A couple weeks ago I wrote about how Tim Tebow's success was confounding traditional NFL analysts, and that despite not being a Tebow fan I was enjoying them floundering. Those of you that know me or have read my NBA stuff will realize why...I'm both a stats guy and a skeptic. The skeptical part of me listens to the "experts" that analyze sports with an extremely jaded ear, and I find much of the standard "analysis" to really be more about bombast and telling-the-people-what-they-want-to-hear than about a true analytical approach. And the stats guy part of me cringed at the lack of real, performance-based metrics in the NFL with which to truly judge how important a player is to team success.
Well, yesterday I came across an article that intrigued both the skeptic and the stats part of me. This article by Kerry Byrne of SI.com claims to explain Tebow's success statistically, with a measure that they unveiled before the season (important for predictive value) that isn't directly tied to wins/losses. Some of the highlights of the article:
"But the Cold, Hard Football Fact of the matter is that there is a fundamentally solid statistical foundation beneath the success of the Denver Broncos with Tebow at quarterback.
Put most simply, Tebow consistently outplays the other team's quarterback, often by wide margins. This superior play is the No. 1 reason for Denver's sudden success -- now 5-1 with Tebow at QB this year after a dismal 1-4 start."
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Read more: CHFF Real Quarterback Rating measures all aspects of quarterback play, passing, rushing, sacks, fumbles, etc., and spits it out in a number substantially similar to passer rating and that uses the same formula as passer rating. (Passer rating, while extraordinarily useful in its own right, measures only passing and nothing else -- even if many fans and analysts erroneously refer to it as "quarterback rating.")"
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In other words, Tebow is no statistical circus freak winning in spite of himself. Tebow's Broncos are winning because he consistently outperforms the opposing quarterback when you take into account all aspects of production: passing, running, sacks, total touchdowns, interceptions and fumbles. In fact, he consistently outperforms them by a wide margin.
If you read the article, you'll see that the author compares Tebow in his first six starts with the quarterback of the opposing team, using both passer rating and his Real Quarterback Rating. While Tebow often loses the passer rating comp, he was routinely torching his opponent in the Real Quarterback Rating. In fact, the Broncos were 5 - 0 in the five games that Tebow won the Real Quarterback Rating battle, and 0 - 1 in the one game that he didn't.
So my question here, is...do you buy it? Could this Real Quarterback Rating be at the forefront of a more "advanced stats" approach to the NFL? Baseball had it's revolution in the '90s, the NBA has been undergoing one of its own for about the past decade...is the NFL next? The feeling I've generally heard is that football is too complicated for this type of statistical approach to be truly effective...but Tebow's success has been playing havoc with the traditional view of what it means to be a quarterback in the NFL. Will that success also lead to a complete reevaluation of the way we statistically analyze the game?