Thinking Skins

This is the situation we're in. And people like Kevin Sheehan (who I really respect because I grew up listening to him and he was the calm and rational one on 980) who tries to take this tone of middle ground while all the while airing nothing but negaive stats (these sack rates, calling them final and acting like other QBs haven't had sack problems and I've done research he refuses to do to show other Elite and average QBs who have had high sack rates in their FIRST 8 - 10 games and gone on to correct it, but he's calling it a fatal stat, and he's been having guests (respected data scientists) on his show calling him at best a career backup so now he can go with that and use it as a lead in with Jay Gruden. But We're about to be in QB purgatory. We have Sam right now. We either trade up for some elite QB like SD did when they had Drew cause they thought he wasn't the one (Narrator's voice: he was, Also Narrator's Voice: the one they traded for, Rivers wasn't). Do we want that to be us? I mean we have somebody who is looking really good right now we can trade him for a maybe in college who looks good against division 2 competition and hope he translates.

So, the problem is that this is what a lot of the draft hounds want. What a lot of us want is to build an OL and go into next year with a solid OL and sam and a solid Offense and a new coach and GM (who approves of Howell after he balls out the rest of the year), kinda like Philly did with Hurts.

This is what we've known all year. He can compete with the big dogs (if not for the sacks). Its been frustrating listening to the radio (except for Hoffman and EB of the junkies and to an extent Chris Russell) because they're always bringing up the sacks and nothing else. I'm like talk about the yards, talk about the other QBs in his class, talk about the QBs in this class, They're all struggling. He's putting up numbers comparable or better than all of them. I used to say minus Purdy but now he's on par with Purdy in a lot of categories.

I won't post the whole article but its a nice read https://sumersports.com/the-zone/average-depth-of-target-carries-less-weight-than-it-used-to/ Often considered the best quarterback in the league, Patrick Mahomes was first in Expected Points Added (EPA) per pass attempt while having the 26th highest ADoT. Continuing the trend of success despite a lower ADoT, Kyle Shanahan’s offense was ranked 2nd in EPA per pass while Brock Purdy and Jimmy Garoppolo had the 22nd and 29th highest ADoT respectively. In the current NFL, the path to having an efficient passing attack does not need to stem from throwing deep shots excessively.

The Commanders' offensive line is arguably the worst in the NFL at protecting the quarterback, allowing the most sacks in the league (40) and ranking 24th in pressure rate allowed per dropback (38.7%). Their 121 pressures allowed are the second-most in the NFL, behind only the Giants (135).4 hours ago

This doesn't use Sam Howell's name, but I'm indirectly asking about him. This is basically me and a ChatGPT talking about some stuff that I thought people may find interesting. Or not.

I don't subscribe to PFF so I depend on others to determine the rankings. I'm seeing that they're 11th in pass blocking and 3rd in run blocking. But it doesn't matter to me if we're ranked good right now. Historically we've had good linemen who have been ranked good by them and we have been able to see with our own eyes that they are bad. Remember Stephon Heyer? Wasn't he always ranked really high on PFF and I used to scratch my head.

Its not about PFF, but its about understanding the complexity of the sport. Your third line is what I'm trying to say. I have been trying to talk to radio hosts about analytics and its really difficult because they swear by one analytic and thats what I'm using as my to argue against. These radio hosts though are very intelligent people and generally understand the analytic very well, just dont understand its blind spots and don't want to be told its blind spots. So as somebody who is trained to look for blind spots (in a matter of speaking) its hard to talk to them about it. I'm saying that I hope that the analytics guys we're hiring don't have this mentailty. Honestly its something I've see with employees at a company as well, people at Microsoft are loyal, people at Google are loyal, peole at FB, people at all those companies, maybe they talk about it in house but not to the general public and thats cool. But I'm gonna need for people to act like Windows does not have problems. Microsoft Office has problems. Facebook has problems Twitter has problems. And we're going to discuss them, and when we discuss them, it doesn't mean that the world hates your product, we're just pointing out some of the areas that need to be addressed or that were not addressed properly. And then the next thing, the more complicated thing for guys like me, is how do you communicate this stuff. PFF says that we have a good OL (using pass block win rate), but PFF isn't a great ranking in itself. How do you tell that to your coaches / GM / whoever and ensure that they aren't too full of themselves going into the next week. That first comment is going to get them excited, right but the second is going to be like ?? What if I follow up and say that another PFF stat (using number of pressures allowed) says that we have a bad OL. Well, what use is that now. I've just confused the entire staff, right. And we dont want them to just go back to their eyes. This guy has been at it He's playing the what if game with SH and Seeing what he needs to change to get a better career

