Rookie bargains

When the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NFL and players’ union was put into place prior to the 2011 season, one of the big changes from the old CBA was the rookie wage scale. Gone were the days when players drafted in the top five became the highest-paid player at their position in NFL history before playing a single down.

Talk, Talk, Talk

Player safety.

That seems to be the key buzzword floating around the NFL these days.  Rodger Goodell and the league office talk about it all the time.  Seriously.  They just don’t stop.  They fine players for it, make new rules in the pursuit of it, and make commercials about it.

The players, meanwhile, also seem to care about their own safety quite a bit.  They talk about it adnauseam, and many former NFL players are suing the NFL for a lack of safety protocol, ostensibly to make the game safer more than to line their own pockets.

This fan, for one, is utterly sick of it, and I know I can’t be alone.  Both sides talk back and forth, pointing fingers at each other, but neither push for any meaningful reform.  All they care about is winning the war of public opinion, and their blatant hypocrisy needs to stop.

When the NFL and players’ union were in a lockout in 2011, they debated many important issues for the future of the league, including how to fairly share revenue and prevent rookies from being vastly overpaid.  But for two parties that both care so much about player safety, they didn’t really make much progress on that front.  Sure, they reduced full-contact practices and offseason workouts and put some token money into medical research, but they missed the main issue.

Style over safety

Football players have safer helmets available to them, ones that are proven to reduce concussions.  A few players, such as DeSean Jackson, Aaron Rodgers, and Greg Jennings, have switched to these (with good results), but the vast majority eschew them because they don’t look cool enough.  So let me get this straight: players will sue the NFL because of concussions, but won’t change to helmets that can prevent these concussions because of the style? It is hypocrisy of the highest order, and it was repeated when players complained about being forced to wear thigh pads.

The NFL league office, meanwhile, is not blameless in this either.  Sure, they fine players for delivering dangerous hits, but they do nothing to force them to wear the safer equipment. I understand that needs to be bargained with the players’ union, but if the league really cared about player safety as much as they claim, that would have been a top priority in the 2011 lockout.  A league that can fine players for their socks or shoes, but not for wearing unsafe helmets, is not a league that truly cares about the safety of those players.

Furthermore, the NFL is really only using player safety as an excuse to tweak rules in favor of the offense.  When one quarterback gets his knee blown out by a player lunging from the ground, that becomes illegal.  Receivers and quarterbacks have greater protection now than they ever have, making the passing game much more prolific than at any point in NFL history, but defensive players do not get awarded this same protection.  Offensive players have far fewer restrictions on how to block than defenders do on how to hit, leading to leg injuries to defensive players who get chopped down on a regular basis.  The NFL’s new crackdown on player safety is inherently biased towards promoting big plays and lots of points, things which help drive ratings and make money for the league.

Calling Bull

Both the NFL and the players’ union claim to care about player safety, but I’m not buying it.  Both sides are extremely hypocritical and only really care about one thing—money.  There is nothing wrong with this, but lying to the public to garner sympathy is just wrong.  I’m calling bullshit right here and right now. Shut up and play. Take the copious quantities of money we throw at you and be done with it.

Don’t expect us to care about your health when you prove just how little you care about it yourselves.

Amidst stories of teams telling their injured players to dust it off and get back out there, it is refreshing to see instances in which a team genuinely puts player safety before the importance of winning a game. Three such examples have happened in recent years within the NFC North, and they all make me respect the men making decisions for those teams immensely.

Nick Collins

Early in the 2011 season, Green Bay Packers safety Nick Collins suffered a severe neck injury. Green Bay kept him on the roster for the entire season before deciding it was not safe for him to play football anymore. Collins retired shortly thereafter. General manager Ted Thompson said that “we were not comfortable clearing him to play again. As with all of our players, Nick is a member of our family and we thought of him that way as we came to this conclusion.”

