Attn: Pro Football Focus Haters: Patriots disrespected

[jmt57]

I certainly give much more credence to FO's stats, as well. They are transparently more thoughtful about their methodology. But they only provide individual ratings for skill positions. PFF is the only site I know of that attempts league-wide ratings of offensive linemen -- or of defensive players at all. Even the best of posters here only appear to review film of Patriots games, and even that sporadically. I personally find the PFF effort commendable and a useful supplement to the endless unsupported opinionation here. Sure their methodology is peculiar, but they review and rate every play by every player on every team. They'd have to be total fools to learn nothing from that exercise. In comparison, very few posters here even do tape reviews of the Patriot games and players, let alone try to do comparative ratings.

So forgive me if I believe that PFF's flawed data is an interesting supplement to the qualitative Patriots-specific crowd sourcing here.

Too bad PFF's data is now behind a paywall. Hard to believe that's a big success for them.

Yeah, but isn't this kind of a moot point?

Is anybody trying to say that any of the Pats players had a good game last week?

Isn't this stating the obvious?


The Pats did not have a good game in any phase of the game, as a team or individually last week. Is anybody disputing that? I don't think so; it's not as if this intricate analysis is earth shattering news.


I guess what it comes down to is that I don't really see the purpose of pointing this out with this link and those stats and a new thread on the subject. To me it's just beating a dead horse.

 

[Kasmir]

Yeah, but isn't this kind of a moot point?

Is anybody trying to say that any of the Pats players had a good game last week?

Isn't this stating the obvious?


The Pats did not have a good game in any phase of the game, as a team or individually last week. Is anybody disputing that? I don't think so; it's not as if this intricate analysis is earth shattering news.


I guess what it comes down to is that I don't really see the purpose of pointing this out with this link and those stats and a new thread on the subject. To me it's just beating a dead horse.

My apologies for wasting your time.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

There is one truly useful stat that PFF has (in fact, when they weren't a subscriber site, it was the ONLY one I looked at consistently), and that's number of snaps.

Honestly, and they pat themselves on the back for their accuracy and the kudos they get from certain organizations PR people (like the Bungles who have no scouting staff either...) for getting that soooooo right. The rest of it is poppy**** simply because none of them has ever scouted at any level and they have no access to coaches tape and they have no clue about scheme responsibilities. They are a several man collection of stats and data obcessed fans who apparenty had nothing better to do than invest 70 hours a week into building a data collection model that fed their geekish fantasies into something they might be able to market from a self funded business consultants hobby into a business they now all own shares in...

Reading this puts them and their conclusions in at least perspective. They believe what they are doing matters, although when pressed they can't really explain how or why...beyond their claim that it's more than you'd otherwise know...

Pro Football Focus: How Do They Put Their Numbers Together? -- NFL FanHouse

 

[convertedpatsfan]

PFF is worse than useless as an analytical tool. I say worse than useless because merely worthless sources are discredited immediately; people for some reason think that PFF has validity. It doesn't matter how many times I and other people point out the complete absurdity of its rankings- people just go on being proudly wrong about it.

Seriously, guys, this is the site that ranked David Garrard ahead of Tom Brady last year. Meanwhile, Football Outsiders, a site that does actual analysis, ranked Brady as the #1 QB in the NFL, because he faced a historically difficult slate of pass defenses. PFF also ranked Stylez G. White as one of the top defensive linemen in the NFL... it's just a useless, crappy source of information. I wish this site had a filter function that allowed me to ignore entire threads from the instant PFF was mentioned onward.

Judging by some of the comments on this board last season, David Garrard and Matt Cassell and every single JAG QB in the league was better than Tom Brady sometimes

I like PFF and FO and others, but all of them make major mistakes. It's still impossible to break down a play as precisely as other sports, particularly baseball. When a runner is stuffed for a loss, how much of that is on the runner, or the center, or the OL in general, or the coach for calling the play, or the QB for not calling an audible out? How much value do you give a sack vs. the huge running lane a guy gives up sometimes?

There are really only two things these sites do, and I'm sure most teams also do this. They count things, and then assess a value to them. With the Dumervil example, if you change the value of a sack, suddenly the formula changes and player rankings change as well. In that example, they chose not to give sacks as much value as others do. Is it right? Is it wrong? It depends. What are we measuring? If we say sacks aren't that significant, maybe Dumervil doesn't do much in a game then. But if we say they're extremely significant, then we say he makes a ton of big plays in a game compared to others.

It's nowhere near perfect, and no website, or even pro scout or coach, will be 100% right on their evaluations. But that doesn't make it worthless. It just means we have to be careful when we interpret that information to understand its limitations.

As for PFF disrespecting the Patriots, we were awful last week, it's not disrespect so much as the awful truth. You don't need a website metric or a statistic to come to that conclusion. :bricks:

 

[Rob0729]

I find PFF a joke, but I am not going to be critical of them for one critique of one game. The Pats played like crap last week. If they gave the players good grades for that effort, I would blast PFF more than their negative grades.

I am sorry, but football is not a game you can get accurate judgments by stats. Stats are misleading in football. Some stat sites are better than others (FootballOutsiders.com, CHHF), but none of them are perfect.

 

[reflexblue]

Ive run accross this thread enough times to finally add my 2 cents. How were the Patriots disrespected, they Did play poorly.

 

[TriplecHamp]

In the past, yes.

In the present, no.

Cleveland this year is as good if not better than Pittsburgh running the ball. But if you only compare the games when Hillis has been healthy, it's no comparison; when he's healthy the Browns' running game is far superior to the Steelers' this year.

Mendenhall is a better matchup for the Pats than Hillis was as well. Now whether or not Pittsburgh can exploit what happened last week remains to be seen. However, I see Mendenhall more similar to players like Peterson and Rice - the Pats didn't shut them down, but they contained those guys enough to win those games.


I don't know, I'm just not buying the idea that this Pittsburgh running game is as good as some are making it out to be. Their running game isn't as good as it used to be just like the Pats run defense isn't as good as it used to be. It's a weakness versus weakness, not a strength versus weakness in my opinion. I'm not saying the Pats run D is better than their run O, just saying don't compare this Steelers running game to that of 2005 or 2007 Steelers - and don't forget all the substitutes they have on their offensive line.

The steerlers statiscally are a better running team than the browns this year. Peyton Hillis big day is the reason its so close. How is Mendenhall a better matchup than hilis? They are similar backs and Mendenhal has more speed, he isn't more similar to Peterson or Rice (who are two different backs all together) I don't know why you would make that comparison. The front 7 will hopefully play better tonight but if they don't the steelers will do the same thing the Browns did. I don't know why anybody would disagree with that statement. Last week was less of an indication of how good the Browns running game is as to how poorly we played.

 

[OldNEPatsFan]

I guess people like Reiss must be total idiots for using PFF's stats and all 32 teams don't know what they are doing because they all receive their stats.