Some stats about prospects

Prospect

1.	Usually, prospects. a. an apparent probability of advancement, success, profit, etc. b. the outlook for the future: good business prospects.

2.	anticipation; expectation; a looking forward.

3.	something in view as a source of profit.

Real Charts about Real Data

Discuss. Here are my thoughts:

1) No surprise that Attempts per INT has decreased over the years. The advent of West Coast offense and new rule changes have improved the passing game a lot. That’s what the intention of the rule change was, so good job rule change.

ii) Attempts per Game has definitely increased substantially since 1970, but not a whole lot since 1994. That’s gotta be West Coast Offense proliferation. By 1994, Bill Walsh was no longer a coach, but several of his disciples had spread the word. The teams that wanted to implement the WCO had started (except Andy Reid who would come a few years later), and the teams that were doing whatever they were doing were still going to do that thing. Since then, there hasn’t been a sweeping change to offensive schemes, hence the relative stability in the numbers.

three) I was a little surprised by the Attempts per INT increase. It’s really staggering. As in, the composite 2009 QB has much better A/I numbers than a composite Hall of Famer. But I’ll post the HOF numbers separately because the HOF is really hard to figure out.

now click for some charts

Real Charts about Real Data

I have now archived QB Stats from 1970 – 2009. I got them from Pro Football Reference, which is an incredible site. Now that I have all of this stuff archived, I can start analyzing it. Sometimes, it doesn’t amount to much. But hopefully I can write up a big article about what I discover. Click the jump for a figure, without absolutely no context or anything.

Something big

My brother sent me this on Monday:

Attached is the top 25 QBs in order of career attempts, along with their attempts per INT. 25th place has 4519 pass attempts. Donovan has by far the highest ratio. As a comparison, the best in the history of the game is Aaron Rodgers who only has 976 attempts, but completes 51.3 passes between interceptions, and the worst is HOFer Arnie Herber, who threw at an amazing rate of 11 attempts per INT.

One thing became another, and pretty soon I was creating spreadsheets, charts, paragraphs, etc. It turned into a full blown investigation of Attempts per INT, past and present. And in the middle of all that, I realized that I couldn’t just talk about Attempts per INT. I had to go even bigger than that. There were so many other things that have changed so significantly, and I feel like they were all worth mentioning. After stopping at 130AM, I laid in bed contemplating what the thesis of this whole thing will be, and I think I finally arrived on something.

Something big. But it’ll be a while.

And Florida says …

If you were the head coach of the University of Florida, and one of your starting defensive players got hit with a DUI the week before the biggest game of the season, you would do:

a) Suspend him for the next game
b) Suspend him for the next game and any bowl game
c) Wait until he is convicted of anything until punishment is handed out
d) Nothing

Tennessee set a precedent by immediately suspending all 3 players involved in an armed robbery recently. They recently reinstated one of the players after he was cleared, but the other two remain suspended despite not being convicted of anything yet. So what should Florida do with Carlos Dunlap?

The sitar-based ballad of Ricky Williams

No one has virtually fumbled more than Ricky Williams. I have no stats to back that up, but while I played as Ricky Williams in Madden ’00, ’01, and ’02, he was guaranteed to put the ball on the turf once a game. I’ve never fully recovered from the damage he did to my Madden career, but somehow, he’s recovered from the damage he’s done to his own.

B and the Reverse Polish Binomial Method

For some, the big game on Sunday night was the Colts and the Pats, but for my brother, it was the highly anticipated, ultra-blockbuster that was the East Carolina University Pirates and the Tulsa Hurricanes. So why was this the important game for him? (besides the obvious collegiate powerhouse matchup).

Greenbacks.

Announcing bugs the shit out of me

Announcing has really extra pissed me off in the last year or so. I’m taking a stand today. I know the guys at awfulannouncing and firejoemorgan have already attacked broadcasting. But I feel like I need to document my own struggles. I’ll try to update this post throughout a day of football watching with anything else I find offensive.

Dear Bud Light, It’s Phil-a-delphia

Bud Light ran a regional commercial during the Eagles-Cowboys game last night. I’m assuming the same commercial ran in Dallas, only the footage was Dallas-related instead of Philadelphia related.

Also, I assume that Dallas was spelled right.

Nothing gets the home team fired up like misspelling their hometown

Any other blogs post this? I think I should e-mail Bud Light. Only saw the commercial once, but it definitely happened.

Sorry Mets fans

It’s been a few days now since the Phillies loss in the World Series. From what I’ve seen, Philly fans are taking it pretty well. I think we still feel pretty good about 2008, and that we’re a little disappointed about 2009, but definitely not devastated. As KDawg mentioned to me, it’s not like we blew a bunch of games in the World Series or anything. The Yankees mostly just beat us, and the things we struggled with during the regular season bit us in the ass in the last series of the year. The fact that we were playing in the last series of the year, that’s pretty great.