Collins had been one of the leaders of a defense that played well in the team’s Super Bowl run, and the Packers clearly missed his presence on the field. Faced with an opportunity to clear him, helping their defense but exposing him to further serious injury, the team chose to put his well-being first, something football fans should take notice of and applaud.

Jahvid Best

The Detroit Lions faced a similar situation with running back Jahvid Best, who suffered a severe concussion (not his first) in October of 2011. The Lions, who had started 5-0 with Best’s explosive playmaking, stumbled to a 5-7 finish over their remaining 12 games.

Heading into the 2012 season, Best had still not been cleared by doctors, and Detroit likely at least suspected that he never would be, yet they still kept him on the roster, paying him his salary and providing him with free, top-notch medical care.  After the season, it was announced that Best’s career was over. Once again, a team had a chance to try and get a valuable player back on the field at the risk of his long-term safety, but decided instead to listen to doctors and make player safety the main priority.

Johnny Knox

Just a few months later, Chicago Bears wide receiver Johnny Knox was bent over backwards and nearly paralyzed towards the end of the 2011 season.

Even though he could barely walk at the start of the next season, the team kept Knox on the roster, once again giving the player access to money (over $1 million) and top-notch medical care they were not obligated to provide. Despite Knox’s public insistence that he wanted to play again, Chicago cut him after the 2012 season, and he retired days later.

Setting the example

Three teams, three talented players in position of need, three franchises put their players’ health ahead of putting the best possible talent on the field. Their good example stands in stark contrast to the recent behavior of the Washington Redskins, who let a clearly hobbled Robert Griffin III play in the playoffs because he insisted he could do it. These teams trusted their medical professionals to make the call, even over the pleadings of their players, who were filled with passion for the game and a burning desire to win. For that they have earned my deep respect. Here’s hoping more teams follow their lead.

Green Bay’s offensive hallmark in the last five years has been their passing game, which makes perfect sense when you consider that they have an all-time great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. However, two successive playoff failures have made many think that Green Bay, which has not had a rusher go over 750 yards since 2009, needs a feature back who can give them a solid running game.

Many fans are looking longingly at free-agent running back Steven Jackson, who has been a very good running back on many very bad St. Louis Rams teams in the last eight years. ESPN NFL analyst John Clayton has also publicly stated that he thinks this would be a great idea, suggesting that signing him for $5 million would be a great deal for the Packers.

On the surface, this move makes perfect sense. Putting a dangerous running back in an offense that is already explosive can only help improve it. But is this actually the case, and would such a hefty investment be worth it for an older back?

Steven Jackson has already played eight years in the NFL, and he has almost 2400 career carries.  That’s some serious mileage, and it’s fair to worry about diminishing returns once a player has taken that many hits. Let’s look at other running backs in the last twenty years who have more than 2400 carries, and see how they fared.

Looking at the table, it’s hard to think that signing Steven Jackson would be a good idea. Only three of the eleven backs in similar situations to him improved their production after 2,400 carries, and one of those (Warrick Dunn) did so in an extremely limited sample size (186 carries). Of the 33 100-or-more carry seasons by these backs after they had ,2400 carries, only seven (21%) averaged better than their first 2,400 carries. By contrast, nineteen of them (58%) found the backs performing at a clip that was at least 0.3 yards per carry worse than their average from their first 2,400 carries.

To put these numbers in perspective, Steven Jackson has averaged 4.2 yards per carry in his career so far. Based on historical numbers, then, he would have roughly a 20% chance of averaging 4.2 yards per carry or more for the Packers, and close to a 60% chance of averaging 3.9 yards per carry or less. There were 31 NFL running backs who had 100 or more carries while averaging 3.9 yards or more in 2012, including five rookies, four of whom were drafted in the third round or later.

This is the second part of a two-part series. In part one, we looked at consistency trends of quarterbacks throughout the NFL. Here we are going to examine in greater detail the consistency and production of the four NFC North quarterbacks.

