Thurman#1

There were no other dot charts. Three, despite many including me begging for more. Three dot charts, Tyrod, Brady and Rivers. I wish there had been more. There weren't. The data on the other QBs you're referring to is from those same charts you're referring to that don't look at the relevant areas. And in 2015 when I did the exact charts and the dot charts were available, the issue was with frequency but also with very bad results to that area. Two of his six INTs that year came from the very few throws he put to the deep and intermediate middle and his completion percentage was also really bad there. I was saying that in 2016 I can't comment on quality. In 2015, I can and it was awful. To that area of the field he threw little and badly in 2015.

Yup, I've seen that chart and the article many times before. They're interesting and really do show a lot of fascinating data. But as to the specifics of our argument here, they have a major problem. "In the cases of out-of-bounds throwaways, those dots are placed at the sideline near where the ball went out of bounds." This of course inflates the sideline numbers, as the writers readily admit. "Remember, the sideline data here are "polluted” by those out-of-bounds throwaways that count as incompletions. As a result, the completion percentages near the edges of the field might be lower than you expect. It turns out the sideline is very important to the NFL quarterback, both for targeting receivers and for getting rid of the football." They also mislead a bit about the frequency of passes to the middle, saying about passes of twenty yards or more that, "only 9 percent target the area between the hashes." Wow, sounds like almost nothing. But when you realize that between the hashes is only 11.5625% of the width of the field, seeing only 9% of throws there is not at all surprising. Still, it was a fascinating article and I welcome the chance to read it again. I think it makes clear that you don't understand what I said. To simplify as much as possible - I've written too much recently - Tyrod throws an awful lot less to the deep and intermediate middle third of the field than he does to the deep and intermediate outside thirds. In 2015 I had the exact numbers but they're gone with the old site. But it was roughly 40%+ / 20%- / 40%+. And Brady and Rivers were close to 33% / 33% / 33%, making them less predictable and harder to defense.

Yup, Scott, that's one of the charts that Transplant has tried to use. The problem is that as you can see at the top it's not dividing the field into thirds. It is dividing them by the numbers. The same old problem. Which means that you're looking at charts where the field is divided this way: The left side: 22.5% of the field The right side: 22.5% of the field The middle: 55% of the field Even a guy who throws very little to the middle will look like he's throwing a lot there if you divide the field up that way. More, Tyrod threw often and well in 2015 to the area just inside the numbers, which is still the outer third of the field. Very well indeed, it was striking. So those stats are including in "the middle" all of those passes to the area he threw well and often to. Which drowns the numbers from the middle third. This is just what I keep telling Transplant. Those numbers don't reveal what goes on in the middle third, the area Tyrod has problems in. They actually are constructed very well to hide, not reveal.

Doesn't insult me. He's just pointing out the facts about who gets on TV. Not surprising with out W-L records that we don't. Good post. It's simply not a tank when you keep Tyrod. But yeah, it was almost certainly a salary dump for a team that was in salary cap trouble and is now significantly less so due to doing nearly everything it can to cut cap without pushing costs forward down the road.

That's maybe the deep south. I have friends from Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia who would say you are categorically wrong, and would even go as far as to point out blood from their state on confederate battlefields as evidence. And while I don't have any friends there, I've heard Kentuckians refer to themselves as southern plenty of times. Floridians too. Heh heh heh. Good point. In any case, I wonder whether Beane would have been the successor there. My sense is that he would have but it's not like I have sources or anything. I've only read the stories, but it's interesting to speculate.

IMHO most of them don't do it because if they go for it and don't make it there'll be a massive firestorm aimed at the head coach, whereas if he goes conservative, no firestorm because he's doing what the conventional wisdom has long championed. So even if the analytics, both general and situation-specific say go for it, most teams still won't.

