Dowdle is a High Variance Rusher

(great movie btw...but then again I'm a fan of Tarentino's work)

 

Total yards is mostly a proxy for carries (like we saw with Najee).

YPC is useful. But what it tells us is how often a player got big runs (which is why Najee's YPC was typically on the low end of acceptable).

As demonstrated above (and you also commented earlier) YPC can also be skewed by usage. This is why the extra information from succ% (consistency) is useful.

 

Ditto Tarantino but even went to a theatre to see Hateful Eight and unfortunately towards the end he sprinkled in some stupidity and I walked out thinking that was a let down

 

Man...I remember when we used to go to the theater to watch movies at least 6-8 times a summer. The very first time I remember going to a movie was when my parents took us to a double feature in a drive in (Back to the Future, and I think a movie called Cloak and Dagger?). I'm sure that's not the first movie I went to, but it's the first one I remember.

But that was when it was $2 (Canadian) on Tuesday nights (when we were teenages...I'm sure even cheaper in the mid-80s). I remember how exciting it was when our parents would call up the theater and tell us what movies were playing so we could pick what we wanted to watch.

When we were kids, the old theaters really were theaters. And if you got there early, you could go sit up in the box seats on the side (like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets...had to look up the names)

Now I don't think I've been to 5 movies in a theater in a decade.

• This year I went with my oldest (16) to see the re-release of Return of the King. This was a really fun "bonding" experience with because she asked me if I wanted to go watch it with her.
• Before that, my in-laws took our kids and us to see Sing 2 (2021)
• At work, my boss took us all (we're an engineering department) to see Hidden Figures in 2016
• I saw The Force Awakens with my family over Christmas in 2015
• When my wife and kids were away visiting family, I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy 2014

I'm sure not all new movies suck. I just don't want to spend whatever it costs now to spend a ****-ton of money to sit around with a bunch of idiots on their phones. Especially since home theater stuff is so good now and the movies will be streaming soon anyway. Although I still don't end up watching them. Even ones where I think they sound cool. Just too much other stuff to do now. Aside: I think this is how a lot of young people feel about sports like the NFL. There's a reckoning coming for pro-sports after GenX I think.

Anyway...all of you can get the f--- off my lawn. I'm trying to shake my fist at the clouds over here...

 

I used to travel a lot and it was a choice between going to an evening movie or sitting in a bar or a hotel room. I saw a lot of movies.

I’m retired now so i am very selective. Plus there is free popcorn for old farts on Monday. But there are some movies that are infinitely better on one of the top of the line big screens with fancy seating and top sound. I only go to the theatre for what I think is one of those. Two perfect examples that will not be remotely the same on the best home theater are:

Top Gun Maverick

Oppenheimer

 

Both of these movies are on my list of "want to see movies" that I just never got around to.

And I'm not even really picky with movies. Really anything with a half-decent story, characters that I like, and/or a bunch of **** that blows up and I'll be happy with it.

If my brother lived closer to me, I probably would have gone with him to see the new Naked Gun movie. Maybe when Spaceballs II comes out we can make it happen.

 

Top Hun was what you expect

Rent Oppenheimer and you will know when to play it loud it’s a good movie especially if you are happy you were born

 

Willis Carrier in 1906 invented the air conditioner but it wasn't for homes it was for the publishing company he worked for. The company's paper would warp and the colors would bleed because of the high heat and humidity. Carrier's invention was the first to control room temperature. It was used only in companies until around 1920. Back then movie theaters were closed for the summer because it was just too hot to sit and watch a movie. A theater in NY City purchased one of Carrier's air conditioners and was the only one open for movie goers. Soon the other theaters had no choice but to also get air conditioning to compete for the movie goers dollar. Then came the great depression followed by WW2, so it wasn't until the 1950's that homes started to have it.

 

Total yards reflects actual production, not subjective numbers that are more heavily influenced by the situations a team puts a back into.

Sure, it reflects carries, but 1,000 yards on 5.0 per carry is a hell of a lot better than 500 yards on 5.0 per carry.

 

Both of these statements are true. First plot is obvious. Second plot shows the average of the top 10% of yards gained by rushers vs their yds/attempt average.

Relying on one or two stats to evaluate a rusher is like trying to paint the Mona Lisa with only two colors. Just won't quite the same.

