Tony Romo: The Whipping Boy in Dallas

Of the 38 QBs who played enough to be included in the 2012 TAVA rankings, Romo’s place (7^th) certainly generated some of the most discussion. Romo? The choke-artist? Higher ranked than Brees?!

Well, first, this is for 2012 only, not an entire career. And second, Romo is often criminally underrated. He has been the whipping boy for Cowboys fans and haters alike, the reason excuse for why the team loses in the playoffs or misses them altogether. And  if the Cowboys don’t improve their rushing attack and/or their defense, that’s set continue in 2013. There will be more disappointment, and more blame (unfairly) placed at Romo’s feet.

Let’s take a look at the Cowboys 2012 Season. They were 8-8 and tied for the 15^th best record in football, pretty much right in the middle. But how did they get there? Here’s some stats from their 2012 campaign

The defense was

·         24^th in points against

·         25^th in yards per play

·         27^th in the % of downs series that led to a first down or TD

EVEN THOUGH

·         The team was 11^th in the starting field position of the opponent’s offense (for anyone who thought the problem was Romo turning it over in his own end).

Now some statistics about the offense.

The offense was

·         31^st in rushing yards per game

·         31^st in yards per carry

·         19^th in starting field position

·         29^th in total number of drives

Romo had to come up with more points than the average QB, he had less drives to do this in, he had below average field position, and he had the second worst rushing attack in the league. It’s not surprising then that Romo had more attempts than any QB not named Drew Brees or Matthew Stafford. Yes, he had 19 interceptions, but so did Brees and Stafford had 17 himself. Every.single.thing (except the passing attack) about the 2012 Cowboys was decidedly below average or worse. Romo didn’t drag them down to average. Romo, and his top ten rankings in Attempts, Yards, Completion %, Yards Per Attempt, TDs, and QB rating dragged them UP to average (kicking and screaming).

And yes, with a chance at the playoffs on the line in Week 17, Romo had one of his worst games of the season and the Cowboys had to talk about next year. But all wins and losses count the same, and it’s too easy to forget that if it wasn't for Romo’s ability to lead them to 5-2 in a difficult seven games directly before that, there would have be no chance to squander in the first place. In those seven games, the Cowboys opponents averaged 28 points/gm and the Cowboys rushed for 61 yards/game. It was Romo, averaging 40 attempts per game and 347 yards  (over 8 yards an attempt), all while completing 69.7 % of his passes and throwing for 14 TDs and 3 INTS, that brought that them to 8-7 after a 3-5 start. 

The Cowboys are still unlikely to be serious Superbowl contenders in 2013. And when either a poor defense, a poor rushing attack, or both dooms the Cowboys once again, the season will come to an end, and  too many people will once again blame Tony Romo. 


CHECK BACK IN TOMORROW for an article about why, with all the buzz about the 'niners, the Seahawks, and the Broncos, we shouldn't forget about the Falcons. 

Don’t Count Out the Cardinals?

Ok, just kidding. You can count out the Cardinals… well, maybe, and mostly because they play in a VERY difficult division, having to play the Seahawks and 49ers twice. But teams might want to hold off on penciling in their Ws for those weeks they see ARZ on the schedule.

The Cardinals have a new coach with Bruce Arians and a new QB with Carson Palmer. Is that enough that we should take them seriously? I mean, it IS Carson Palmer so how good can they be? But consider the following:

Last year, the Cardinals had the second worst overall QB performance as measured by TAVA with a season average TAVA of -1.81 (2^nd only to the Chiefs), but even that’s misleading. Because in the first six games, when it was mostly Kevin Kolb playing QB, the Cardinals QB play was only slightly below average (-0.19). They were 4-2, having beat both the Seahawks and the Patriots. It was in the next ten games (where they went 1-9) where the Skelton/Hoyer/Lindley QB-by-committee dumpster-fire put together a league worst -2.8 TAVA score. The stretch included gems like these combined stat lines:

11/27 70 yards (lost by 4)

10/31 72 yards (lost by 1)

31/52 312 yards 4 INTS, two INTS returned for TDs (lost by 14) 

Even the lone win against the Lions didn’t exactly include “adequate” QB play. Yes, the Cardinals put up 38 points, but that included 2 defensive TDs, a 2 play TD drive that started at the Lions 3 yard line, and a 2 play drive that started at the Lions 29, and a one play drive that started at the Lions 5 yard line. Total number of passes on those 3 TD drives… wait for it… ZERO. Average yards per pass for Arizona in that game: 4.95.  

Well, even if they fix the passing game, how about that defense? Well, the 2012 Cardinals defense ranked:

·         6^th in Interceptions per drive

·         12^th in yards per game and yards per play

·         4^th in points allowed per drive

This isn’t a bad unit. 

