Only to a point, in fact dumping off for short when the QB rating is in the rarified level of 110 and especially above 120 will actually lower the rating though never as much as an incomplete. Conversely on 3rd and short taking a 4 yd. pass is smart, moves the chains and may lower ratings but still good play. Of course your right when you say the QB who takes a shot for 15 on 3rd and 9 loses rating points but the dump may be correct because on that one play because it may be all that was available and its up to the receiver to do something if he can. Stats have to mean something because its how we evaluate and its complex when there are 22 players and coaches who influence the play and an ever shifting field of different lengths based on scrimmage line etc. If I am wrong in my conclusions tell me why but to dismiss as a wet dream is not very helpful.
Your right about red zone and third downs, it will not rate that and those are good considerations but as to Pennington he only had a high rating in 2002 and that year he was very effective and the Jets played a tough schedule and went to the second round of the playoffs. Team strength in 02 credited somewhat for the rating?
Any NFL statistic is useless by itself. But if you look at all of the statistics as a whole, including games won, points scored, QB rating, percentage completion, etc, then you get a compete picture and a single statistic can be put into context. Case and point, A lot of Favre haters point out his interception statistics, which are on the high end. However, they keep bringing up that he throw for more INTs than anybody. However, thats not true when you consider how many years he's played or more accurately, how many games he's played. Also, Favre a large percentage of those INTs where when the team was down and Favre was throwing up hail Mary's with seconds left on the clock. Just this past week Favre chanced it because it should have been an defensive offsides. QB rating, for the most part, is a pretty good indicator. Check out ESPN's stats tab and check out the top 10 QB ratings by year for the past 8 years or so. I don't think it's any coincidence that consistently the top QBs in the league finish in the top 10. Romo, Brady, Peyton, and other good QBs are up there year to year. Now it is true that it takes receivers and a good OL for a QB to even rank. Put Romo or Brady on a different team, say Oakland or the Rams, and I'm willing to bet that their numbers would drop off a bit. Mark Bulger used to be one of the top ranked QBs and now that the Rams suck so do his stats. Favre is a great QB, regardless of what stats you want to throw up there. It shouldn't even need to be debated. Just like Elway, even though he has a higher TD/INT percentage than favre. Marino was a great QB, even though statistically he never won a SB.
i don't care if his picks are on the high end... if he continues his pace ill be happy with 48 tds's and 16 picks
Exactly. The relevance of the passer rating is directly related to whatever point someone is trying to make for or against a given QB. Football in general is not a game of stats. Look at the difference Alan Faneca makes in our offense, what are his stats? That's right, he doesn't have any. But take him out and see how we do. Stats belong in baseball and math classes, nowhere else.
What is the value of the passer rating? Well, look at this chart (dated 2007) of the best all-time career ratings: http://www.profootballhof.com/hof/story.jsp?story_id=2356 Whatever its value, it isn't in rating the best QBs, unless you think Warner and Bulger are top 5 all-time. Testaverde is 77, with plenty of wretched QBs ranked ahead of him. Brian Griese is top 20, but Bart Starr and Aikman are in the 30s, Elway is in the 40s, and Unitas and McMahon are in the 50s. This stat has gotten way too important over the last 20 years.
Phil Simms had a great quote. He said as a rookie he looked at the stats on the wall after two games and saw his passer rating was ahead of Roger Staubach. He said "I didn't know very much yet at the time but I knew not to pay any attention to that." Perfect.
But until Sunday favre hasn't been getting the job done so that would tell us passer rating may be overrated? We won the first game b/c of the D, we stayed in the 2nd game b/c of the D, game 3 he raised his rating in garbage time. The only game the O has been good in was against Ari despite what the rating tells us.
I don't think even defenders of the passer rating would say it is very usefull for making single game, or even four game stretch, judgments. It doesn't account for the variations in individual games, it's supposed to be for long stretches of time, or careers. It was invented by a public relations employee and is nothing but a way to spoon feed the fan a SINGLE rating, instead of all of this: completion percentage, yards, touchdowns, INTs, TD:INT ratio, etc. Without looking it up, does anyone here actually know how to calculate a passer rating? If not, why have much faith in it? It's not like football is rocket science and the ratings need to be obscure and complex. I've also never heard any NFL team say that it uses passer ratings in personnel evaluations, and I've heard plenty say that they absolutely don't use it.
Couldn't agree more re: Favre's interceptions. I have been a Favre fan since year 2 of his career. Statistically he should have a lot of ints because he is the most experienced QB in the game's history. This thread was simply a question of what if anything can be drawn from the passer rating. My conclusion was that good QBs may have good passer ratings if they have good people but that good QBs may have mediocre ratings if they don't have the people to protect or execute on the passes. Not about Favre, in fact if you read my posts I am one of his biggest supporters on this forum. I could not agree more that so many of Favre's interceptions were in desperate games when he let it all hang out trying to win and 40 times he has done just that in the 4th quarter and no telling how many more times he pulled off a great play in the 2nd or 3rd just keeping it close.
I beg to differ. Compared to what we had previously? We could realistically be 0-4. How many TD passes has favre's predecessor thrown? Sunday's performance was 3 years worth of big plays from Pennington in the Passing game.
Passer rating is disparaged, most often, by those who are trying to disregard often legitimate criticisms of quarterbacks who "just win," but the statistics they take into account are some of the most important measurements of a quality passer. "What good is passer rating? Vince Young just WINS!" Statements like this are more often than not proven to be bunk. Statements like this are also used to defend average quarterbacks on great teams(Troy Aikman has mediocre numbers while surrounded by all-time greats) and guys who turned out to be great(Elway, who spent a good portion of his career being reckless with the football, and was, people forget, nearly replaced by Tommy Maddox). Passer rating is only really relevant in the modern era of high completion percentage offenses, and there are guys who end up with inflated ratings as a result of offensive systems, but at the end of the day, it takes into account the most relevant factors in an effective passing attack, and is therefore a viable stat. -X-
There's still too many variables to compare apples to apples in most situations like you can in baseball. Look at the run-and-shoot era with Warren Moon and the Oilers. Moon and his WRs all set records because of the way their offense was set up, did that make them better than any other group? They never made it through the playoffs like a lot of other good-but-not-great teams, yet statistically they were head and shoulders above.
Even those are variables. The last two are a team stat being applied to an individual and TD passes require help also. If you have great RB or a big bruising FB your TD passes might suffer but your team doesn't, that kind of thing.