 

All of these metrics reflect actual production. They are useful when you look at them together. You never have to just pick one. And you shouldn't because (1) it's very easy to find all the numbers (you didn't realize that succ% was on PFR the first time we talked about this last season*) and (2) looking at only one number means you lose information, which means you're more likely to make poor decisions. You still lose information when you look at all the numbers...the distributions (like those shown upthread) are the best IMO, but succ% is relevant there too because we don't know down and distance when we look at the distribution.

All of these stats require context because they are single numbers that represent a large set of data. If you only look at one number you are flattening out a ton of nuance.

For example, getting 1200 yards in a season is good (Najee in 2021). But it's certainly less impressive if you needed 307 carries to do it. This is why YPC gives important context to total yards.

So that 1200 yard performance is much worse that someone who got 1259 yards on 228 carries (Chubb in 2021). Or 1159 yards on 249 carries (Cook in 2021). Or when someone else has 332 carries and 1811 yards (Taylor).

Then someone will say "his YPC is low becuase he gets so many short yardage carries". Which is why succ% is a good metric to add more context to YPC.

* I think the argument that succ% was difficult to find and calculated differently by everyone was a good argument five years ago. At that time, I think you're right that definitions were more arbitrary (which is the word I think you really mean when you say "subjective").



But you know what happened? The "wisdom of the crowds" guided the definition. Because lots of people were doing it in different ways, the community got to see which definitions worked best in reality.

So while there is some "subjectivity" to the definitions of success on each down, these definitions are not "arbitrary" (again, what I think you're actually arguing) because they have been empirically tested.

The convergence of these definitions and the fact that they show useful information is why reputable stats cites like PFR started including them. And even back-calculating them for every player they can (back to 1978, because as I told you before the analysis here is objective and not subjective).

All you need is the down and distance and the result of the play.

This is different than metrics like "on target percentage" which actually are subjective because it requires someone to watch the play and make a subjective judgement on how accurate the pass was.

Another example of a subjective metric here is "broken tackles". Because someone has to watch the play and determine if the tackle was broken. Somehow Washington had zero broken tackles in a game where this happened:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1e3UtaT1OSM

We saw with TJ not breaking the sack record that "sacks" are also a subjective stat. Sure you tackled the QB behind the line, but that was an "aborted play". This is also why it's hard to go back and get data from old games.

 

Thanks Bubba!

These are nice plots. I like that the min carry size is large enough to catch pretty much anyone that contributes in a time share (basically Warren's role in his rookie year). I tried to manually count the dots and got 57. So basically the top 2 RBs on each team. I think that's about the right number of guys to fit in a sample like this.

My guess is that Scribe will continue to argue against the fact that YPC is a metric for how many long runs you have (and how big those runs are). Looking at their longest runs (i.e. top 10% of carries) is a good way to show this IMO. And the correlation is really tight here. Maybe tighter than I thought it would be.

Even though (1) anecdotally his argument was crushed in the Lions game last year and (2) your plot shows that it's not just that anecdote.

 

I also use receiving statistics.

What I don't do is use subjective statistics that evaluate things beyond what the running back actually does, which is why I don't put much stock in success rate.

 

You lost the argument when you used a meme questioning my understanding of subjectivity, then admitted there is still a subjective element to the dubious statistical measure you are pushing. Glad we agree that it is a subjective statistic. Thank you for that.

Your last line is comparing apples to cumquats. One is a statistical measure. The other is a league rule.

 

Let me ask a question; if a RB gains zero yards on a carry, would you say that run was good or not?

 

Nice dodge! I almost put the Neo dodging bullets meme in here, but I'm trying not to be a dick (at least too much).

Let's try something different (which is what I was trying to get at with the previous post).

Why do you think the "subjectivity" of selecting what counts as "staying on schedule" is bad?

Since I think you're an English teacher (?), I'll tell you a story about one of my old English teachers who I really liked (especially in hindsight). He used to write B.S! (be specific!) in big bright red letters when we tried to hand wave our way through an argument in an essay.

This is what I think of when you say you don't like it because "it's subjective" (especially since you seem to be using that word to mean more than it actually means). I think I'd really appreciate understanding why you think that makes it bad. Again, 5 years ago I had what I think is pretty close to the same opinion you have on succ%. But a lot has changed since the definition is now pretty standard (after vetting many options) and it's been publicly adopted and available at places like PFR (to maybe around when we were born!)