Oh, so Gillman, a coach 70 years ago, divided the field up into five? Wow, well when you have to go that far out of relevancy to find an example, that says a lot about your argument right there. But what says more is that you don't know how Gillman's results turned out in terms of dividing up the field in threes. Gillman was doing exactly what I'm saying everyone should do, spread things out and challenge every area across the field. Which Tyrod doesn't do. As for more recent examples, yet again, Brady and Rivers spread their deep and intermediate attempts evenly across the thirds. Tyrod doesn't. As for your hashmarks thing there you're yet again looking under the streetlights because it's easier to look rather than where you lost the keys. Yet again, Tyrod throws very well and very often across the middle in the first ten yards. And between the hashes would also include behind the line of scrimmage, things like shovel passes or middle screens ... Nobody says Tyrod doesn't throw well in the middle in the short area, because he does. And you're including those stats here, yet again throwing in areas of strength and prolific throwing with his areas of weakness. Which does indeed cover up the problems in the deep and intermediate middle third, but doesn't do a single thing to prove they don't exist. It's like a guy who wants to examine screen passes and can only find stats that combine screen passes and go routes together and so he thinks he's proven that that team's screen passes have a surprisingly high YPA. The problem is isolated in one area. When you throw stats from other areas in with the problem areas, sure, you can make things look much better. But you're missing the problem because it's over in the dark area a few blocks over while you yet again look under the streetlight. Yeah, it's a thing. That's why Roman talked about needing him to throw more and better to middle and the QB coach also talked about the same problem. But it's not a thing that you can find if you look in the wrong place, and that's what you're doing, looking at stat tables that don't isolate the problem but instead lump it in with areas of strength.

You're asking who would do it right now? Jeez, that's a tough question. I'd be right on the edge there. In any case I would give it really really strong consideration.

May 16, 2013 - Bills promote Doug Whaley to GM. Oct 30, 2013 - Bills launch analytics department by hiring Lyons So it wasn't Nix, but beyond that I agree. They clearly haven't been using them enough. Hope they start to do so now.

All I can say is that I'm sorry but my numbers are gone. Hundreds of people saw them, as I published them on buffalobills.com. There were 2015 dot charts for Rivers, Brady and Tyrod. And I went back and watched every single pass in the 2015 season, and put up game by game compilations with every single pass that came anywhere close to being in the deep and intermediate middle third, and my comments. And not a single person challenged me on my interpretation of a single play, on where the ball was being caught. Not a single person, including Transplant himself. That site disappeared, without warning. The numbers are gone. And again, the reason why those numbers are important are simple. Deep and intermediate throws matter. They're where you get chunk plays, they're a way to pressure the defense to cover the whole length of the field instead of being able to step up, fill up the box and make your run game and short pass game more difficult. And if you're throwing about a third of your deep passes to the left third, a third to the right third and a third to the middle, third, you're unpredictable and you make the defense's job tougher. Which is what Brady and Rivers were both doing. But if you throw roughly 40% of your deep passes to the left third, 40% to the right third and below 20% to the middle third, you're saying to the defense, "don't worry about that area, we rarely use it, go ahead and put more pressure on the areas we use more." Which is what Tyrod did. And I didn't take the QB figures and divide by three. There were dot charts showing where every pass went. Brady and Rivers had a relatively even distribution. Tyrod had an extremely visible gap in the deep and intermediate middle third. I then went and checked pass by pass and confirmed that it really was a distribution problem for the Bills passing game and that that was where the problem was.

Why would I care whether the coaches specifically mention the middle third? Coaches avoid talking about what specific problems are for millions of reasons, spin, wanting to keep being positive, not wanting to point out weaknesses ... a million reasons. Have the coaches ever admitted that the players didn't understand the defense last year, have they ever said those words? Nope. But one of the biggest problems on the defense appears to have been that ... well, they didn't fully understand the defense. The idea that something isn't real unless the coaches specifically admit it to the world is flat-out stupid. It's plenty that they said he had problems in the middle. When you look, though, you see it's the middle third. That's the point. As you know, I analyzed every single pass of the 2015 season and discovered that the problem was the deep ... and intermediate ... middle third of the field. You look at the dot chart and it stood out like a twenty-foot great white shark in a thirty-foot wide goldfish pond. That's where the problem has been. The deep and intermediate middle third. Which is why, by the way, everyone knows the Bills have a problem going there and you can't find any trace of the problem using the stats that don't just cover the area that he doesn't throw to but also throws in a ton of passes in an area of strength. You're looking where the light is better, not where the problem is.

