syhuang

Texans' Will Fuller (groin) not expected to play vs. Bills NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reports Fuller is not expected to play in the wild-card game due to the lingering groin injury, per a source informed. The Texans, however, will allow the wideout up until game time before an official decision is made, Rapoport adds.

If you are indeed arguing how raw a top 10 rookie is, like I said earlier, there is no way to prove who is right considered QB situation of the team also plays a major role on whether a rookie QB plays in the first season or how much he plays. In this case, let’s just agree to disagree.

Or it’s possible he considered the better QBs in FA market are overpriced and the term is too long, but that’s the not point whether what Beane did in that offseason can be used to prove who is right. I think I may know the root culprit of this discussion. Basically when others said a rookie QB isn’t expected to start the first season, they mean the QB is raw. Most of the time these QBs are forced to action due to non optimal QB situation. On the other hand, when you see others said a rookie is not expected to start, your take is that the QB situation often doesn’t allow the rookie to sit out the first year or as long as the coach prefer even he is raw. if this indeed your interpretation, your take is inline with others. On the other hand, if you are arguing whether a top 10 rookie is as raw as others, there is really no way to prove who is right consider the QB situation of a team also plays a major role on whether a rookie is playing.

I guess we can agree to disagree. In my opinion it has more to do with the QB situation that even the top 10 rookie QBs are considered raw and the plan was to sit out the first season, they are mostly forced to play later in the first year. Mahomes’s case is an exception that although he was drafted in top 10, Chiefs had a much better QB situation then. He is not an exception due to he is the only QB considered raw and expected to sit out the rookie season.

it has more to do with QB situation consider teams drafting a QB in top 10 usually have a big hole in QB position. When others says “not expected to start”, they refer to how raw a QB is. However, even some of these top 10 QBs are raw and aren’t starting immediately after draft per coach’s plan, they are often forced into play later in the first year due to non-optimal QB situation. on the other hand, with better QB situation, Mahomes did pretty much sit out the first season. You can argue he actually started the meaningless last game of the season so technically he didn’t sit out, but we all know it’s to let him gain experience and see game action in a meaningless game. In the playoff game next week, Alex Smith started again.

People need to realize Daniel Jones actually has lower yard per attempt, 6.62 yard/att, than Allen who is at 6.76 yard/att. The reason Jones has higher passing yard per game is that he has more pass attempts. Excluding Dallas' game from Jones when he came in to relieve Eli and played only one series, he averages 37.1 pass attempts per game. For Allen, he only averages 30.4 pass attempt per game. Even if we exclude the first Patriots game where he basically didn't play the 4th quarter, Allen still only averages 30.6. With higher yard/att (6.76 vs. 6.62), Allen is very likely to have similar or higher pass yards if he had 6~7 more pass attempts per game. Lots of people make a big deal that Jones had 300+ yards last week against Redskins when he had 42 pass attempts. When Allen played Redskins several weeks ago, he only had 160 passing yards. By just looking at these numbers, Allen sucks and can't even break 200 yards against the same opponent. However, if we looked closely, Allen only had 20 pass attempts in that game. If Allen had 42 attempts like Jones, there is a good chance Allen broke 300 yards too. Also, the opponent matters. Allen faced top 10 pass defense 6 out of his 15 games (40%), including #2 (Pats * 2), #5 (Steelers), #6 (Broncos), #7 (Ravens), and #9 (browns). For Jones, he faced 1 in his 11 starts (Pats).

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And here is the burner account ?

Correlation doesn't equal causation. You implies that it's Allen having lower than 60% completion causes Bills to lose, but you do not consider other factors that can affect his completion percentage in these losses, for example, opponent's defense ranking in these losses. In these 6 games (1-5) you listed, the opponent defense ranking in terms of pass completion percentage is #1 (Pats x 2), #2 (Ravens), #5 (Eagles), #7 (Steelers), and #11 (Browns). The defense Allen faced in these games has to be taken into account. However, you simply saw sub 60% in these 6 games and concluded it's the causation without considering other factors. If you insist it's a causation and not a chance it's a correlation, let me ask you a simple question. If there is a factor, let's call it X, and BIlls' record is 1-3 with X but 9-2 without it, is X also a causation of the losses, similar to how you interpret sub 60% completion in these 6 games? If not, what other factors should be considered when analyzing stats in losses? and why do you not consider any other factors in your theory that completion percentage is the causation of the losses?

