Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking per Pro Football Focus

[Sciz]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

PFF reviews every play, of every player, every year, on film, and compiles the statistics. Then we have random opinions from internet message board posters. I'm not taking a position here. Some prefer the former some prefer the later.

I absolutely love their stats, like coverage and playing time. The grading system is garbage, though.

The biggest problem is that these guys have no real football knowledge. They're from England and never mention any previous football experience, so I'm going to assume that they don't have any. If this were a former coach or something, then it'd make sense. A group of a few guys who have never even played football as far as I can tell? Absurd.

One big example is on stunts. They have absolutely no idea who is responsible for pressure causes by stunts. They gave Mankins the best grade of any LG in the playoffs in the Jets game. They cited him as not giving up any pressures at all, when really he (along with the rest of the OL) was getting destroyed by stunts. Another example is unblocked pressure off the edge. If 6 guys come and the safety comes in untouched off the left side, they mark the LT down for that, when really, that's the back's job to block the unblocked guy or the QB's job to get rid of the ball quickly. They give a guy a lower score for not blocking the guy that got the pressure, when really, he blocked who he was supposed to.

You can't grade intent unless you have football experience and know what the responsibilities are, and these guys don't have that. That's my biggest problem with the site.

 

[flycessna]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

Matt Light sucks. We have a chance to cut and run here. Been waiting for this for years and years. If we bring him back it better be a damn friendly cap hit and with no guarantee of starting.

Matt Light Sucks?

Based on what? your own personal opinion.. you just read where he was rated 5th against the run..

I understand his 55th in pass protection isnt ideal but did it look like to you the Pats had a Pass protection problem this season?

Add to this his leader ship role and the other major areas of focus this teams needs to take and I believe a blanket statement like yours leaves many questions.

Hopfully they keep him.. and yes I agree a friendly cap hit is always better for the TEAM.

 

[Rob0729]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

PFF reviews every play, of every player, every year, on film, and compiles the statistics. Then we have random opinions from internet message board posters. I'm not taking a position here. Some prefer the former some prefer the later.

As pointed out by another poster, they do not review the "All 22" or coaches' tape, they use the TV broadcast. You cannot do a clear analysis through the TV broadcast since you cannot see what every player is doing on every down. You only get a small glipse of what is going on during the play.

Also, they do not use trained, experience analists like most sites, they use volunteers who may not have the proper knowledge and could have biases against players and/or teams.

For example, they don't give Brady the proper credit because they feel he is a system QB. How can you properly evaluate a player when you have a preconceived label on him and discount anything special he might have done because you think it is the system and not him?

Fact of the matter, PFF is garbage. It is easy to poke huge holes in their analysis and they even admitted to using faulting stats in the past.

 

[nashvillepatsfan]

AWESOME. I wondered when the first "Matt Light sucks" thread would appear :bricks:

oh well, its another typical offseason

 

[bucky]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

As pointed out by another poster, they do not review the "All 22" or coaches' tape, they use the TV broadcast. You cannot do a clear analysis through the TV broadcast since you cannot see what every player is doing on every down. You only get a small glipse of what is going on during the play.

Just to take this point even further, if you do have coaches' tape, it's still impossible to equally grade all players on all teams on every single play. That's because you don't know each team's system, or what the particular play call was. If a blitzer comes in untouched, you can't know whether it was the QB, RB, or one of the OL who is to blame? When the QB throws to a dead area, you don't know whether it was the QB or WR? When a guy runs down the field wide open, whose fault is it? Is it a communication flaw, or did someone just screw up the coverage? What's true for one system is not true for another. Heck, even within the same system, responsibilities change from week to week and based on who's in the game.

That's why all these attempts at football sabermetrics are so flawed. In baseball, the players show up, take batting practice, and play every day. In football, everyone on the team spends the whole week watching film and practicing for that 1 game.

 

[BradyManny]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

So out of 64 starting tackles, 54 were better than Light at pass blocking? But,59 were worse at run blocking?

Exactly. It makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that they have fans grade players off of TV tape.

 

[DarrylStingley]

These stats surprise me. But I'm not surprised that Matt Light is not a top tier LT. He gets his ass kicked at times and it seems to happen at the worst times. He wasn't great in SB 42 or in the Jets playoff games.

If the Pats can get him at reasonable money, great. If not, thanks for the amazing memories and all the best to you, Matt.

 

[BradyManny]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

PFF reviews every play, of every player, every year, on film, and compiles the statistics. Then we have random opinions from internet message board posters. I'm not taking a position here. Some prefer the former some prefer the later.

Unfortunately, effort != quality.

As much as I love food, I could spend all day, every day critiquing fine dining, I'd be no food critic. I have no background in the culinary arts, therefore, my opinion - no matter the amount of time I could spend on forming the opinion - is not of merit.

