Testing a new Quarterback Efficiency Statistic

 

I've been thinking of a new way to consider quarterback efficiency that encompasses more than the Passer Rating and is less convoluted than the QBR, which laypersons with limited time and video access cannot compile themselves.

My Quarterback Efficiency Rating (QER) includes all plays involving the quarterback, and adds the percentage of good plays (first downs and touchdowns) and subtracts the bad plays (interceptions, fumbles, sacks). First downs, touchdowns, and fumbles include not just passing plays, but runs as well.

I use first-down percentage instead of yards per play (or yards per pass) and completion percentage to measure efficiency because first-downs are a better indicator that the quarterback made the right play.

Stathead has data for all plays, including first-downs, dating back to 1994. I looked at 12 quarterbacks whose careers began since then who are also in the top 20 in career passing yards. I wanted to look at quarterbacks who put in a lot of miles and experienced different degrees of quality in offensive lines, receivers, coaching, and management. How closely would my Quarterback Efficiency Rating (QER) compare with the passer rating? How does it serve as a predictor of team success? Does the QER make sense?

The following chart lists these players in order of their career passer rating. At the you see their winning percentage rank and QER rank.

This would be an appropriate time to note that Aaron Rodgers, the all-time leader in passer rating, is the most-sacked quarterback of all time. Tom Brady has six fewer sacks but played 93 more games than Rodgers. Drew Brees and Peyton Manning also played more games than Rodgers, and respectively have 151 and 268 fewer sacks.

Sacks are the reason why Rodgers is only fourth in QER and significantly behind the top three of Peyton, Brees, and Brady. Carson Palmer (9th) is closer to Rodgers in QER than Rodgers is to Brady.

Russell Wilson, second in passer rating, has an even greater sack problem. He's been sacked 560 times, just 11 fewer than Rodgers, in 41 fewer games. As a result, he has the second-worst "bad play" percentage behind Philip Rivers, and falls all the way to tenth among the twelve listed in QER.

Sacks are often blamed on poor offensive line play and receivers not getting open. But how often does a quarterback have no chance of avoiding a sack? Ironically, Rodgers and Wilson, among these quarterbacks, are best-known for their relative athleticism and scrambling ability; one would think they would be the best at avoiding the pass rush.

Sacks are drive killers. I couldn't quickly locate the primary source with the data, but Ted Nguyen writes:

"[S]acks (including ones that don’t end in turnovers) are often drive killers. Derrik Klassen of Football Outsiders charted the 2016 season and found that only 179/1118 (16.01 percent) drives in which there was a sack eventually got another set of downs. 83.99 percent of drives were essentially killed by sacks."

2016 is a long time ago, but it's unlikely there's been a meaningful change in the data since. Teams still can't easily overcome sacks. Jason Lisk noted quarterbacks are pretty consistent with their completion percentage regardless of the talent around them, but sack rate is nearly as consistent.

Rodgers and Wilson just aren't very good at avoiding sacks. Yet sacks are ignored in the P[asser Rating statistic, which helped Rodgers win four MVPs and Wilson rack up ten Pro Bowls.

That said, Passer Rating is still a stronger predictor of team success than QER. The top five in passer rating among these twelve are in the top six in winning %, and the bottom four in passer rating are in the bottom five in winning %. There is a much weaker correlation when comparing QER rank to winning % rank.

That said, the QER generally looks right. The top four look right. The bottom two look right. Each of the six quarterbacks ranked 5-10 had, at times, been regarded as one of the five best quarterbacks in the league.

While Wilson's score and rank at tenth is the biggest surprise, perhaps that's only because we've underrated the importance of sacks and the quarterback's responsibility for them. My instinct is that he was better than his rank over most of his career. But he, like Roethlisberger, played for a strong organization for most of his career and thus won games at a high rate. Some others on the list have not always been so fortunate.

Quarterbacks can't be held responsible for everything.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! Contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work at jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

Eugene McCarthy, War, and the Draft

 

Eugene McCarthy, 1964 (portrait: Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr)

Eugene McCarthy was born on this day (March 29) in 1916. A U.S. Senator from Minnesota, his claim to fame was his 1968 Democratic primary challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti-Vietnam War platform. 

McCarthy finished second to the President in the New Hampshire primary but amassed 42% of the vote. This strong result prompted Robert F. Kennedy, a more famous figure, to enter the race on an antiwar platform. Johnson saw the writing on the wall and withdrew from seeking renomination.

