Maybe you’ve heard about the new statistic that ESPN has wheeled out for the NFL season called QBR. It’s ESPN’s advanced answer to the QB rating statistic that we’ve used for years to judge quarterbacks on efficiency and success. ESPN couldn’t stand pat with that, no sir. Not in an age of advanced metrics. So naturally, to upstage everyone else, ESPN put together the brilliant minds of guys like Trent Dilfer and Herm Edwards along with some statistics interns to develop a formula with arbitrary values assigned to nearly immeasurable statistics to try and create an all-encompassing statistic to rate quarterbacks. We’re talking values for stuff like “being clutch” and “importance of drives”. Who are they to decide that? And more importantly, how can you weight those against measurable stats like interceptions. For example, according to QBR, interceptions that don’t lead to points don’t carry much weight because it didn’t directly lead to the other team scoring. But so much else goes on in a game that isn’t accounted for because of turnovers, regardless of if points come from them, that weighting these situations is asinine and pointless. But I digress.
Tom Brady threw for 511 yards and four touchdowns last night and, if you watched the game, you know that he absolutely LIT up that Dolphins secondary. Hell, I think the yardage and touchdowns speak for themselves. Anyways, in terms of QBR, Brady came out third after week one. Third behind Aaron Rodgers and…Ryan Fitzpatrick. I love it. ESPN’s golden boy puts on a record performance on Monday Night Football, and the network can’t even jock his night because, according to a statistic that they made up, he was the third best quarterback in week one.
ESPN is going to keep shoving this stupid QBR statistic down our throat throughout the season. They’ll tell you it’s the best way to measure a quarterback and all of that garbage when, in reality, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And at least some of us can have the satisfaction of knowing that, in an age where ESPN has basically thrown their allegiances on the table to guys such as Tom Brady, it’s their own creations that are holding them back from giving him the ball washing we all know they desire.
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The QBR is by far the stupidest rating system and is pretty much just ESPN putting their cockiness on display because they really have been a sporting news monopoly for far too long. I take the QB Rating system more serious, and I don't get why it's scaled that way either.
I, like most fans, have my own rating system and it's just the stat line; And I rank it by the stat I'm most interested in at that moment.