Passer ratings go up in cold weather

[Quest4SevenHomie]

Found these stats as well as the Pats' records in below freezing temperatures

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

No one responds to this thread, but they’ll have no problem spewing false statements about cold weather and the passing game.

 

[primetime]

Passer rating is a weird index stat that isn't particularly meaningful on its own, and I'm not sure including, like, every game ever played in the NFL is a good way to establish a sample for games played in 2019. Especially since it doesn't control for quarterbacks or whatever. The majority of Patriots cold weather games since 1960 were played with horrifically awful QBs, not Tom Brady, so you're not actually comparing apples to oranges here.

This article has better (regression adjusted) analysis on how it actually impacts the passing game: The Factors: Cold weather's impact on play-calling | Fantasy Analysis | Pro Football Focus

Yards per attempt is generally the more meaningful stat since it completion percentage is intrinsic to it. I would say this article suffers by not clearly denoting its methods and by not giving us a confidence interval (are these differences statistically significant?) but it's all much more useful than passer rating, which is a weird index score with I believe four different components. In any case, it seems clear that there's some negative impact on yards per attempt and a positive impact on yards per carry rushing the ball.

 

[DarrylS]

Remember when football was about X's and O's, now all these opposing metrics make things more confusing than need be..

 

[BobDigital]

Here is how I see it.

First lets looks at the overall stats.

In a Dome - 86.1
In the outdoors but above 32. 71.8
In the outdoors but below 32. 73.9

So what can we look at going by these numbers? Well first of all being in a Dome is great. That seems to prove that perfect conditions help the passing game and offense. Makes sense. But what conditions matter the most and why is it teams above 32 do just as well as teams below 32 on average when it should follow that the worse the weather the worse the passing game?

I think there are a few reasons for that. One being that something happens above 32 that doesn't happen below. Rain. Rain is the worst thing to play in as a passer (besides a snowy blizzard in a very cold game). I don't mean just a little snow I mean a full on blizzard. Even a little rain can ruin your passing day while a little or a moderate amount of snow can be shrugged off or perhaps even beneficial.

The games below 32 degrees don't need to deal with rain and so they benefit from that. The other thing worth pointing out is that most of these outside games in the playoffs take place in cold weather to a degree. In the end there isn't much difference between 40 degrees or 30 for athletes. If you move around a lot you will be able to play through it. I don't think 32 is the best cut off for how cold effects a player. It is just cold enough to eliminate rain. That makes it in some ways the perfect cut off number to skew the data.

Another thing to note is that in colder games you tend to play more risk averse which raises your passer rating. But your passing attack on the whole gets worse. You score less.

I'm not going to pull up all the games but here is a link.

11 of the coldest games in NFL history - sports - att.net

A lot of QBs ended up with good passer ratings, but the actual teams don't score much. 365 points total were scored in these 11 games which are the coldest on record. That is an average of 33 Points total per game or 16.6 per team in each game.

Clearly the cold effected the offenses even if the QBs posted good passer ratings in a large number of these games (I checked and a lot of them had very good passer ratings. Usually on fewer attempts than usual.)

So when it gets THAT cold offenses clearly slow down. I would say the colder it is the worse offenses in general tend to play, but exponentially worse. And the big drop doesn't start to happen at 32 degrees. IDK the degree at which is really starts to matter, but I would say it is fair to assume in a large enough sample size each degree below 32 would be shown to make a bigger difference than the last one.

 

[primetime]

Most domes are also newer (especially if we're considering the broad history of the NFL as the OP does) and there's a clear trend towards higher passer ratings over time as a result of rule changes and skill, so it's no surprise that dome passer ratings are going to skew higher. You need to control for time fixed effects. All of these analyses are bad.

At least the PFF one uses pass attempts since 2011 or whatever as the unit of analysis instead of games played since the beginning of time. That naturally controls for era and lets you examine the outcome of individual passes. (If you wanted to do real stats, it would let you build a nunber of models to determine the regression-adjusted odds ratio of playing in cold weather on completion chance, TD percentage, interceptions, etc.)

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

Pro football reference splits for Brady don't include temperature, but they do break down indoor vs. outdoor, and this is for the regular season:

Brady passer rating in domes: 109.0 (record 11-3)
Brady passer rating in retractable room stadiums: 100.4 (record 6-2)
Brady passer rating outdoors: 96.9 (record 190-57)

Tom Brady Career Splits | Pro-Football-Reference.com

There is a sample size concern, with ~18X more games outdoors, but it does suggest that, not surprisingly, perfect indoor conditions (mild temp, no wind, good footing) is conducive to better performance by TB12, despite all of the indoor games in the regular season being true road games.

I always thought that wind was the biggest negative, rather than temperature, but that is just my impression.

I've no idea if the indoor/outdoor splits are similar for other QBs (somebody can please look them up), but it matches my eye test. Late in the year, more wind, bad footing, plus cold equals more of a struggle for a lot of QBs. Maybe for QBs that suck, it doesn't make as much of a difference!

 

[Brandon Manning]

But are these 5 to 10 yard passes? 40 yard passes? I think teams would be more conservative in colder weather.

 

[primetime]

But are these 5 to 10 yard passes? 40 yard passes? I think teams would be more conservative in colder weather.

Yards per attempt goes down in colder weather. So does completion percentage, which means some of that difference is likely explained by a larger proportion of incompletes (i.e. zeroes) but also some of it is probably explained by shorter passes.

 

[sb1]

It’s not going to be nearly as cold as the forecast said but it might be windy. That might hurt a quick strike offense like the Chiefs have.

 

[Ring 6]

Passer rating is a contrived formula that is all but useless. It’s only value is that it happens to correlate to good QBs have good ratings and bad QBs have bad ratings.
Using it to suggest 74.2 is reliably better than 72.6 is ridiculous. Using it across generations of the nfl and enormous rule changes, scheme changes and talent changes, all of which make passer rating not only incongruous across generation but also a “statistic” that looks better under one style of play than another even when the QB play under that style isn’t.

All you can draw from this is yes, it is possible to use the formula under weather conditions but the result is wholly meaningless.

 

[libra957]

The weather will be fine,no artic blast from Antarctica, or whatever the hell they're predicting. I expect the passing game to be fine from both team.