IIRC, your first response to me re: succ% was something like I don't trust subjective stats like that and (maybe because?) you can't find them on PFR. I think this made sense 5 years ago. Because this was a stat that was usually either locked behind a paywall, or mentioned on a blog or in a Tweet for a single player (usually in a single game), so we couldn't compare it to any baseline which made it mostly useless.

Then when I told you that I pulled them from PFR and they retroactively calculated it back to '78, you said something like well...I still don't like them. And I still don't get why you think it's a bad metric (besides your hand wavy "they are subjective" comment without any reasoning for why that's bad). For example, it's subjective to look at total distance run in a season in yards instead of feet or meters, but this subjective choice doesn't matter because it wouldn't change your conclusion (so it doesn't matter).

Also re: total yards. I think before you used the subjective measure of 1k yards per season to justify why you thought Warren didn't do as well as Najee did last year. Why did you pick this subjective benchmark?

So, what specifically do you think is bad about succ%.

I'm not going to ask you for a 5 why analysis or something. But what is your specific objection to using what teams generally use as "subjectives" baselines for what they are trying to do on average to "keep up with the chains"?

Let's look at a couple examples:

1. When you see a RB get 2 yards on 1st and 10, do you think one of these things?
   1. Doesn't really matter, they have 2 (maybe 3) more plays to get the other 8 yards
   2. What a great play!
   3. This play wasn't good.
   4. This play doesn't matter because it will have very little impact on this RBs YPC this year. YPC is mainly affected by the frequency of big runs because those big runs are a lot more than the mode. But short runs like this are pretty close to the mode. So even though this individual play kind of sucks, it won't bring down the RBs YPC very much. So it doesn't matter.

1. When a guy gets stuffed on 4th and 1 at the end of a game when they're down by 6, do you say: His total yards are going to be awesome this year!

1. Why would a coach ever put any RB in this situation? Don't they know that this play is very unlikely to impact the RBs total yardage this season? He's almost certain to get between -1 to 2 yards. Can't we just skip to a play that is going to make a difference for total yardage?
2. What a great play!
3. This play was terrible and probably cost them the game.
4. This play doesn't matter because it will have very little impact on this RBs YPC this year. YPC is mainly affected by the frequency of big runs because those big runs are a lot more than the mode. But short runs like this are pretty close to the mode. So even though this individual play kind of sucks, it won't bring down the RBs YPC very much. So it doesn't matter.

​

I think I said this before (or at least I thought it)...I think any run on 2nd and long (e.g. 8+) shouldn't count in succ%. This is the OC giving up on this set of downs...or maybe trying to run out the clock at the end of the game. Outside of that, it's a stupid play call and 100% on the play caller and not the players IMO.

Also, from your post above (related here).

The bold part of this argument doesn't make sense to me either.

If you aren't judging players based on what they're asked to do in the offense, what are you judging them based on?

Again, did Mike Alstott suck in the years I posted above (low total yards, low YPC, high succ% in 2/3 years)?

 

Why don't you get to your point rather than asking me to play a silly rhetorical game?

 

No, that wasn't a dodge. When you start your post with nonsense like that, I have no interest in reading the rest. Seriously, I stopped right there. You are so busy trying to sell this notion that something subjective isn't subjective because a bunch of guys who like playing with numbers decided they like it that you contradicted yourself. Because I'm good at what I do, I caught it. You and I usually play nicer than this. Please don't say I dodged something when I did no such thing. What I did was catch the flaw in your argument. You seem to be pretty good with statistics, but rhetoric is my territory. You are usually better at that, too, because you understand how to treat your audience better than most on here.

Care to try again, without the bs?

 

You are not allowed to like one guy over the other, or something is wrong with you. LoL

 

I think it was better the 2nd time. Did You notice all the different stuff that was borrowed (not exactly the word I mean)from John Carpenters the Thing??

 

I love westerns I’ll give it a try again

 

I’m more the 1951 version of The Thing

 

Booooooo. LoL . They both come from the story Who Goes There, but I believe John Carpenters the Thing maybe one of my all time favorite movies.....ever!!!! If You watch Hateful 8, and JC the Thing you will notice many things similar, including the soundtrack/score.