Kasmir

Shalise@Globe. The Globe is a paying customer, apparently.

RyanP421

Recovering and making a good throw is the sign of a great QB...But you can't dismiss the fact that Brady should have been picked off 3 times in the Bears Game. He was lucky that the Bears defenders couldnt hang onto the ball. Brady was NOT as sharp as we're used to seeing, but he got away with some mistakes, thank goodness. He was able to make up for it by taking advantage of the mistakes made by the Bears defense.

Kasmir

Their QB ratings are complete garbage, and they don't seem to care they they correlate with nothing of interest to anyone but themselves. Owslek has pointed out how their system is oblivious to the value of good decision making, which is inane when evaluating QB play. I pointed out to them that their system actually scores QB's higher for making decisions that decrease the likelihood of winning. Utter insanity.

Since they use broadcast tape for their evaluations, their ratings of anything in the passing game except pass protection are nearly useless as they're necessarily incomplete in an unknowable way.

It's only with OL, DL, and LB play against the run that they have enough information to even attempt to fairly score player's performance. They are at least potentially useful there, especially as statistical scoring of those very players is meaningless -- unlike with skill position players.

Even for those "unskilled" positions, their scoring is opaque and arbitrary. I don't think they even know what a sensitivity analysis is, let alone having any notion of a success correlation to measure against. They've never even discussed the arbitrary weightings they use, let alone try to justify them.

They don't even divide what scoring they do per play, so their scores as reported are inherently not even useful for comparative purposes.

They use a subjective scoring system subject to "Russian Judge" problems, and I see no evidence they have made any attempt to even normalize their scorers vs each other.

It's such a shame, really, because the put so much effort into it, and done properly it could be a unique and useful service, especially for league-wide comparisons of players in non-skill positions, who are very poorly served by pure statistical systems like the NFL's official stats or Football Outsiders' system.

So in my book, they get an A for the effort that they claim, but a D- for the execution they demonstrate. Until they put all their work behind a paywall, I would have given them a C- for the (limited) utility they provide, but that's a fail now too.

And I'm one of their biggest supporters here

BradyManny

Neil Hornsby - the site's founder and the guy who just graded the Pats-Bears game - is literally just a businessman from the UK.

That should tell you all you need to know about the site.

Kasmir

Hmm... UK Pats fans, is there a Association Football website analogous to Pro Football Focus?

PatsWickedPissah

If so this just reenforces the well supported conclusion that the dinosaur media is clueless in how to discriminate and deal with the new media. The NYT and its Boston serf can't die quickly enough for me.

__________________
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck." RAH

patriotscpfc

We have ratings of our players from various sites for the top 4 leagues

I don't like it because a lot of players do things that you can't recognise

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Paul, London - Patriot and Proud

patriotscpfc

I agree other than the UK part means absolutely nothing. We know and watch as much as what Americans do

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Paul, London - Patriot and Proud

Raymond

Good grief. Another jewel from the site.

When passer rating and reality collide: Tom Brady vs. the Bears | ProFootballFocus.com

BradyManny

Certainly - as fans, it has absolutely no bearing. But to run that site, and charge for it, he should be more than just a fan of the game.

I was merely pointing out the fact that he has no experience in football in his entire life. He's literally a businessman, with a day job, who likes football. Just like everyone else who scouts on that site. They've never played football, never coached it, never scouted it. Just like most of the posters here - save for some of our guests that actually do have experience and knowledge in football. And often, we defer to their analysis, and rightfully so.

Anyone here on this site is capable of the analysis PFF provides (and as I said, a few here are capable of providing much, much, much more), the difference is, we don't get paid for our patch-work analysis, and they do.