The previous installment featured a study of all 24 NFL quarterbacks who have started at least twenty games for the same team between 2011 and 2012.  Conveniently, Jay Cutler, Christian Ponder, Aaron Rodgers, and Matthew Stafford—all four quarterbacks in the NFC North—fit that description.  So let’s look a little closer at those four in an effort to better understand just how they compare to each other in terms of consistency and overall production.

Consistency

The overall numbers showed that Aaron Rodgers was far and away the most consistent of the four quarterbacks; his passer rating standard deviation of 20.5 marked him as the third most consistent in the NFL. Matthew Stafford came in at 23.5, slightly more consistent than average, while Christian Ponder was on the other side of average with a standard deviation of 27.2. With a standard deviation of 30.0, Jay Cutler came in as the least consistent quarterback in the entire league.

Let’s dig in a little deeper to see more clearly the distribution of their games relative to their average passer rating that season. The chart below compares the percentage of games that are within 10.0 points of their average, between 10.1 and 20.0 points of their average, between 20.1 and 30.0 points of their average, and more than 30.0 points away from their average. The table also lists the percentage of games in which the quarterback is more than 50 points away from his average, but it should be noted that this is a subset of the 30 point group and those two are therefore not exclusive of each other.

There are a few interesting trends to note here. First, observe that Rodgers, the most consistent quarterback, has a significantly lower percentage of game right at his average than either Stafford or Ponder. What makes Rodgers so consistent is that he avoids the extremely varying games that are more than 30 points from his average passer rating. All of his games basically fall within a range of 60 points (i.e., ± 30 from his average).

That is not the case for the other quarterbacks, particularly Cutler and Ponder; nearly one-third of their games fall more than 30 points from their average passer rating. A large reason why Cutler has the largest standard deviation an insanely high proportion of his games — 16.0% — fall more than 50 points from his average. This is more than four times the NFL average and nearly doubles that of any other quarterback.

Overall production

It is important to note that all of the statistics discussed to this point have been about quarterback’s average and their production relative to that average. This ignores the difference between the average production of the quarterbacks, which can be fairly substantial when you consider that Aaron Rodger’s average passer rating of 114.9 is nearly 30 points better than that of Matthew Stafford, the second-best quarterback in the division with an 88.1 passer rating.

So let’s put some clarity in this discussion by looking at real numbers instead of simply averages. The table below shows the percentage of games that have fallen in various passer ratings by the average NFL quarterback (the 24 in the overall study) and each of the four NFC North quarterbacks. The graph below that shows the same numbers in a visual format.

These numbers show three clear groupings in the NFC North quarterbacks. Ponder produces an abnormally high number of bad games without really having many really good ones (only one game with a passer rating above 120), making him a below-average NFL quarterback. To be fair, Ponder has only finished his second year, so he still has significant room to grow. Stafford and Cutler both have roughly average numbers, at least in terms of their most typical passer ratings, although Cutler does have an atypically high number of really bad games.

The true standout here is Aaron Rodgers, as he incredibly has no games with a passer rating below 75 in the last two years (in fact he has none below 80); he is the only quarterback in this study who can claim that remarkable feat. The typical Rodgers game resides in the very good category, with relatively equal numbers of average and great games.

This clearly illustrates the difference between Rodgers and the rest of the NFC North quarterbacks. A bad game for Rodgers, when his passer rating is in the eighties, is an average game for Cutler, Ponder, or Stafford. An average game for Rodgers is a very good or great one for one of the other three.

This is not an earth-shattering revelation. Rodgers is clearly the best quarterback in the NFC North and by most statistical measurements is also the best quarterback in the NFL. It is truly remarkable, however, to look at just how large the gap is between Rodgers and the rest of the quarterbacks in the division.

Conclusion

This is the part for all you lazy bums who don’t feel like doing much reading (that’s all of you, including me). I’m going to put my findings in simple, easy-to-digest bullet points so you can skip all the long, confusing words above!

