NFL 2015: Week 3

The real shocker isn't Mariota. It's this:

Gumbie wrote:

5. Tyrod Taylor - 116.1

Does anyone know how Tyrod got good? I watched him play plenty when he was at Virginia Tech, but there wasn't much to suggest that he would be a good pro.

Enix wrote:

Does anyone know how Tyrod got good?

Solid offensive line and good receivers. Most quarterbacks in the NFL would look pretty good with a strong o-line.

It's only three games; give it a while and see if defensive coordinators start to pick up a QB's tendencies. I recall when rookie Bruce Gradkowski was starting for Tampa, and he was great for a few games before his flaws got recognized.

If Tyrod Taylor is playing this well in week 12, that's something else, but it's too early to make any real assessment.

Also, anybody know of a Greasemonkey script to automatically block any version of "fatbucsQB.jpg"? Asking for a friend.

I would kill to be fat like Freeman.

(Although, in fairness, no has ever paid me to be an athlete).

The line's not super good though. They did get a big boost in bringing in Richie Incognito, who is playing out of his mind after being out of the game for a while. Cordy Glenn is solid, though not a dominant stone-walling left tackle. And Eric Wood is good. But the right side of the line is still a big issue.

Really, Taylor has been very solid against two teams that have been floundering with poor defensive play (Indianapolis, Miami), and he struggled against New England far more than the passer rating statistic credits him for (took a lot of sacks in lieu of throwing balls away, which kept his completion % high which boosted his passer rating).

He's throwing a *lot* of short catch-and-runs to Percy Harvin, who hasn't looked this capable in a long time, and he's targeting Charles Clay on a lot of high percentage throws too.

Still, even taking those allowances into account, he is way outperforming what anyone had any reason to expect from him. You could put EJ Manuel in that situation and I still doubt he'd be able to connect with anyone reliably.

*Legion* wrote:

Really, Taylor has been very solid against two teams that have been floundering with poor defensive play (Indianapolis, Miami), and he struggled against New England far more than the passer rating statistic credits him for (took a lot of sacks in lieu of throwing balls away, which kept his completion % high which boosted his passer rating).

So once again we should use the ESPN QBR where sacks are taken into account (among other things), eh?

http://espn.go.com/nfl/qbr

Ah well that drops him down to 8th at least. And yeah, the worst sack EPA in the top 10 by almost a full point. Also drops Mariota down to 20, partly from sack problems. He is tied for 2nd in sacks. Tyrod's actually only 5th there.

Stele wrote:

So once again we should use the ESPN QBR where sacks are taken into account (among other things), eh?

I'm still pretty skeptical of QBR.

I am a big fan of advanced metrics, but strongly prefer ones which shine the light on specific details not captured by traditional stats, like the time-to-throw average, average depth of target, or pressures-per-pass-rush-attempt. What a lot of these metrics do is control for sample size and varying situations to try and make more apples-to-apples comparisons.

QBR is kind of the opposite. It's obscuring all those fine details away behind a great big overarching aggregate "statistic". Which is what passer rating does too, but QBR is casting a much wider net, and boiling a collection of very different individual inputs into a single number.

PFF or FO?

I guess PFF is what you post in the thread each week.

Stele wrote:

PFF or FO?

I guess PFF is what you post in the thread each week.

PFF is what I'm looking at during the season, FO's stuff I get in their annual Almanac publication.

Both groups calculate some of the same metrics, like Catch Rate.

Catch radius has been an interesting study as FO adds that in.

Thanks for the Tyrod info. I don't usually pay much attention to the Bills. Might have to change that, or at least until the Bills go into the tank (in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... )

And speaking of FO, their updated DVOA numbers should be out soon, right? They use a lot of last year's numbers until they get enough current-year data, if memory serves.

Yeah, until week 4, their numbers do not include any adjustments based on opponent. So they're technically just VOA instead of DVOA.

I don't trust QBR because ESPN isn't willing to disclose their algorithm. I don't care if they're using a billion variables per play, I want to know what they're looking at and how they get to the number.

I don't know all of KenPom's formula, but he's got the best NCAA Basketball ranking system by far.

All this Mariota talk reminds me of all that RG3 talk in 2012.

It's early. Real early.

Top_Shelf wrote:

All this Mariota talk reminds me of all that RG3 talk in 2012.

It's early. Real early.

I'd be curious to see how many rushing yards vs passing yards rg3 had after the first 3 games. Mariota has 25 rushing yards. He's not relying on his legs and he's gong through his reads and making throws like someone who's been in the NFL for years. I promise you if the Titans front office is smart enough to build a good team around him (and that's a BIG if) they will be contenders in the next year or two.

It still is very early.

But it's a good story.

Rivers McCown (an Football Outsider guy who also writes for Vice Sports) wrote a bit ]where he compared the various rookie/second-year QBs from Sunday. His basic thing; Winston is being asked to do a lot more and is doing it pretty well, Mariota and Carr are similar in that they're playing very well in simplified systems that really haven't forced them to play a full playbook, and Blake Bortles is still Blake Bortles.

Seen: Internet ad for a local car dealer featuring Russell Wilson in casual clothes looking to throw the ball with the caption, "We'll Hook You Up!"

Unintentionally hilarious.

So... 2 hours until kickoff, still no new thread. *Legion*?

Stele wrote:

So... 2 hours until kickoff, still no new thread. *Legion*?

The Week 4 thread is never late, nor early. It arrives precisely when I mean it to.