Shaw66

Yup. It isn't decision time now. After the 2017 season is decision time for Tyrod, because that's when the Bills will have to decide if they're using their first-round picks to go after a QB. And what I'll say what I've been saying since 2015: If Tyrod plays the essentially the whole season and has a passer rating in the 93-94-95 range or better, he's your guy. Think about it. If he has a passer rating of 95 in 2017, his career passer rating will be in the top 10, ALL-TIME. Even if someone wants to adjust the calculation of the passer rating to give more or less weight to certain numbers, a guy in the top ten all-time on the old system will be in the top 20 under the new system. Are you really going to cut a guy who's in his prime and is a top-20 passer? It's ludicrous.

You need to go back read my posts. You're responding to things I've never said. I didn't say two seasons was enough. I did say it's interesting that if he had enough attempts his two seasons would put him in the top ten career passer rating list. But I've never said two seasons is enough. I think above I said 3-4-5 seasons is what you need. You say I've drawn conclusions, and I haven't. I'm not sure you've said what you think the better quality statistic is.

That just isn't right. The correlation IS excellent. Not for games, but for seasons and certainly for careers. 8 or 9 out of 10, season after season, is excellent. (And, by the way, if you look at the lists you'll see that usually numbers 11, 12, and 13 are guys who are IN the top 10 most seasons. You're right, correlation isn't causation. But you can't find any stat that correlates nearly as well on QB performance, so, just like batting averages, when you see a guy with a good passer rating over 4-5-6 seasons, he's almost certainly a good QB. In other words, you can have a good passer rating for a game and not be a good QB, but you can't have a good passer rating for multiple seasons without being a good QB. The whole point of the discussion here is whether these mini-stats that Fahey has created really mean anything in terms of a QB's quality. The answer is no. Passer rating is the stat most likely to indicate whether a QB is good or not.

Forget your hypotheticals. It's very simple, and I've said it dozens of times, most frequently about three times in this thread: Stats are useful if there is a high correlation between the stat and observed performance. In the case of the passer rating, there IS a high correlation. I just gave you the numbers. All ten of the quarterbacks with the highest career passer rating are or were very good to excellent QBs. Ten out of ten. That's the best correlation possible. 21 of the 25 best single season passer ratings of all time were by current or future HOF QBs. That's excellent correlation. Look at the to 10 passers, by passer rating, in each of the last 10 season. Every season there are one or two or three average QBs on the list, but the majority, often the great majority, are the best QBs in the league. And the average QBs make the list one season, but no the next. They have a career year and they make the list. But some names make the top 10 almost every year, and those names are Brady, Rodgers, Rivers, Roethlisberger, Manning, etc. Single game passer ratings aren't too valuable, because that's an average with a small sample size. A one-game or one-week batting average isn't all that meaningful, either. But just as a baseball player's batting average over a full season is a pretty good representation of the kind of season he had, a QB's passer rating over a full season is a pretty good indicator. And to to bring it back to Taylor, over two seasons his passer rating was about 94. If he had enough attempts to qualify (looks like you need 1000) for the list, he'd be in the top 10. To repeat myself, the top 10 is Rodgers, Wilson, Romo, Brady, Young, Manning, Brees, Rivers, Roethlisberger, Warner. So I don't care if you can construct two 40-attempt games where the passer rating results are scewy. It's very difficult to construct two REALISTIC 400-attempt seasons where that's the case.

But even these stats are skewed. Taylor holds the ball longer than any other QB in the league BECAUSE HE'S THE BEST SCRAMBLER. Brady essentially never scrambles; he's been taught to give up on plays and move on to the next play. That behavior brings his average down; Taylor scrambling takes his average WAY up, because he plays where it takes him 10 seconds before he throws. That's not a negative, that's a positive. On top of that, because he's such a good scrambler, he expects to escape, so he takes off and gets sacked more often than other QBs who see the rush, know they can't escape and throw it away. That's why Taylor, Russell Wilson and Cam Newton are regularly in the top 10 in sacks.