Yeah, but if they depend too heavily on only one. I'd like to believe that the analytics guy isn't as easily fooled by PFF or other analytics as some of the community. The same way that I didn't want Bruce to only go to Alabama to get talent, I don't want to only depend on certain cites for analytics. Now I realize that Harris is a business guy and he'll do deals some of which are business analytics deals. But I just hope that they don't get sold fools gold.

One thing I am always interested in is how receptive they are to 'criticism' or feedback. We know that no anlaytic is going to perfectly analyze the entire game of football because it is too complex of a sport. So the question is where do these analytics fall short. I dont mind that being a job for the users, you wouldn't want to tell me why I';m a bad guy to date. But when I question you about it, Don't act like its not true. Cause we're in this hype fest right now where everyone has their favorite analytics without knowing the flaws or limitations of that analytic. And when I try to speak on it, I get labeled as a hater, no I'm just saying that as a mathematician you can't prove your claims so be careful with what your saying.

So its hard to do, but I'm going to try to remove myself and my optimism from this post, But what we see, especially from a players perspevtive are now 3 games theyve lost they could've won late. (Philly, Chi. NY}. This is all while installing an offense and developing a QB, There is blame to go around, but I think they really believe (or want to believe) the Ron speeches about 10 games left; They have played far from their best ball and have been in a lot of these games late in the 4th largely due to the QB and the defense. Thats something to build on. But its something that Craig Hoffman and EB and others have hinted at its like 9 people pulling the rope in one direction and 2 in the other direction, leads to mistakes. Sometimes those 2 are OL. Sometimes its the QB. Sometimes its a RB or a TEor a WR. But late in games they have 11 guys pulling the same direction. How do they get that same energy to start games? You mention the Giants, but truth is I was looking at our schedule and outside of SF and Miami (any given sunday) I didn't see any games I'd expect to lose by double digits. This league is struggling on offense, outside of KC and SF. And once we get the sacks issue under control we will be a force to be reckoned with.

A key think about the Elway comparison is that right around now (game 7) is when his sack rate started to go down. Can't say it will be the same here, but at are seeing changes in the OL, so his hopes are high.

So I was looking to discuss the last paragraph. The Brady stuff was extra, but I think they play the game very similar. I don't think Howell plays the game at all close to Brees or Wilson who he's been compared to because to his size. He's (Howell)had that pocket escapability, but it wasn't something that Elway always had. He learned or over time. That was my main point of the point, just that these two are similar.

This gets into the discussion I was having with some analysts on twitter. The NFL is changing too much too fast to only consider data relevant that is recent. There are modern QBs that remind me of Howell from a numbers perspective (Big Ben) and old school OBs (Elway). The problem is that each counterexample I try to bring up is met with something like this "well that one is too old school" or "his style of game is too different from Howell" or "he has a running game though" and so they don't allow for a fair fight. I posted this here because normally people here are tamer, but I got the same reaction. meh. The game of football has not changed that much since Elway. Yes there is FA. Yes there is a rookie cap. Yes there are much different offenses and defenses and schemes are much different and players are much different. But football is still football. But I like the Elway comparison as opposed to say Brees because if you look at most of our games (Arizona, Denver, Philly, heck even Chicago, Giants) there was a comeback element to them, there was that we're not out of it no matter how much we're down. That's why I'm big on seeing that Elway started with a big sack rate too. Because he held onto the ball too. He has that same gene too. And PFF wasn't around then, but I bet he didn't have the all pro OL he had later in life (he was THE top draft pick).