The questions remains, however, is Palmer a big enough upgrade to help the Cardinals win tough football games? Palmer himself had a -.477 TAVA score (30^th out of 38 ranked QBs) so he wasn’t exactly lighting it up. But the Cardinals don’t need great; they need average (or maybe even just below average). And Palmer also gets major improvements in two things TAVA cannot take into account: coaching staff and quality of WRs, which brings me to Larry Fitzgerald.

I took a look at stretches of Fitzgerald’s 2012 season with different QBs and extrapolated what his season totals would be if he played a full season with those conditions. This is what I found:

QB		REC	YARDS	TDs		QB TAVA
Kolb/Skelton	First 6 Games	96	1147	8		-0.18
Skelton Only	Next 3 Games	80	827	5		-1.54
Skelt/Lind/Hoy	Last 7 Games	45	487	0		-3.29

If Palmer can stay healthy and play at least below average (just not league worst kind of levels), don’t count on Fitzgerald to have another disappointing season. As for the Cardinals as whole, don’t count them out either… well, maybe, sort of, not yet I guess.

Come back tomorrow for QB Support’s 2013 NFL Countdown 2/5: Romo, The Whipping Boy

New and Improved TAVA Methodology

TAVA or Total Adjusted Value Added is a metric designed to show which QBs are truly playing a valuable role in helping their team win ball games, which QBs might be winning but in more of a game manager role, and which QBs are holding their team back. 

TAVA = "(weighted) WINS ADDED" + "(weighted) POINTS ADDED"

WHAT IS "WINS ADDED"
WINS ADDED or WA is a calculation that measures how much a QB is adding to help his team win. By looking at an entire season's worth of data, one can see a clear correlation between QB Support and a team's chance of victory. And this makes sense: a team that rushes for 250 yards, allows three points, and scores two defensive TDs should have a pretty good chance to win, regardless of QB performance.

To get to WA, I perform a logistic regression to estimate, at any given amount of QB support, what is the expected chance of victory. Then, I take that percentage chance of winning (Pw) and put it into one of the following equations.

If the QB Wins, I use this equation:

   (1-Pw)    

  ((Pw)+.5)

If the QB loses, I use an inverse equation that looks like this:

      (-Pw)      

  ((1-Pw) +.5)

What this ends up doing is giving each QB a WA score for each game where they were the only primary QB. Here are a few examples of what the score would be if a QB won or lost a game with a certain QB Support

QB SUPP	% Chance of Win in 2012	Result	WA
1.00	11%	WIN	1.46
2.00	25%	WIN	1.00
3.16	50%	WIN	0.50
4.00	69%	WIN	0.26
5.00	86%	WIN	0.10

QB SUPP	% Chance of Win in 2012	Result	WA
1.00	11%	LOSS	-0.08
2.00	25%	LOSS	-0.20
3.16	50%	LOSS	-0.50
4.00	69%	LOSS	-0.85
5.00	86%	LOSS	-1.34

WHAT'S WRONG WITH WINS ADDED
The problem with WA is that it unfairly punishes QBs who may have played well, but just barely lost a game as well as QBs who played excellent and helped make an otherwise close game a complete blowout win. It overly rewards QBs who win close games (like Andrew Luck and Matt Schaub in 2012), even if, sometimes, it was only close because they played average or below average. This is why TAVA also has POINTS ADDED.

WHAT IS "POINTS ADDED"
POINTS ADDED (PA) is a much simpler calculation. I take the data from a single season, and I plot out the QB Support numbers against the margin of victory or defeat. This gives me data points at like 0.5, -7 (a QB who lost by seven points with a QB Support level of 0.5) or 2.5, 10, etc. etc. I use a linear regression to create an equation that tells me, given the QB Support level, what is the expected points a QB's team should expect to win or lose by.

For example, a QB might win with a QB Support level of 5.5. That's fine, but the equation for PA says that his team should have expected to win by about 13 and a half points, and so if they only squeaked out a win with a last second field goal, well, then his PA score would -10.5 points in that game. Likewise, a QB who lit it up and led his team to a 24 point victory would have a PA score of 11.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH POINTS ADDED
Well, it's the opposite problem as WA. Whereas WA puts too much emphasis on just whether or not the game was won, PA puts too little. A QB who throws a garbage time TD to lose by 10 instead of 17 (or win by 17 instead of 10) improves his PA score just as much as the QB who throws a game winning TD to go up by 4 points with 3 seconds left.

TAVA: A GOLDILOCKS METRIC
TAVA takes the positives and negatives from WA and PA and balances them by combining them. Again, it takes the 512 QB performances over the season, gets an average and a standard deviation for both WA and PA. Then, each QB can receive both a PA and WA weighted score based on how many standard deviations their scores are above or below the average. Combine those weighted scores and VOILA! You have their TAVA scores.