Interesting to hear from someone who actually knows how the passer rating is calculated. I never studied it. But I'd say your complaints are just quibbles. Assuming it's true that the formula treats an interception as -100 yards, when you think about it, that's probably about right. On average, an interception costs your team, I would guess, about 25 yards, because the average yardage NFL teams get per possession. Plus the interception costs you about 30 yards in lost field position, if you look at drive starts for the opponent after punts instead of after INTs. So that's 50 yards or more your team lost. And it's worse than that, because some interceptions cost you a TD or field goal, so you have to account for lost points AND the loss of field position, because your opponent's drive start after a kickoff is usually worst than after an INT. So maybe 100 is too much, but it's in the ballpark. As you say, the passer rating isn't perfect. But it's pretty good. And pointing to Stafford's year only proves the point that the passer rating isn't perfect in identifying good quarterbacking. The important point is that the passer rating correlates very well with good quarterbacking. Just about all the best QBs have high passer ratings, and just about every QB with a high passer rating is one of the best QBs. And that makes the passer rating a useful and reasonably reliable way to evaluate QBs. Want the evidence? The top 10 career passer ratings are owned by guys who are named Rodgers, Wilson, Romo, Brady, Young, Manning, Brees, Rivers, Roethlisberger, Warner. Top 25 single season passer ratings? These are the only guys in the top 25 who aren't Hall of Famers already or on their way: Foles, Culpepper, Milt Plum, Josh McCown, Four out of 25. Good QBs have good passer ratings.

http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/buffalo-bills/tyrod-taylor-7899/

i DID check. Spotrac. $30.5 million guaranteed over the next two seasons. $14.5 this season, $16 next season. Don't know where you're getting your numbers.

This struck a nerve with me. I struggle with calling him "good," too. Maybe he's good. I'm not sure. Put his two seasons together and compare him to all the other QBs in the league for the same two years (which would leave Dak Prescott out), Taylor is someplace around 10th in the league. I thin his passer rating is about 12th, and he's the best running QB in the league. But you're correct - downright maddening. Those who cite his late-game performance are also correct - he just hasn't looked like a keeper in crunch time. He's done it occasionally, but not as often as we'd like or "good" QBs get it done. I'm more of a Taylor booster than most, because I believe he's still learning. I think he, like every QB, needed to get a couple of years playing under his belt. It's a bit of a setback to be starting over with a new offense, but even so, the couple years' experience, on the field, under fire, should make a difference. One of the reasons I'm optimistic is that he's an extraordinary athlete. He throws the ball beautifully, his throws have a lot of zip even though he doesn't have the size (leverage) of the bigger guys. A second reason I'm optimistic is his work ethic. He REALLY wants it. On the other hand, if others are right when they say he doesn't anticipate and he throws short balls poorly, he may never be able to correct those things. But for now, until something better comes along, he's pretty, uh, good.

$30 million. But let's not let the facts get in the way.

This is exactly right. Exactly. They have a decent quarterback who makes their team competitive while they look for either (1) Taylor to get better or (2) a better choice.

I don't remember the game, the situation or the play, exactly, but giving the ball to Reggie on that play was an instant classic on a dumb calls of the season show.

Crushed makes a lot of good points but I think its too conclusory. First it ignores the point BillsFan4 made about a lot depending on the offense the guy is running. In particular, if you look at the data on most teams that run a lot you'll find that they struggle in the fourth quarter. Second that's particularly true if the QB doesn't have quality receivers on the field. Third, although people don't like to hear it, QBs need onfield experience. His fourbueats on the bench don't amount to much on the experience category. Taylor is still learning. Will he improve? I don't know. But he needs at least another year. And maybe two, if Watkins leaves after this season. And he's in a new offense. Lots of variables. Just because she hasn't done everything yet doesn't mean that he won't.

I really don't buy the splash signing notion. I think Mario Williams was one of those. Not Watkins, not McCoy. Both of those moves were driven by the desire to improve the offense, not ticket sales, dramatically. Football people made those deals, not marketing people. McCoy particularly - Eagles called, Doug and Rex jumped and made a deal in a half hour. That had nothing to do with marketing.

I agree that the Bills need more yards per game passing, but it's hard to fault the QB when the game plan is to throw fewer than 25 times per game. Some people will argue (they always do) that he isn't asked to throw more because the more he throws, the worse he gets. However, the data doesn't support that, either. Some of his best games (and some of his worst) were when he threw over 30.