Thanks. Valuable information from one person. But there was a question a while back that asked and another statement made that Howell whether there were any QBs who had ever recovered from a sack rate like Howell's. I understand if its not your cup of tea and i'm not here to ruffle feathers. So if you want me to go on a hiatus for a while just say the word.

Honestly, if you go through the PFR passing leaders page and go through their early years, you'd be surprised how many of them struggled early on. I mean they act like just because we're in a new era Howell isn't supposed to struggle.

I was doing some research in my spare time. One is my favorite QB of all time and the guy I like to compare Sam to (Elway) and the other is a guy who I didn't think struggled early but looking at his numbers he did seem to have somewhat of a higher than normal sack rate that's worth investigating. John Elway 1983 4 4 sacks in 8 attemps 50 % 3 7 in (21) 29, 24% 3 10 in (33) 62, 16% 2 12 in (11) 73, 16% 3 15 in (10) 83, 18% 2 17 in (15) 98, 17% 2 19 in (31) 129, 15% 4 23 in (28) 157, 15% 0 23 in (24) 181, 12.7% 5 28 in (44) 225, 10.8% 0 28 in (34) 259, 10.8% Sam Howell 2023 6 6 in (31), 19% 4 10 in (39) 70, 14.2 9 19 in (29) 99, 19.2 5 24 in (41) 140, 17 5 29 in (51) 191, 15 5 33 in (23) 214, 15.4 6 39 in (42) 256, 15.2 Tom Brady 2001 0 0 (10) 10 0% 1 1(23) 33 3% 4 5(24) 57 7% 3 8(54) 111 7% 0 8(20) 131 6% 2 10(38) 169 5.9 3 13(31) 200 6.5% 7 20(21) 221 9% 2 22(27) 248 8.9% 4 26(26) 274 9.5% 3 29(28) 302 9.6% 3 32(28) 330 10.6% 5 37(35) 365 10.1% 3 40(19) 384 10.4% 1 41(29) 413 9% Now the Brady numbers are not near the Howell numbers, but the Elway nubners? C'mon. He turned it around but those sack numbers are crazy. Another QB that had bad sack numbers early in their career and turned it around was Big Ben (for a number of years).

so now that I've had breakfast, this number is simply the pressures allowed number, which is not widely available but I think is available through different sites. But I have not seen OLs ranked by number of pressures allowed. I guess that's only offered at PFF right now. I can't find it anywhere else. That's why it would cause us to look further into it. The thing is a rating system should rate bad players bad and good players good. The COP back and the and the bellcow (under my system) would be rated both very badly because they both had 8 fumbles. But if you look into it and see the numbers and then look further at it and see the why, they'd rank the COP worse because he did it on fewer carries. The Bellcow would not be seen as a "good" back but its more understandable because he took more snaps. I still wouldn't trust him holding the ball though. And that's the thing though. When 15 pressures allowed gets just diluted by the pass heavy system we run, and then all the other pressures of the other linemen are just the same way, so that we have a "high" grade (so that they become 60s and 70s) , so much so that Craig Hoffman who is an intelligent man on radio, but is hanging up on callers who try to point out flaws in this system. So that now we rank as a top 10-12 unit. So that now it can't be the OL's fault? Really? Sorry, but your system is bad. I will comment that I love having these type of discussions, and its even better when it can be almost all ball.

So this was a long discussion but basically PFF grades are a ratio and MAM is saying that they should be a counting stat like fumbles. The person he's taking to disagrees. But the example at the head of the discussion is a Commanders OL who has the same number of failures of more reps. So yes like a RB with 15 fumbles on 400 carries vs 15 fumbles on 100 carries. One is better. But they're both bad. Both have 15 fumbles.

This brings up another perspective, who will be released. But he's 30. I guess thats better than we have though.

I don't see a threat for this but I'm thinking of who I want in free agency. I'm looking at Connor Williams Jonah Williams There are some other names that I like but they're backups so I don't want to put too much weight in them.

So I've updated my position. I'm not back in the Kyle Smith board. He was let go by Ron so he's not team Ron. But I think he's respected. Question is what's his opinion on QBs and Howell and this roster.