This is the kind of thing I disagree with. Was it a success when the 1987 Cowboys who went 7-8 regressed the next year to go 3-13? You betcha it was a success. It allowed them to pick Aikman with the first overall pick that next year and thus served as a building block for a true dynasty. It also gave them the 29th overall pick, the first of the second round and Steve Wisniewski, a cornerstone of the OL and another in Stepnoski as the first pick of the third round. Were the 2-14 1979 49ers a disappointment? They'd gone 2-14 the year before as well, so by your theory they showed no improvement. But in fact they had brought in Bill Walsh that year and spent that year starting to internalize his systems and methods. That year was a huge building block towards winning the 1981 Super Bowl. They didn't even get a good draft in 1980 out of that awful win-loss record in 1979, but it was still an absolutely crucial year in their path to dominance. Improvement doesn't always show up in wins or even visible improvement right away.

LT? Do you mean RT? And I love the Hauschka point. I've been questioning this move because Hauschka has had the same problems as Carpenter. Hope you're right here. Interesting thread. I, like you, don't expect a very good season in terms of record but think this could be an important one in team history if McDermott and Beane turn out to be keepers. I like some of yours, though not all of them. I'd add that it would mean a lot if both the offense and defense start playing better in the new schemes near the end of the season. I think requiring us to be in all games as a benchmark to success will lead only to your own disappointment. Years like that are rare for bad to mediocre teams. Anyway, interesting thread. Thanks for posting it. Assuming the Browns are competitive for Super Bowls within two or three years, I don't think anyone will remember. I know I won't.

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/28/nfl-analytics-front-office-old-school-approach-draft-game-planning-charting It's an article looking at how all 32 teams handle analytics. "The Bills hired Xerox exec Michael Lyons to be its director of analytics four years ago, but his role has been pretty limited since his arrival. That is about to change. Lyons and analyst Peter Linton have simply provided the information up until now, but with new GM Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott in place, their influence is expected to grow and additional hires are planned for before the season begins." I know this is almost three weeks old, but I searched for it and didn't find anything. You can see because I searched old analytics threads, got interested and necro-bumped an old thread on the subject. Sorry. ;-) It's something I have been hoping for since forever, really.

Coin tosses aren't a good example for how useful analytics can be. Coin tosses produce one outcome - say tails - 50% of the time. But if advanced analytics can find you examples of situations where teams react to certain situations in certain ways 80% of the time in games, you can exploit that, and doing so will help you an awful lot. Coin tosses are based purely on chance. The stuff that is analyzed by analytics is based on human decision-making, human variance of abilities and the way two hugely complex systems (teams) produce results when pitted against each other. Moneyball in baseball is an example of a situation when looking carefully at analytics in ways better than the other teams do can indeed affect outcomes.

So someone interviewed someone who had an opinion. And you disagree with that opinion. No, they don't have to rule out three years but it's a reasonable enough guess that if you looked at the next three years the Bills might be one of the several teams who will have a tough time. There'll be teams that suck for those three years. Myself, I'm hopeful that by 2018 and 2019 the team could be looking up. But we just don't know yet how good McDermott is or isn't as a head coach or how good our new GM will be for that matter. Neither your opinion nor the ESPN guy's is that out of line.

