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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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https://www.fantasypoints.com/nfl/articles/season/2021/mobile-quarterbacks-and-injury-rates#/

The claim that mobile quarterbacks are more injury prone is unsubstantiated at best.

Dumb luck and how good a team’s offensive line is at pass protection are where I’d put my concern.

My mind immediately goes to Cincinnati’s brass knowingly rolling the dice on a suspect front five in 2020 and having to watch a guard’s fuckup result in their franchise QB’s knee getting imploded.

unsubstantiated at best

Nitpicking phrasing (though I disagree overall as well), "at best"? So, at moderate, it's worse than unsubstantiated? Which (to me) means actually the inverse of truth? So, at moderate, mobile quarterbacks are less injury-prone, is the hypothesis?

Brady, Young, Fahurev, his benchwarmer Rogers or whatever, Montana, Aikman, were thus the injury-prone cohort, while the less-injury-prone cohort spearheaded by Randall Cunningham (who in the o-fkn-riginal Madden Football is the greatest player to ever fondle a pigskin), Michael Vick, Cam Newton, and Robert Griffin III's surgical team.

Sorry, I'm being tipsy and a bit smarmy. Base point is that, of the top ten qbs in rush yds/game, two have played 100+ games. Of the top twenty, same two. Top 25 qbs in rush yds/gm, a total of three have played over 100 games.

Statistical analysis fails here because of the changing nature of the game, small sample sizes, and an inordinate number of confounding factors. Some mobility is good and contributes to longevity, but turning the passer into a runner exposes them to blows of a fundamentally different nature than those a passer takes--this isn't theoretical or statistical, but real, in a very tangible way for the guy getting smashed by a few hundred flying pounds. This isn't to say pocket qbs don't get laid out, but the repetitive stresses simply cannot be ignored, and the most holistic grand-scale view possible of "do running qbs hold up?" says, no, they do not. RBs have a lifespan of maybe six years...to play a QB like an RB and expect a twenty year lifespan is foolish.

Non of the running qb aged well. Maybe they aren’t hurt more but how many did anything impressive after 30.

Lamar also has the issue he’s been figured out. Ever since Brian Flores hit him with cover 0 he hasn’t been the same.

The 30+ zero blitz game was a wonderful bit of daring and ingenuity from Flores, and it was surprising it continued to work immediately after the half, but I’m not so sure I agree it was some huge catalyst. Baltimore did finally adjust before that game was over.

281 YPG passing before that Dolphins game, 275 YPG from that game on for the rest of ‘21.

But even if the non intuitive answer is true (running QBs that get hit more or not more likely to be injured) the effectiveness of a running QB after injury may be entirely different compared to a passer QB. Thus even if the risk of injury may be the same it doesn’t follow the risk from an injury is the same.

That’s fair. But I also think that since the advent of the zone read, any QB that can average even say 5 YPC and 6-10 carries a game gives his offense an extra man in the run game.

With any contract, teams want to pay for future performance and I think there’s consensus Jackson’s demands are optimistic. At the same time, even if he regresses on the ground he has some room to fall before he’s no longer effective.

I think running QBs fall off much more than passing QBs because their success as a passer is a bit of a mirage. It is because of the running threat. Thus a small decrease in running effectiveness can lead to a large decrease in passing effectiveness.

I think this is true. For example, the parent listed RG3 as an example of a quarterback who could only run, not throw. This wasn't always true. In fact, RG3 holds the NFL record for the highest passer rating by a rookie. And his passer rating in college was one of the highest ever. It's only in the rear view mirror that RG3 is seen as an ineffective passer. He got injured and his career tanked.

RG3 was a better pure passer than Lamar Jackson. If Jackson loses his ability to run, his value to an NFL team will fall to zero.

I’d like to see some data and a large sample. And only looking at Jackson, his QBR has been meh the last three years while his YPC have fluctuated from 6.3 to 5.8 to 6.8.

Worth pointing out before you look at the data that QBR takes into account rushing. I was referring to passer rating which does not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_quarterback_rating

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passer_rating

You can’t win the Super Bowl with an “effective” QB on a massive contract. You either need an elite QB on a massive contract, or you need an effective QB on a tiny contract that you can build a great team around.

Eli Manning was about as average as it gets and won two Super Bowls with large contracts. He was somewhat cheaper than contemporaries, but not much.

Of course, I wouldn't try to build a team with that pattern, but it's not necessarily a complete disaster.

No one said otherwise, above. But it’s not impossible — Peyton Manning’s 2015-16 salary was $18M (high for that year), and he was cooked in his final season. (I hope he still thanks Von Miller for that last ring).

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