Mike Dussault

I have never once mentioned or referenced QBR here but what better time to talk about it? I saw something this morning referencing this, mentioning that no one actually knows what the formula for QBR is and that it’s likely that the large amounts of yards-after-catch hurt Brady’s score.

This is a common way to state the “Tom Brady’s not that good” argument from those who love to ding him because he’s not hurling the ball 20 yards downfield in an impressive aerial assault every play. For some reason that is now a sort of standard for various analysts out there when evaluating quarterback play. As if “dink and dunk” is a gimmick and not real quarterbacking. 

If it was just a gimmick though, I’m not sure why more teams are trying to do it because it’s been deadly effective for the Patriots since 2010 especially.

YAC hurts the QB? Well what about the fact that Brady audibled to that play based on the defense then threw the ball to the hot receiver in less than 2 seconds? Not many quarterbacks in the NFL can do that, but it’s something that isn’t taken into consideration by graders. They see an easy short pass and the receiver running a long way with the ball.

I’m not one for a lot of individual stats here on the blog. I think the only thing I really ever reference is Football Outsider’s DVOA, which measures total team efficiency. I also know people have issues with Pro Football Focus when some of their grades that don’t pass the smell test for the same reason.

I just think it’s hard to apply individual grades to players in the ultimate team sport and since I’m not really interesting in ranking individual players, rather just analyzing how the team performs and executes, I pretty much ignore things like QBR and PFF. 

I just prefer to watch the games closely and come to my own opinions rather than stress about handing out a numerical grade to every individual player on every play when the game is so fluid from play to play and game to game.

You can make stats say whatever you want to, and so much of these advanced stats are more interested in find HOT TAKEZ that they lose the forest for the trees, just like last year when Brady was said to be “no longer elite” or whatever even before the Kansas City game.

So my power ranking-free, individual stats-free Patriots blog will power on!

I think it’s going to be a lot more of a battle than many are expecting. The last few matchups look like blowouts in hindsight, but last year’s regular season game especially was closer than we might want to think. This is a Colts team at home fighting for their season in many ways. At some point Luck is going to stop throwing interceptions to us. Now I’m not sure how well they can stop our offense, but I think this will be a real test for the defense.