This is huge. Fuller has significant impact on Watson's performance especially on deep balls: ----------------------------- Houston’s deep passing success dependent on Fuller? The Texans have used an empty formation at the highest rate in the NFL this season (14.9% of offensive plays). The formation has been beneficial to Deshaun Watson, who has been effective on passes from empty formations, averaging 8.4 yards per attempt (fourth-most in the NFL) and throwing for 6 TDs (tied for second-most in the NFL). The Texans' key to keeping up with the top offenses in the AFC might lie in Will Fuller's availability. Watson has been significantly more aggressive throwing deep (20-plus air yards) with Fuller on the field during his career. With Fuller on the field, Watson has thrown deep on 16.8% of his passes and completed 43.2% of those attempts, with a 94.6 passer rating. With Fuller off the field, Watson has thrown deep on 10.7% of attempts, and he's struggled when doing so, completing 33.8% of passes with a 66.6 passer rating. Fuller played 59 of 63 offensive snaps for the Texans in his Week 15 return from a hamstring injury that also sidelined him in Weeks 8-11. -----------------------------

Actually I do not have the opposing POV. I do not claim whether Allen is slower to read a defense or not since I know there is no stat to indicate it, just as you also agreed. ?

Glad we are in agreement that there is no stat to show a quarterback is slower to read a defense. The only problem I have with your earlier stats is that you didn't show the correlation between the stats and your claim. It's good that you now realize it. BTW, in addition to Hodges, I'm pretty sure I also list Trubisky who plays 13 games this year. But that's beyond the point now since you admit blitz rate isn't an indicator either.

Glad that we also get worse-performance-under-blitz out of the way. It looks like you only have blitz rate left. Let's move to it too. Russell Wilson is currently being blitzed in 44.5% rate and Jimmy Garoppolo is at 43.6%. By you standard, these two elite quarterbacks must be slower to read defense than Devlin Hodges (35.6%) or Trubisky (25.8%), right? You're entitled to have an opinion on whether Allen is slower to read a defense comparing to other quarterbacks. However, when you cite stats to attempt to support he is slower than others but fail to show the correlation between the stats and your claim, it's where the problem is. Again, Allen needs to continue to improve and be better under blitz, but so far you fail to show any stats that he is slower than others in reading a defense.

Good that we get time-to-throw out of the way. Now, move to the next. Being blitzed often or performing worse under blitz is your new indicator of a QB slow to read a defense? If so, Tom Brady being the 5th worst QB vs. blitz must mean he is one of the slowest to read defense. Should Allen continue to learn and be better under blitz? Definitely. But using it to indicate he is slow to read a defense comparing to other QBs, you need to show better correlation when using stats. As for Josh saying he needs to improve in different areas in press conferences, let's just say you have a strange way to interpret it. If a young QB says he doesn't need to improve anymore in an interview, that would be really worrisome.

NextGen Stats shows Allen's time-to-throw average time at 2.87 seconds with Russel Wilson at 2.85 seconds, Lamar Jackson at 2.91 seconds, Aaron Rodgers at 2.90 seconds, and Deshaun Watson at 2.83 seconds. Are they all slower to read defense than Devlin Hodges who is at 2.80 seconds? To use a stat, we need to understand the stat first. What is the definition of time-to-throw here, it is " Time to Throw measures the average amount of time elapsed from the time of snap to throw on every pass attempt for a passer (sacks excluded)". By this definition, one major problem pretty much everyone immediately realize is that it includes passes after scrambling, roll-out, etc. For the quarterbacks who are mobile and athletic, they can buy time when the pass rush closes in. In this case, they get penalized in the time-to-throw stat. These outliers can dramatically affect the average. In other words, using time-to-throw to indicate a QB taking too long to read a defense is misleading unless you are able to cite a time-to-throw stat which excludes these outliers.

