So, you think a QB should be penalized in how he is evaluated because of how many yards the ball travels in the air, even though the QB put the ball in place when and where it needed to be for the play to suceed?
I don't want to speak for
@CBBI but that would not be my view of what he is saying.
A player isn't evaluated on the number of expected or average plays he makes. Most NFL QB's can throw the ball on time, to an open receiver for example.
It is an assumed talent to stay in the NFL. QB's are evaluated on the value they deliver over an average QB.......because being better than average at the QB position is, generally speaking, how you win. Can you win other ways? Sure.....you can. But it is harder to do so, your margin for error is smaller and year to year, it is a lot more difficult to sustain.
Game to game, this can be harder for people to rally around.......but over the course of a season or seasons, you can't just scheme your way out of average QB play....because eventually, a defense will start doing things that limit the number of average or expected throws the QB is getting......blitzing, coverage, etc. and the QB will need to start making plays that an average QB really cannot (consistently). In a 16 game season, you can sometimes get away with it. Like last year, Ben was generally bad relative to the league.....but Pittsburgh rode a great defense and some fortunate timing to an 11-5 record. But you can't win over multiple years with that formula.
Stefanski has made some mistakes this season but his scheme is certainly working. Opportunities are there for big plays but the big problem has been Mayfield has regressed rather significantly in Expected Points Added per Play for example.
EPA/PLAY OA is Expected Points Added Overage Average, expressed as a season total. So it is (Production over or under league average x Number of plays). If you divide that number by games played, you see on a per game basis what the QB did throughout the season.
This can change but through 6 weeks, on average, Baker is -2.133 in 2021......or roughly 2 points per game worse in EPA
than an average QB. In 2020, he was 2 points
better than average. That is a
really big difference in wins and losses, as there is a strong correlation between EPA at QB and wins. So if Stefanski is roughly losing 4 points in EPA from 2020, he has to make it up elsewhere......we have attempted to do that by riding Chubb and Hunt,
who are both top 5 RB's in Value Over Average.
But as injuries have mounted or things like bad penalties have gone against us, that massive EPA regression from our QB then comes in to play......and in situations where we don't have more runway to absorb something unexpected (like LAC), we are generally going to lose more than we are going to win. Last year, we had far better chance to absorb adversity because we had better than average QB play, which afforded us more margin for error. It is why Mahomes is the ultimate cheat code. Play like shit for 2 quarters......doesn't matter because Mahomes can deliver 2-3x the value per play over the average QB. So you can quickly erase mistakes or succeed with plays other teams can't succeed with.
Sorry is this is super long winded, I was trying to clearly articulate the point here with Stefanski. To me, the scheme is the scheme......
it is great......it can churn out points at the NFL level. Think of our scoring metrics this season or DVOA rank and consider that we are doing that with a below league average performance at QB........that speaks to how great of an offensive tactician Stefanski has been. Generally speaking, his mistakes have been magnified this season because he is trying to navigate a pretty severe handicap offensively. That doesn't absolve them......he needs to be better in certain situations but I think it can help explain why he has made some curious choices a handful of times.