The race between McCarthy and Kennedy was close. Vice President Hubert Humphrey did not actively campaign because the rules at the time told him he didn't need to. Kennedy was assassinated on June 6 of that year. McCarthy entered the Democratic National Convention with a plurality, but not majority, of primary votes and committed delegates. George McGovern, who had not run in the primaries, also announced his candidacy. 

Kennedy's delegates largely chose Humphrey, who won the nomination. Humphrey, however, couldn't distance himself from unpopular Johnson Administration policies and lost the election to Richard M. Nixon. After 1968, both major parties passed reforms that allowed the primaries to have a more binding role in the party nominations.

Under the new rules, the antiwar faction of the Democratic Party prevailed when McGovern won the nomination in 1972. The Democratic leadership, however, refused to support him, and the Democrats have run candidates ever since who've been hawks to some degree. 

The fact that McCarthy and McGovern succeeded even to the degree they did had less to do with the Vietnam War itself, but with the draft. Young men were forced to fight and die in a country for reasons that weren't so clear as, say, World War II or even Korea. Nixon understood this, and promised to end the draft in his 1968 campaign. According to Andrew Glass, 

Nixon thought ending the draft could be an effective political weapon against the burgeoning anti-war movement. He believed middle-class youths would lose interest in protesting the war once it became clear that they would not have to fight, and possibly die, in Vietnam.

Nixon didn't keep his promise in his first term, but the draft, which had been active for most years since World War II, ended at the beginning of his second term. The draft has yet to be reinstated.

In this age of the all-volunteer military, nobody's sons and brothers (and now also daughters and sisters) are in danger of being wounded or killed in war unless they sign up. They assumed the risks voluntarily when they enlisted. 

One unfortunate consequence is that the issue of war becomes abstract. For most American voters, it's just one issue among many. Some people get far more passionate in opposing trans rights, and others are more passionate about how much the wealthy pay in taxes, than they are about America's bombing campaigns and funding of foreign wars.

War isn't a moral issue to them, it's just an instrument of foreign policy.

During Vietnam, the issue of war was more immediate because the prospect of one's son or brother getting drafted was even more critical than "bread and butter" issues like unemployment or inflation. 

That said, America is undeniably better off without the involuntary servitude of the draft. If not for Eugene McCarthy's insurgent bid against the incumbent President of his own party, which gave voice to the anti-war/anti-draft movement, we might still be living (and dying) with the draft.

McCarthy didn't end the Vietnam War, but he did help create a political environment that ended the draft. For that, we should be thankful.

As for ending the wars, that might be a question for each individual's heart to address. War is mass murder and mass destruction. It creates massive public health crises and massive poverty.

One would think that war would always be the number one issue. The economic and social distress of American life pales in comparison to that of war-torn countries. Is it even possible to be genuinely concerned about liberty and justice at home when we continually keep other nations in chaos and misery?

McCarthy helped end the draft. It may be time we all helped end the wars.

© James Leroy Wilson. You may republish with attribution and a link or URL to the original.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

When Sandra Day O'Connor opposed fascism

Official portrait of Sandra Day O'Connor 

Today (March 26, 2025) marks the 95th anniversary of Sandra Day O'Connor's birth. O'Connor, who died in 2023, is noted for becoming the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, where she served from 1981 to 2006. Shortly before her retirement, she provided dissents in the landmark cases Gonzales v. Raich and Kelo v. New London.

Raich was about a federal prosecution of someone who grew marijuana in her own home for personal medical use, which was legal in her state of California but against federal law. The question was whether the law was unconstitutional by exceeding Congress's power to regulate commerce "among the states." Remember, this was an activity that took place within a state and in which there was no buying or selling.

The Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Feds. In her dissent, however, O'Connor noted, "the Court’s definition of economic activity for purposes of Commerce Clause jurisprudence threatens to sweep all of productive human activity into federal regulatory reach."

Kelo was about whether a city could use eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another, so long as it promoted "economic development." The Court ruled 5-4 in favor of this. 

The Fifth Amendment, however, states that taking private property could only be for "public use. O'Connor again wrote the dissent. Here's the opening paragraph:

Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded—i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public—in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings “for public use” is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property—and thereby effectively to delete the words “for public use” from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. 

When Kelo and Raich were decided in June 2005, the United States became a different country than in 1998. That was before NATO, what I had previously thought was a defensive alliance, launched an illegal war of aggression against Yugoslavia. Then Bush v. Gore, then the open-ended War on Terror, then the Patriot Act, then the War on Iraq.