• Aaron Rodgers is one of the most consistent quarterbacks in the NFL because he is exceptional at avoiding games with extreme passer ratings (relative to his average).
• Jay Cutler is the least consistent quarterback in the NFL because he has an incredibly high rate of games that are either really good or really bad.
• A bad game for Aaron Rodgers is an average game for any other NFC North quarterbacks.

Introduction

Football announcers are fond of saying that an outstanding quarterback is “consistently excellent” — or conversely bashing an underachieving quarterback by saying he “needs to improve his consistency.”

Based on comments like this, there seems to be a prevailing theory out there that the elite quarterbacks in the NFL are separated from the pack by their consistency.  Do the statistics back this assertion up?  Let’s dive in and take a look.

Because I am a giant stats nerd, I just had to dig into this and see if there was any truth to the conventional wisdom. This is the first installment of a two-part series in which I will examine the consistency of NFL quarterbacks. This installment will explore league-wide trends, while the second part will focus on the four NFC North quarterbacks.

To the statsmobile!

Numbers and tables

To find the simplest method possible of measuring quarterback consistency, I looked at the standard deviation of game-by-game passer ratings for quarterbacks in the last two years. Ignoring playoff games, I included only quarterbacks who made at least 20 regular-season starts for the same team between 2011 and 2012. A total of 24 players qualified for this study. These numbers were chosen to find the best middle ground between getting a large enough pool to do a meaningful study and having a large enough sample size for each individual to get meaningful results.

The table below shows the 24 quarterbacks examined, along with their passer rating over the last two years and the standard deviation of their single-game passer ratings. A lower standard deviation means there is less variability — or in other words, that a quarterback is more consistent.

Looking at the spread of this data, we can see that it shows what statisticians call a “normal distribution,” which is a fancy way of saying that the frequency of the numbers peaks around the mean (average) and tapers off toward either end of the range. In this case, the range is roughly 20 to 30.

Lessons

A quick glance also tells us that more consistent does not necessarily equal to better: five of the six least consistent quarterbacks rank in the top ten for passer rating over the last two years. Indeed, there is almost no correlation between a quarterback’s average passer rating and his standard deviation(r²=0.002). In other words, there is no indication that consistency is necessarily a marker of excellence, for a quarterback can just as easily be consistently bad as consistently good.

This makes intuitive sense. St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford has put up the most consistent passer rating in the NFL the last two years — but no one would accuse him of being an excellent quarterback. There is no value found in being consistently mediocre.

The next two most consistent quarterbacks, however, have been two of the best in recent years. Ask the average NFL fan to name the best two quarterbacks of 2011 and 2012, and the most common answers would likely be Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady (Drew Brees would be in the mix as well), and indeed, they rank as two of the top three in passer rating. Interestingly, though, seven of the top ten highest-rated quarterbacks rank in the bottom half for consistency.

This suggests that, among the top quarterbacks, what separates the truly elite players from the rest is their ability to avoid bad games and be consistently excellent. The numbers suggest that may be possible, as the correlation between passer rating and standard deviation rises to 0.38 if the sample size is limited to the top ten highest passer ratings It should be noted, however, that 0.38 still represents a relatively low correlation.

Now I want to look briefly at one interesting case for a quarterback who did not qualify for this study because he missed the 2011 season: Peyton Manning. I am looking at quarterbacks playing for the same team, so rather than combine his 2010 and 2012 numbers (which featured him plying his trade in two different cities), I decided to look at his numbers from 2009 and 2010. In those years, Manning posted a passer rating of 95.6 with a standard deviation of 22.2. His passer rating would rank only sixth in this study — likely because he missed out on the passing bonanza that was 2011, when defenses suffered tremendously from the lockout and shortened training camp — while his standard deviation would score him as the fifth most consistent quarterback.

These numbers actually muddy the waters a little bit: Manning falls short of the elite benchmark in passer rating but is still relatively consistent (similar to Ben Roethlisberger).

Conclusion

Those of you who don’t like wading through a whole long article full of numbers — in other words, all of you — can skip straight to this point and read what I learned in easy-to-digest bullet points!