His salary led the Skins to the 3rd best offense in yards and 12th best in points, and the 28th best defense in yards and the 19th best in points. Clearly the QB's fault.

t Are they a small handful of plays for every QB? Yeah. Deep passes are a small handful of passes. But they're extremely important. I get why you're trying to ignore that, after all it hurts your argument. Nonetheless, it has the logical problem for your contention that it's, you know, true. Deep passes are where most chunk plays come from, and effective deep passing games make short and intermediate pass games more effective, as small as their actual numbers are. But again, you keep arguing about the middle of the field ... but again, the only numbers we know from the middle third of the field show the exact opposite of what you're saying, that Brady and Rivers did just the opposite of ignoring the deep middle. That they in fact threw about a third of their deep passes to the deep middle. Unlike Tyrod who didn't. Making Brady and Rivers hard to predict and defense and Tyrod easier. I see, so you're saying that the only facts we have on the middle third of the field, the Brady, Rivers and Tyrod Taylor 2015 stats, are anomalous. Fine. Start counting and prove it. But we both know you're not going to do that. The only facts we have on the exact area in question show a problem for Tyrod. You can't just assume those facts are anomalous for no better reason than that you don't like what they show. The only way to prove your contention here is to start counting individual plays. Neither of us are willing to spend the time to do that. So we're left with only the facts that we have. Which support my argument and completely undermine yours. As we both know, I've already googled your charts. And for the thousandth time, the charts you're talking about are the wrong charts. The word around the league on Tyrod is that he can't and doesn't throw to the middle of the field. The reason people think that is because when you watch the games you see he doesn't throw to the middle third. Even the coaches last offseason talked about wanting to get Tyrod throwing to the middle of the field. This isn't made up. This is a thing. There are no charts for that because it takes a ton of effort to look at it. Infinitely easier to look at visual markers on the field, hashes and numbers. That's why people divide the field up that way, not because it makes sense but because it's easy to count. But looking at those charts ignores Tyrod's issues. Looking at those charts to try to understand Tyrod's problems is like the old joke about the cop who sees a drunk at night crawling around looking at the ground under a streetlight. The cop says "What are you doing?" and the drunk says, "I'm looking for my keys." The cop says, "Oh, you dropped them here?" and the drunk says "No, I dropped them a couple of blocks over." The cop says, "Why are you looking here then? Why don't you look where you dropped them?" And the drunk says, "The light's better here." You keep trying to find Tyrod's problem under the streetlight (your charts) because the light's better. But the problem's over where the light is worse. You'll never see the problem, and not because there isn't one but because you refuse to look in the right place. Tyrod's problem is with the ... middle ... third ... of the field. None of your charts address that area. In fact, they cover up the stats for those areas with completions from Tyrod's strength, the outside thirds. Yup, keep looking under that streetlight. Don't be surprised if you don't find anything, though. And I don't know what YPA charts you're referring to, but Tyrod's YPA last year was 6.9. Which is simply bad. 25th in the league. Don't know how you figure bad YPA like that proves he's throwing well deep to any area whatsoever.

Bold predictions are bold because they're likely to be wrong. I'm interested in trying to be right. I don't generally have bold predictions. Instead, I expect what's likely. But have fun, folks. It's an interesting idea. I'll come back and read, but I don't expect to have anything to contribute.

