? As criticized as Marino is for not being a winner, he's 54 wins over .500. But you can find plenty of greats at other positions that struggled with winning throughout their careers. I just don't see how someone can honestly try to say that you'd find a similar correlation between player quality and wins at non-QB positions as you do at the QB position. And again, I'd be fine just listing W/L for every player. But saying good players just win more games at every position, after we spent most of the last like 15 years watching most of the best WRs in modern football, Fitz, Andre, Steve Smith, Calvin Johnson all get stuck on inconsistent at best football teams, is just ignoring a huge sample size, to me.

Disclaimer, I was going off memory when I listed players. If one or two of them, my memory failed me, the point still stands. Maybe the good Chargers outweighed the bad Chargers in LT's career, or Steve Smith on the Ravens outweighed the Panthers, I dunno. Point stands, all these guys had chunks where their teams were peaking at mediocrity, in contrast to guys like Rodgers or Brees at QB who at the lowest points in their careers were going 7-9.

[FrantikRam]

4 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

This is not true at all. This exercise fails horribly with other positions. Barry Sanders, Anthony Munoz, Joe Thomas, Tony Gonzalez, Steve Smith, Calvin Johnson, Ladainian Tomlinson, Walter Payton, Lee Roy Selmon, Khalil Mack, Larry Fitzgerald, Aeneus Williams, Andre Johnson, O.J. Simpson, etc. There are tons of guys at non-QB positions that either spent their entire careers on crap teams, or at least had really long stretches with a lack of success for their teams. Like, Walter Payton's Bears got it together at the tail end of his career, but most of the time he was their they were bad to okay. Gonzalez probably has the most wins of any TE, but purely through longevity as KC sucked like 80% of his time here. There are two QBs in the hall of fame with a losing career record, in Sonny Jurgensen and Joe Namath. And Namath is one of the most debated hall of famers ever. You don't see great QBs have prolonged periods of losing. You just don't. The worst we've seen in ages is what, Drew Brees going 7-9 a few times? As criticized as Marino is for not being a winner, he's 54 wins over .500. But you can find plenty of greats at other positions that struggled with winning throughout their careers. I just don't see how someone can honestly try to say that you'd find a similar correlation between player quality and wins at non-QB positions as you do at the QB position. And again, I'd be fine just listing W/L for every player. But saying good players just win more games at every position, after we spent most of the last like 15 years watching most of the best WRs in modern football, Fitz, Andre, Steve Smith, Calvin Johnson all get stuck on inconsistent at best football teams, is just ignoring a huge sample size, to me.

Disclaimer, I was going off memory when I listed players. If one or two of them, my memory failed me, the point still stands. Maybe the good Chargers outweighed the bad Chargers in LT's career, or Steve Smith on the Ravens outweighed the Panthers, I dunno. Point stands, all these guys had chunks where their teams were peaking at mediocrity, in contrast to guys like Rodgers or Brees at QB who at the lowest points in their careers were going 7-9.

 

Not sure Id call Steve Smith an all time great. Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Manning could possibly all be top five all time QBs. So the comparison there would be Rice, Moss, TO, Harrison, Bruce - with some of that being up for debate.

But you point out another flaw with using wins as a statistic. If the best 32 QBs in NFL history were all playing right now, you'd have to throw the records out the window because they'd be playing against each other every game.

So the recent guys you pointed out - few if any of them played with Brees, Rodgers, Brady or Manning - but all played at the same time. Someone had to lose those games. That context matters.

 

And you have one off successes for a lot of those guys - LTs Chargers were consistently good, Payton helped the Bears win their only Super Bowl, Fitz had the Cardinals up 4 with 4 minutes to go in a Super Bowl - a franchise that otherwise has been near Detroit Lions level of bad.

 

To effectively do this exercise, you need to start with a baseline such as accepting that Philip Rivers is a better QB than Troy Aikman - as an example. I think Aikman was thoroughly mediocre, so I probably would conclude that Rivers was better - and when you do that, LT, Andre Johnson and the like are probably not top 5 at their positions. Establishing a top 5 and analyzing that first is a good baseline, then expanding out and going from there.

 

Having said that, I realize it will be more drastic with QBs because they do have a bigger impact - but they don't win games by themselves so having it as a stat that people cite to excuse a QBs poor statistical performance is asinine. Using it as a tie breaker when QBs have similar talent/production makes sense.

[JAF-N72EX]

On 7/28/2021 at 9:34 AM, Tk3 said:

I actually don't think my comments were for a different thread though - the broader point I was trying to make is that in practice, we ARE using team success as a metric of a QB's quality. It's a sort of "proof" that wins/team success ARE broadly used as a QB stat

This doesn't make it right either tho.

And don't say "we" either. Alot of people (inlcuding myself) think using team wins as a QB stat is lazy as hell and only proves said people can't truly evaluate QB play.

 

[lancerman]

On 7/28/2021 at 8:40 AM, BobbyPhil1781 said:

That's the thing though; it's not being ignored and is literally used on a daily basis. I wouldn't have a problem if people changed the wording like "Team X has a W/L record w/ Player Y as their QB" as I feel that's a very accurate statement but when you say "Player Y is W/L" then you take away every aspect of the game. I just find that corny ergo asking for people's opinions.

There's one player who touches the ball on every offensive down and can audible plays. QB's have a largely disproportionate effect on the game. 

Honestly if you look at the all time wins for QB's and look at all time passer rating for QB's, I like the wins list better. You have Brady, Farve, Manning, Brees, Ben, Elway, Marino, Rivers, Rodgers, Tarkenton, Unitas, Montana as the top 12. Watson, Wilson, Cousins, Prescott, and Romo are all in the all time top 10 for passer rating. The wins list is very similar to the yards and TD all time lists give or take. Pretty much every efficiency stat is so inflated it's pretty worthless to be impressed by in this era. Then the volume stats, well... you get those numbers through longevity. How do you get a team to keep you for a long time? Win. 

It's a stat. The problem with this topic is that you have a strawman that people are acting like people don't use statistics contextually. Every stat is garbage in isolation of context and without weighing other factors. But yeah, generally over a large period of time the better QB's tend to win the most and seperate themselves. Like eye test and comparisons are usually better for evaluations, but stats can help provide context. 

[Matts4313]

48 minutes ago, lancerman said:

There's one player who touches the ball on every offensive down and can audible plays. QB's have a largely disproportionate effect on the game. 

Honestly if you look at the all time wins for QB's and look at all time passer rating for QB's, I like the wins list better. You have Brady, Farve, Manning, Brees, Ben, Elway, Marino, Rivers, Rodgers, Tarkenton, Unitas, Montana as the top 12. Watson, Wilson, Cousins, Prescott, and Romo are all in the all time top 10 for passer rating. The wins list is very similar to the yards and TD all time lists give or take. Pretty much every efficiency stat is so inflated it's pretty worthless to be impressed by in this era. Then the volume stats, well... you get those numbers through longevity. How do you get a team to keep you for a long time? Win. 

It's a stat. The problem with this topic is that you have a strawman that people are acting like people don't use statistics contextually. Every stat is garbage in isolation of context and without weighing other factors. But yeah, generally over a large period of time the better QB's tend to win the most and seperate themselves. Like eye test and comparisons are usually better for evaluations, but stats can help provide context. 

The dudes on your all time wins list were all time efficiency at the time of their retirement.