How Many Games Will Ben Survive?

If it is the one I am thinking of then it should have drawn a late hit penalty. Ben had clearly already started his slide before the defender initiated the hit. That is called 110% of the time with Brady (the extra 10% is for plays where he isn't actually hit late but they call it anyway).

 

Depends. Are you talking about 5 yards COMPLETED per attempt? If not, then it doesn't really matter how many yards per attempt there were. Incomplete is incomplete, no matter how many yards the attempt was.

 

Yards per attempt includes incomplete passes.

 

If you want to complain, complain about completion percentage. If he has 5 yards per attempt with 100% completion, that would be pretty good.

 

*sigh* The point is that YPA factors in completion percentage. If a pass is incomplete that is 0 yards for that attempt. It is technically possible for someone to have 6 YPA because every pass is completed for 6 yards, and that would obviously be great because you'd never punt barring penalties. But in the real world that never happens. Someone averages 6 YPA in the real world because they can't move the ball downfield. They are missing on passes like everyone else. They just aren't hitting the big ones that actually result in points in today's NFL. Again, YPA is a basic stat that actually has predictive power. Averaging around 6 YPA is a great way to lose games. Go ahead and find me good QBs in today's NL who average such a miniscule number. There aren't any because you can't win consistently like that.

 

*sigh* another statistician. Or maybe you just like to throw out TLAs. Brady averaged 7.6 last year. Worked out pretty well. Or is 7 yards your cutoff point? 7.1, 7.2....?

 

7.6 would be a VAST improvement over the 6.3 YPA average Ben had last year and the 5.9 YPA he has so far this year. I'd be fine with that number. Right now I'd jump at 7 YPA. You can scoff at the stat as much as you like but it definitely has a big impact on whether the team wins or loses. You simply do not win consistently averaging 6 YPA. Go ahead and find me a good team that averaged that per pass (without delving into deep history). The current NFL is set up for teams to pass for chunk yardage. The inability to do so is a major problem with this team right now. If they want to win a playoff game it has to improve. No amount of burying your head in the sand is going to change that.

 

You can say “What’s the big deal about a half a yd per attempt?”

Ben threw over 600 times last yr. an extra Half yd per att amounts to 300 extra yds of offense over the course of a season. Almost one full games worth of offensive yardage.

 

I don't get it either. It's not like I hate Ben or want him to fail. I am simply worried about what I saw in the first game because it looked a lot like what we saw last year and that was clearly not good enough.