I do tend to ignore the stuff you bring up on this particular issue. I read it every time but you consistently don't directly address my specific objections. So yeah, I often don't bother to answer. Because you tend to be repeating the same things you've already said, and ignoring the problem rather than dealing with it. As you did here. I pointed out that the ESPN stats were combining areas of the field where Tyrod throws well with areas where he throws little, and thus masking his weaknesses. In response you compare other QBs stats to Tyrod's artificially elevated stats whose weaknesses at diagnosing his problems I just pointed out. So yeah, I do tend to ignore that, and other cases where points are missed. But you say here that you want to "save posters here some of your misinformation," so I'll do the same for yours. I explained that those stats miss the point, examine the wrong areas of the field and bury the information about the area he has trouble with in data from areas he's good in. And you use the exact same stats and compare them to other QBs ... thereby missing the exact same point yet again.. You argue that since guys don't go deep middle that often it's not important, again missing the point which is that the reason they didn't go deep middle all that often is that they didn't go deep all that often. QBs don't throw half of their balls deep. Nonetheless those deep balls are some of the most important they throw as they have much higher chances for being chunk plays and they force the defense to respect the deep ball which then opens up the shorter areas for more efficiency. Why are those 5% - or whatever - of passes important? That's why. They're an extremely important part of the plans for the passing game and if they're not functioning well in one area or being predictable as to where they will go, it's important. You ask if I charted all those other QBs in that area. Did you? If you didn't, your argument has the same weakness you're accusing mine of having. But in fact as you're aware from our arguments on the old site, I don't need to do that, because a guy did it for us, He produced the dot charts for Brady and Rivers. And so I did at that time indeed go through those dot charts and count out the results and to the surprise of nobody they showed that both Rivers and Brady, unlike Tyrod, distributed their deep and intermediate balls pretty close to evenly across the field. They threw close to a third of their passes to the left third, close to a third of their passes to the center third and close to a third of their passes to the right third. Which made them far more difficult to predict and therefore depend than Tyrod who threw about 40% of his passes to the left third, 40% of his passes to the right third and slightly below 20% of his passes to the middle third. Making him predictable and handicapping the receivers. I so wish those posts and 2015 dot charts were still available. They're not, but a ton of people saw the argument and none at the time disputed those charts. Those two distributed balls evenly across the field and weren't less successful in any area either. Whereas Tyrod distributed the ball unevenly and did poorly when he did throw it there. This was in 2015, and I can't claim to know what happened in 2016. But in 2015 the results were an estremely telling contrast. And again, in 2015 nearly half of Tyrod's INTs came from that extremely small number of passes he threw to the deep and intermediate middle third. So in 2015 he threw little and poorly to the deep and intermediate middle third. Which makes the defense's job easier and may well have been part of the adjustments that defenses made this last year that reduced his efficiency. You do touch on the key point in your post here, which is this ... "So what?" Jeez. So a lot. Guys who struggle to use a large area of the field - in this case the deep and intermediate middle third - make things a ton easier on the defense. The safeties can take a step or two away from the area that he doesn't use towards the area he uses well. The CBs can give less respect to the WRs moves towards the center of the field which reduces WR efficiency in the areas Tyrod is better at. Defenses with a lot of time to look at tape tend to find ways to take away strengths and attack weaknesses. Not exploiting a huge area of the field allows defenses not to defend those areas. It makes the job of the offensive passing game harder. That's so what.

To repeat what I just said, yeah, me too, slightly. But Tyrod's a 7th year guy and Siemian a 3rd year guy. Plenty of guys with two years of NFL experience make huge leaps upwards. Whereas pretty much the only 7th year guy is Gannon, though hundreds have been in position to do so. Siemian, without a doubt. No. The answer to your first question about how many QBs rode the bench for four years yadda yadda yadda is ... plenty. Probably somewhere close to 50. But you're also missing the point of your own question. How many guys rode the bench for four years ...? Exactly. The good QBs, the ones who have a good chance to become franchise QBs, don't do that. They beat out the guy ahead of them in the first three or four years. And if they don't for some reason, like Aaron Rodgers, then the three or four years on the bench has put them in position to succeed and they quickly show they belong. What doesn't happen is they sit on the bench for a long time, have a good year and then regress. There are virtually no cases of this happening and it resulting in a franchise QB ... because that's not how guys like that behave.

Yeah, Tyrod was a better runner but beyond that their success was fairly close. In Tyrod's last year and Teddy's last uninjured year, Teddy had a significantly better YPA and nearly an equal passer rating. Not a bad comparison for Bridgewater when you realize you're comparing a sixth-year guy last year with a second-year guy last time he played (Bridgewater's 2015). In any case, I hope Bridgewater recovers and regains his levels of physical ability. He was an exciting young player, looked like a guy who had a chance to become a good one.

Used to listen to them on long drives on the Mass Pike. They were entertaining. Russo's voice and attitude just cracked me up.

Yup, I'd take Siemian over Tyrod. Not if they were both third year guys. But Tyrod is going into his seventh. And seventh year guys who aren't franchise guys make the big leap up to the franchise level almost never.

Interesting.