I agree with you, at least for now. If the Bills had a true franchise QB and they weren't winning, I wouldn't be looking to unload him. But that's not where the Bills are. There are real questions about whether the Bills can win with Taylor. But you don't help your credibility by supporting your argument with stats that aren't true. If you think Taylor isn't a winner, that's a legitimate opinion and there's some evidence to support it. But when you say his 4th quarter passer rating was 65 when it was 90, I have to wonder if your opinion is based on anything real. Right. That's exactly what I said. His 4th quarter passer rating isn't bad; it's right around his passer rating for the season - a little below in each of the last two seasons. The problem is that the really good QBs, the guys many people think are special, have BETTER passer ratings in the fourth quarter than they average for the season.

i'm not exactly endorsing this comment, but it's worth talking about. A no-star system works if you have Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. But look at most other teams; they have stars. Look Seattle, Atlanta, Green Bay. A lot of what seems to have been going on with the Bills is to model the organization after the Pats. That's all well and good if you have a Belichick, but McDermott hasn't coached one game yet, so I wonder whether it makes sense to go aggressively in that direction. Atlanta has two players this year with cap hits over $10 million. Pats and Bills have three. Steelers, Packers, Seahawks all have five or six. It's too early to tell where this team is headed so far as stars are concerned. But if they're going in the direction the Pats are going, McDermott and his new GM better be really good at figuring out who the athletes are that fit the system. And the system better be awfully good, because a mediocre system with mediocre talent ain't cuttin it in this league.

No. The argument is that people post information that is wrong and then base their argument on it. You said you believe you'd seen it posted (no link) in several places that Tyrod's 4th quarter passer rating is 65. It isn't. It's more like 90, which isn't bad.

But this is the kind of stuff that I'm really skeptical about. Other than the citation to Football Outsiders, these statements are completely conclusory, with NO EVIDENCE to support them other than, maybe, Fahey's observations after film review. The guy has ZERO football experience, and yet we're supposed to believe his conclusions about Taylor's impact on the running game. He may be right, but I'm not going to believe it just because he said it.

I vote no because there's only a 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 chance that a first-round QB will make it as a credible starter in the NFL, let alone become a true franchise QB. As much as I loved his performance in two national championships, Watson hasn't shown me enough to make me believe his odds are better than that. Taylor, on the other hand, already has shown he can be a credible starter in the NFL. His chances of continuing to be at least a decent QB are much better than the chances Watson will be. He also could get better. So I think for the short-term, Taylor is the better option. Since the Bills only have him for the short term, and since the Bills are now well positioned to go after a guy in 2018 whose prospects are as good or better than Watson's, trading Taylor for Watson doesn't make sense.

I'll say, without any sarcasm intended, good for you. It's an old fashioned notion that the GM picks the players and the coach assembles the team. The best teams do it more cooperatively now, and there's plenty of evidence/rumor that Whaley didn't agree with the head coaches.

Shady - Taylor's 4th quarter passer rating in 2016 was 86. In 2015 it was 101. In 2015 with the scored tied his passer rating was 88. When losing his passer rating was 95. In 2016 it was 92 and 92. I think you need better data. It's funny; I'm constantly defending Taylor here, and I'm not at all convinced he's the guy. But there are so many misstatements and misrepresentations about his performance, it's crazy. The problem with Taylor's late-game, close-game performance is not that it's bad. The problem is that it isn't as good as the best QBs. His late-game, close-game numbers are like his numbers at other times. The best QBs get BETTER in those situations.

Just discovered this duplicate thread, and this is one that seems to have legs, so I'll repost what I just said in the other thread. I love hearing from the people who have been there. Now, I'm not sure how he knows the things he says and he knows, and in fact I suspect he can't prove much of what he says actually happened. I think he's speculating. But he's speculating from a perspective the rest of us don't have. He's been there and seen these dynamics up front and personal. So he's inclined to know even though he wasn't in the rooms at OBD. Very interesting commentary, and believable. Thanks for posting.

I love hearing from the people who have been there. Now, I'm not sure how he knows the things he says and he knows, and in fact I suspect he can't prove much of what he says actually happened. I think he's speculating. But he's speculating from a perspective the rest of us don't have. He's been there and seen these dynamics up front and personal. So he's inclined to know even though he wasn't in the rooms at OBD. Very interesting commentary, and believable. Thanks for posting.

What I'm saying is that stat may be helpful to coaches who discover an aspect of his game that requires improvement. It isn't particularly helpful in deciding whether he's a good quarterback, because EVERY quarterback has some details in his game that are worse than some other details. That's why I keep saying that all this data that Fahey has collected doesn't amount to a whole lot in a debate about Tyrod's value as a long-term solution. His passer rating matters. If his passer rating is in the top 10, I don't care if he's last in the league in YAC. I mean, I care in the sense that I'd always like my QB to get better, but I don't care if I'm in a discussion about whether to keep Taylor. If Taylor's passer rating is in the top 10, I'm keeping him, whatever his YAC is. And if his passer rating is in the bottom third, I'm NOT keeping him, no matter how GOOD his YAC is. Detailed data like this doesn't determine the value of a QB.