These guys at PFF all have day jobs and have no background in football.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but as someone in an industry currently being undermined by amateurs who have no education or background in the field, I take great offense to the hacks at PFF deciding they can snap their fingers and become football experts and charge for it.

The bridge between amateur and trained professional gets blurred more and more in this internet era, and for those that reap financial benefit off of that blurry line at the expense of those who did put in the proper time to become educated in their craft, I don't have a lot of respect for.

Not to mention, PFF's analysis is - predictably - extremely pedestrian when compared to those who have experience in football. If they were to openly acknowledge they are amateurs and not charge for their analysis, I wouldn't have a problem. But plenty of posters on patsfans and patriotsplanet can go much more in-depth in the game and for free, and without the completely unjustified pretentiousness of PFF.

 

[BradyFTW!]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

Once again, the standard PFF disclaimer: it's a useless site that does a terrible job of measuring player performance. Back when its stats were open to the public, I could jump on, pick a random statistic and position, and point out at least 10 examples of how egregiously awful its rankings were. And before crowell offers the predictable response of "yeah, but every formula has outliers", I'll point out that I have a not-insignificant background in statistical modeling, and these objectively wrong results occur far too frequently to be anything other than what they are: indicators of deeply flawed, broken models that are measuring something other than on-the-field effectiveness. So I genuinely couldn't care less what its metrics think of Matt Light's performance.

Crowell33 can wish for it to be a legitimate source all he wants (I'm honestly beginning to suspect that he's probably affiliated with them in some way), but that won't make it true.

PFF reviews every play, of every player, every year, on film, and compiles the statistics. Then we have random opinions from internet message board posters. I'm not taking a position here. Some prefer the former some prefer the later.

When the latter thinks that David Garrard is better than Tom Brady, I'll take the former.

 

[3rd and Long]

Been a reader of the board for quite some time, but thought I would make my first post chiming in on Matt Light and the oline.

Yes, PFF could be called a fringe website that we should not bother paying attention to, but I think the general point they have made on Matt Light is worth looking at. Based on the last few post season losses I feel like an oline upgrade is needed, not to say that Matt Light is the problem, but he certainly has not been great.

 

[Coach42]

The problem with trying to apply "metrics" to sports is that the more players that are on the field the more complicated the math involved has to be. Metrics works great for batter v pitcher and pitcher v batter in baseball because it is essentially a "one on one" confrontation. I think you would find that even the most ardent baseball statistic defender would admit that the defensive statistics like uzr are flawed because of all the factors that go into rating a defense.

I think the same premise can be said for football statistics. While some of PFF numbers are useful they hardly tell the whole story. With 22 men on the field plus numerous other factors such as coaching, weather, scheme, playing surface, injury etc. etc. when accounting for those factors the math becomes impossibly complicated.

Bottom line the more players on the playing field the more difficult it is to pull any meaningful statistics from the game.

 

[BradyFTW!]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

What are you insane? We should package Light with Brady and trade them for David Garrard.

According to PFF, this trade would actually improve the Pats, so we should definitely try to do it.

 

[scout]

Re: Matt Light: 55th rated tackle in pass blocking

According to PFF, this trade would actually improve the Pats, so we should definitely try to do it.

You know what the litmus test is?
This site.
If Matt Light was anywhere as bad as PFF is stating, this board would have been overflowing with negative posts concerning Light. Have we seen that? NO.
Where does Light rank as the whipping boy? Well (in your best Ronald Reagan impression), On the spectrum, somewhere in the middle of Brandon Merriweather and Tom Brady.

 

[stinkypete]

PFF's rankings of linemen is absurd. They grade individual performances based on 1-on-1 matchups, I believe. Each play that a lineman is actively engaged in results in a win, a loss or a draw.

So how then do you grade a single lineman's role in pass protection, when an offensive line, more than any position in the game, is a team effort. How do you grade the playcall, and the responsibility of each individual lineman during that play? How do you compensate for TE support or RB blitz pickup?

An individual grading system like PFF uses is useless in the ultimate team game. Look at the coldhardfootballfacts offensive hog index...they rank the Patriots OL #1 overall in the NFL. There's no way Light is a bottom 10 pass protector.

 

[nashvillepatsfan]

These stats surprise me. But I'm not surprised that Matt Light is not a top tier LT. He gets his ass kicked at times and it seems to happen at the worst times. He wasn't great in SB 42 or in the Jets playoff games.

If the Pats can get him at reasonable money, great. If not, thanks for the amazing memories and all the best to you, Matt.

Light was the only one doing his job in SB 42. However, Mr. 'I want 8 mill a year' had his worst game ever. I hate having to bring this up every offseason. Here, go look at the link for yourself;
http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...pass-protection-breakdown-excellent-read.html

I know nobody wants to rewatch that game, but it would be nice if they did before commenting. I do agree with others, that money will matter. I want Light back, but only if its a fair deal, which i think it will be. The interior of the line needs improvement. Always has, and its time to fix it. Im not the least bit concerned about the tackles.