Instead of looking at the traditional completion percentage, which is affected by receiver's ability, pass block, opponent's pass rush, etc, NFL NextGen stats has a relatively new stat, Expected Completion Percentage. Before introducing it, I want to emphasize there is no perfect stat, and there will never be one. Expected Completion Percentage uses machine learning and takes much more factors into account to evaluate quarterback's passes, including pass air distance (from quarterback to receiver), air yards, the distance between the receiver and the nearest defender, the distance between the quarterback and the nearest pass rusher, and the speed of the quarterback at throw, and so on. Basically you can think this stat tries to evaluate the possibility of a pass being completed. If you're interested in how it works, the following is a good description. The Expected Completion Percentage stat can be found in https://nextgenstats.nfl.com/stats/passing#expectedCompletionPercentage. As we can see, Josh's expected completion percentage is 3.3% higher than the actual completion percentage. It means that his passes are expected to have a 62.6% completion but only 59.3% of his passes are actually caught. Or if we look at Tannehill whose expected completion percentage is 62.9% but his receivers do a good job and catch passes normally not expected to be caught, which increases Tannehill's comp% to 71.5%. By plain comp%, Tannehill is significantly higher than Allen, 71.5% vs. 59.3%. But by expected completion percentage, they are quite close, 62.9% vs. 62.6%. Again, the Expected Completion Percentage isn't a be-all-end-all stat, no stat is. Furthermore, Allen is in the bottom 3rd in Expected Completion Percentage and, as everyone know, needs to continue to grow. On the other hand, people need to realize that the traditional comp% is really outdated and doesn't tell close to the whole story. ---------------------------------------------------------- Next Gen Stats introduction to Completion Probability http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000967238/article/next-gen-stats-intro-to-completion-probability-part-ii How The Completion Probability Model Works With the help of machine learning based models leveraging Amazon Web Services' Sagemaker platform, Completion Probability is measured using more than 10 different in-play factors collected by Next Gen Stats player-tracking devices. Those inputs include pass air distance (from quarterback to receiver), air yards, the distance between the receiver and the nearest defender, the distance between the quarterback and the nearest pass rusher, the speed of the quarterback at throw, among several other metrics. Each in-play factor in the Completion Probability model has a direct relationship with the likelihood a pass is complete or incomplete. We can evaluate these relationships by plotting each in-play factor against Actual Completion Percentage to better understand each factor's effect on the outcome of a play... 1. Air Distance: As distance between the quarterback at the time of the throw to the location of the receiver at the time of the catch increases, the likelihood of a completion decreases. Passes traveling more than 40 air distance yards have roughly a 20% chance of completion, while passes traveling 10 air distance yards have a roughly 80% chance of completion. 2. Target Separation: As the distance between the receiver and nearest defender increases, the likelihood of a completion also increases. The thickness of the each data point of the plot shows the density of passes for each level of target separation which suggests the majority of passes come with less than 4 yards of target separation. 3. Sideline Separation: As the distance between the receiver and the sideline decreases, the likelihood of a completion also decreases. The probability of a completed pass decreases rapidly at 5 yards of sideline separation. Controlling for all other factors, passes to the sideline just inside the white paint have a roughly 30% chance of completion. 4. Pass Rush Separation: As the distance between the quarterback and nearest pass rusher at the time of the throw decreases, the likelihood of a completion also decreases. A quarterback throwing with no defenders around has a higher probability of a completed pass compared to a quarterback with a pass rusher within a few yards at the time for the throw. 5. Passer Speed: As the speed of the quarterback at the time of the throw increases, the likelihood of a completed pass decreases. Speed below 8 MPH has little effect on the probability of a completion, however, as the speed of the quarterback increases above 8 MPH, the chance of completion decreases dramatically. 6. Time to Throw: As the duration of time increases from snap to throw, the likelihood of a completed pass decreases. Most passes occur between 2 and 3 seconds after the snap, and the probability of a completion declines significantly after 3 seconds. The model uses in-play data points collected by Next Gen Stats player tracking technology on over 36,000 pass attempts dating back to the 2016 season and was validated against a random sampling of 10% of the pass attempts. Using only data not included in the model, we find the relationship between the Actual Completion Percentage and Completion Probability is strong, with an r-squared value of 0.98. For reference, "0" represents no correlation while a value close to "1" represents a perfect correlation. ----------------------------------------------------------