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mramefa

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Posts posted by mramefa

  1. 26 minutes ago, LSHMEAB said:

    Wouldn't surprise me one bit. I thought Carson Palmer was TOAST before his mini-run in Arizona.

     

    If anyone is going to get Winston going, it's Arians. They definitely have some talent.

     

    Here was Winston yesterday, using his head as a golf tee

     

    Seems like he's really getting ready to be a winner

    • Like (+1) 1
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  2. 29 minutes ago, Nextmanup said:

    The issue is the Bills' track record, like every other team in the NFL, is terrible at assessing talent in the draft.

     

    Sheer number of draft picks trumps perceived  "quality" of picks.  

     

    More kicks at the can = more opportunity to land contributors.

     

     

    I think it's harder than this. Some people just improve a lot after they're surrounded by better competition. That doesn't happen over the course of a single training camp and preseason, though, and the Bills don't have enough roster space to give time to 10 draft picks to come good. I think they're better off taking fewer, with a slightly higher upside on average, and giving each of them more of a chance.

  3. For everyone thinking that 40 time is a perfect indicator of game speed, just think of Josh Allen. He ran mid 4.7s, and can absolutely take off and outrun players on the other team. His measured top speed in-game was the fastest of any QB over the last several years (outside of Mariota).

     

    Running a 40 without the ball and with no padding is a really noisy indicator of what you can do with the ball in a game situation. Singletary is going to surprise people thinking he's slow.

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  4. 3 hours ago, Stranded in Boston said:

    About time that some real mathematicians look into the Bills getting screwed on the schedule year after year! And as with any good scientific process, the results should be peer-reviewed. I would suggest that the chair of mathematics at MIT, Tom Mrowka, should be the lead reviewer (Buffalo native, LOL  ? ).

     

    So I know a little about this. Recently, the NFL was hiring a consulting firm to design their schedule, which was actually run by a couple MIT PhD alums specializing in optimization.

     

    From my understanding, the NFL's focus was almost entirely on building a schedule to take advantage of the primetime spots, in order to maximize viewership (since that translates to more money in future TV deals and more fans). There's a reason why the Cowboys play Sunday/Monday/Thursday night football every year, and the Bills do not. While I never actually heard the Bills mentioned in this regard, I did hear a couple other teams explicitly named as undesirable. Any unfairness in the schedules resulting from this approach was basically an afterthought, from what I know. It's good that the Buffalo researchers noted schedule unfairness, because I doubt it was really on the NFL's minds at all, but it should be fixable with only a small impact on what the NFL really cares about ($).

  5. 8 minutes ago, WotAGuy said:

     

    This made me giggle. Since when do lawyers need a “legitimate case”?  LOL

    It depends on their payment contract, which we're not privy to. If the lawyers payment is highly contingent on Colton Schmidt getting paid, then obviously they think there's a case. If the payment is largely hourly, then the lawyers might be taking advantage. In cases like this, it's often the former, so I think there's a good chance the players actually have a case.

  6. 51 minutes ago, DC Tom said:

     

    It truly isn't.  People don't remember that the rocket scientists told the lawyers "No, this is high-risk," and the lawyers said "No, it's okay, just watch."

     

    And it's worse today, with the "I'm a statistician, I have Excel!" crowd.  The "statisticians" at work stopped sending me emails after I shredded their work one too many times.  I consider that a sufficient result.

    I don't think that's why they stopped sending you emails.

  7. 5 hours ago, DC Tom said:

     

    Except that I know a correlation of 0.31 sucks.  Sometimes linear regression is not the proper analytical tool.  

     

    What's telling is that no one with a Wonderlic lower than 27 has a passer rating above 95.  You want to draft a great QB, don't look at anyone with a Wonderlic below 30, and your chances of getting one increase significantly.

    My take is different. I think 10-15% of variation in passer rating being explained by a single combine measurable is actually a lot. It's not the correlation for a complicated model, just a single measurable. Keep in mind that to some extent passer rating is also a function of things outside of a quarterback's control (offensive scheme, receiver and oline talent). I think teams would be foolish to ignore that measurement as they try and predict prospect success, and I'd be surprised if you could find a single combine measurable that's a better predictor of QB success (I'd guess velocity is also important, although less so).

     

    I also looked at nonlinear relationships (e.g. exponential), but the best fit curves were still approximately linear. You can confirm that a linear fit is reasonable from the chart visual.

     

    • Like (+1) 1
  8. I've been hearing people discuss pros and cons of wonderlic forever,  usually giving data that can only be interpreted anecdotally. I was curious, so I took a few minutes, and compiled a scatter chart of wonderlic scores vs career passer rating (for QBs with over 1500 career passing attempts from Source: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/pass_rating_career.htm).

    Screen-Shot-2019-03-30-at-9-58-46-PM.png

    The results are pretty straightforward. Wonderlic has a correlation of 0.31 and an r-squared of 0.10 with passer rating. That means 10% of the variation in career passing rating can be explained by the variation in wonderlic scores. 10% of success coming from a single metric makes it very important, regardless of the exceptions you might hear about. The chart also shows pretty clearly that wonderlic is not just a good indicator of success below a certain range (i.e. quarterbacks below a score of 16 will not succeed). A higher wonderlic score is associated with a better passer rating regardless of how high the score is (with Fitzpatrick being a slight outlier on the lower side, otherwise the relationship would be even stronger).
     

    Here is the same chart with Fitzpatrick removed. The r-squared jumps to 0.15.

     

    Screen-Shot-2019-03-30-at-10-11-56-PM.pn

     

    It's pretty clear that teams should be looking at wonderlic when they evaluate quarterbacks, and it's a very good sign that Josh Allen has a strong score.

     

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