• There is no statistical relationship between consistency and effectiveness for NFL quarterbacks.
• It looks possible, but is not proven, that the truly elite quarterbacks are separated from the merely good ones by being consistently good.
• Second-tier quarterbacks are some of the most inconsistent in the NFL, probably because they fluctuate so often between good and mediocre.

Stay tuned for an upcoming look at the NFC North quarterbacks!

“If only our guys had stayed healthy.”

This common lament from NFL fans at the end of a disappointing season reflects the harsh reality that injuries are an unavoidable part of football.  I don’t particularly like using injuries as an excuse, but there is no denying that the health (or lack thereof) of certain key players can have a dramatic impact on a team’s fortunes in a season.

With that in mind, I thought I’d take a look at the four teams in the NFC North to see how they were affected by injuries in 2013.  I had some difficulty here in trying to find one perfect metric for looking at injuries, and ended up settling on four different ways.  No one of them is perfect , but together they should give you a pretty good idea of how badly teams were impacted by injuries.  Before we get to the numbers, let’s take a minute to briefly explain each method.

Procedure

WARNING: if you don’t care about how I did what I did and just want to see the results, you should save yourself a lot of time and skip to the results section.

The first metric I examined was games missed due to injury.  This simply counts any time a player on the roster is ruled inactive for a week due to an injury.  This is useful for seeing how much injuries impacted the roster as a whole, but completely ignores the value of a player.  A superstar quarterback missing a game means a lot more to the team than a fringe roster player who only plays on special teams, but they both count the same here.

The second metric, therefore, is starts missed.  This looks only at games missed due to injury by players expected to be starters with a fully healthy team (so the standard eleven on offense and defense, plus a third wide receiver and cornerback).  This helps distinguish in player value a little bit, but still treats all starters equally when in fact that is not close to being accurate.

The third metric looks at starts missed by Pro Bowl performers, that is, players who have made a Pro Bowl since 2012 playing for their current team.  The idea here is to look at players who are high-impact starters expected to be the best players on the field.  The flaws are that the Pro Bowl voting system is far from perfect, and again, there is still a difference in value between a star quarterback like Aaron Rodgers and a nice fullback like John Kuhn, both of whom qualified as Pro Bowl players here.

Finally, I looked at money lost due to injuries, assuming each players gets 1/16^th of his cap for the season.  So if a player has a cap hit of $16 million for the year and missed one game due to injury, the team just “lost” $1 million.  The general idea is that teams pay their better players more money, but there will always be guys who are overpaid or underpaid, sometimes dramatically (Chicago defensive end Julius Peppers, for example, had the second highest cap hit in the NFC North this year but did not play anywhere close to that level).  Players who particularly get overlooked here are young players playing well on relatively small rookie contracts (think of guys like safety Harrison Smith and tight end Kyle Rudolph in Minnesota).

So again, let me emphasize that no one approach is perfect here.  Different teams will appear to have larger injury issues than they actually did (or vice-versa) if you look only at one of the four metrics, but looking at all four should generally give us a solid idea of how teams fared relative to each other.

I should also mention that all salary cap numbers come from Spotrac and all injury information is from Pro Football Reference.

Results

Here are the totals for each team in the NFC North in the four injury areas.  For those who are curious, the raw data can be seen here.  I had bold and italicized fonts to indicate starters and Pro Bowl players, but it didn’t copy and paste from Excel to Google Docs, and I didn’t care enough to go back and add it in manually.  Sorry.

Discussion

In three of the four areas, the Green Bay Packers comes out as the NFC North team that suffered from injuries the most in 2013.  This is probably not very surprising to anybody who followed the division closely this year-their injury woes were well documented-and makes their division title all the more impressive.

What is interesting to me is that, despite having almost twice as many games lost due to injury as any other NFC North team, the Packers were not that far off from some of the others in starts, Pro Bowl Starts, and money lost.  This suggests that a good number of their injuries were to backups and special teams players, although they still certainly lost their fair share of top-shelf talent as well.