Adam Steele is back for another guest post. You can view all of Adam’s posts here. As always, we thank him for contributing.
Introduction: QB True Talent
One of the mandates for being a football analytics guy is to create a quarterback rating system, so today I’m going to throw my flag onto the field. However, I’m taking a different approach by asking a different question. I’m not trying to measure individual or team accomplishments, nor am I calculating value or attempting to predict the future. My goal is to answer a simple question: At a fundamental level, how good was he? As far as I’m aware, nobody has made a systematic attempt at answering this. Before we go any further, I need to add a vital disclaimer. My formula is statistically derived, and does not account for supporting cast, coaching, or anything else we can’t measure directly. So when I use the label “True Talent”, it really means “A rough estimate of true talent, based solely on statistics.”
I’ll save the gory micro details of True Talent’s calculation for another post, but today I want to outline how it works and ask for feedback on how to improve it. First, I’ve attempted to isolate what I believe are the four pillars of QB play: Passing Dominance, Passing Consistency, Ball Protection, and Rushing Ability. These categories are weighted by a) their importance within the framework of the overall QB skillet, and b) the level of control a QB has in converting the skill into results. The score for each category is era-adjusted, balanced by volume and efficiency, and scaled so zero is equal to replacement level. The overall True Talent score is simply the sum of the four category scores, minus five (the replacement level bar is higher for overall QB play compared to each of the pillars on their own). The overall score is expressed as percentage above or below replacement level. I’ve purposely rounded all figures to whole numbers to remind readers that these numbers are estimates, not precise measurements.
My plan is to eventually apply True Talent back to the 1940s, but for now we’re going to look at the last twenty seasons (1996-2015). I want to nail down the methodology before I go all the way back through history. Normally I wouldn’t subject readers to an arduously long table, but in this case I think it’s warranted. I want you to see how all levels of QB fare in my system, not just the best and worst. This table includes every QB season since 1996 with at least 100 dropbacks. I encourage you to sort by each category, by season, and by player to really get a feel for True Talent.
If that was too many names for you to swallow, here’s a much shorter table displaying the top five QB’s from each season, as well as the worst:
I’m going to refrain to sharing my opinions on what you see above, because I want your unbiased feedback. What do you like about True Talent? What needs tweaking or a complete overhaul? Does the scale work for you? What type of QB does it systematically underrate or overrate? Thanks in advance for your input! And a special thanks to Bryan Frye for providing me with the data I’ve long been searching for.