With the War on Terror as an excuse, the federal government gave itself new, unprecedented powers to make way for a fascist country. The Feds can monitor our communications, banking, and travel. Militarism is heavily promoted and the wars are endless. Fascism in the economic sense was made apparent in the bailouts of Big Business in the late 00s.

However, Raich and Kelo are also potential tools of fascism. Thanks to these decisions, just about anything can be criminalized at the federal level. Just about any piece of land can be taken from the little guy and handed over to the big guy.

But what do I mean by Fascism?

A recent post on the "I Acknowledge Psychedelic Class Warfare Exists" Facebook page, the (unknown) author says:

[Fascism is about] returning to greatness by purging the body politic of anything that isn't nationalism.

Because it's opportunistic, it isn't a coherent single idea but a constellation of historically and locally defined ideologies that are both distinct and interrelated.

Fascism isn't a belief. It's a political project people do.

Ex. Donald trump doesn't believe in fascism. But he does constantly do it.

[...]

Because it's syncretic, fascism takes in a lot of influences which are not themselves fascist. 

On a follow-up post, the writer says:

When I started studying the rising fascism in the west about a decade ago I heard, mostly from decolonial and third worldist thinkers that fascism was fundamentally settler colonialism practiced by and on settler nations.

I was skeptical.

But the most I've learned about the history of of European imperialism and colonies, the more right this view appears.

In the US for example, the freedom in the constitution was explicitly for white men who owned property (mostly, it was left to the states).

It took until 1856 for white men to get full suffrage.

It took more than another hundred years to reach universal suffrage for indigenous people, who were the last to be granted legal suffrage. Voter suppression and informal barriers to voting remain a major problem.

The lost greatness fascism seeks to restore is the empire, which in modern times almost inevitably means settler colonialism. 

This is the machine that unifies the disparate fascisms in their thorny complexity.

If I understand the meaning here, it is that rich whites took the land. For reasons that probably made practical sense for them, the heirs of the original landowners, the old-money "Establishment," liberalized the political system. Today, however, new generations of rich guys and religious allies who were always excluded from the inner circles of power have crashed into the system and taken it over. 

They want to "re-settle" the country. That is, they want to minimize and marginalize all who don't share their vision and values. Immigrants return to their native countries. Minorities back to ghettos or to prisons. Disenfranchise as many as possible.

Imagine a legal immigrant using medical marijuana in California or in any of the 38 states where it is now legal. It is still illegal on the federal level. Thanks to Raich and Trump's policies, she may be raided and deported. "Raich'ed" out of the country.

Don't expect drug law reform on the federal level. Instead, convict and disenfranchise as many as you can, using any law on the books, no matter how antiquated.  

Imagine using eminent domain to target minority homeowners, who must hand over their land to a federal contractor who promises to create jobs. Kelo'ed out of town.

Did the Supreme Court promote a fascist agenda in its Kelo and Raich decisions? Not consciously: most who ruled in favor considered themselves "liberal" or "progressive." Nevertheless, the sacrifice of human rights for the sake of government economic and social plans is not not fascist. Certainly closer to fascism than anti-fascism.

When legislators, Presidents, or judges diminish personal freedom for the sake of the "public good," they can't turn around and say they didn't mean the fascist definition of the public good. Every time a vote goes against personal freedom, the fascists win, even when the fascists aren't in power. They will inherit the same tools and precedents once they do get power.

Justice O'Connor was involved in plenty of bad Supreme Court decisions herself. But her finest hour was in her last year on the bench with the Kelo and Raich dissents. 

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.

Bracket Update and Controversial NBA MVPs

 

Photo: Public Domain

IN THIS ISSUE of the MVP CHASE:

• NCAA Bracket Update

• Convertoverial NBA MVPs

NCAA Bracket Update

Well, that experiment didn't provide promising results. Last week, I ranked all the NCAA Men's Tournament teams, based in part on how often they were decisively beaten. How's it turning out so far?

I accurately picked 20 of the 32 games in the round of 64, which is not good, and predicted just 8 of the Sweet 16. On the plus side, six of my Elite Eight are still alive, and three of the Final Four. St. John's, which I had in the championship game, has already been eliminated, but my champ, Duke, is alive.

If I had signed up for a small pool of, say, 10-12 with money going to a third-place finisher, I might still have hoped to win some money. As it is, however, I was in a free-to-enter contest with millions of participants, and my current rank is 2,576,102. 

In any case, my hypothesis was destroyed regardless of how well I finish. I predicted six "surprise" teams, seeded fifth or lower, to make the Sweet 16. Four teams seeded fifth or lower actually did make the Sweet 16, but I didn't pick any of them.

Maybe I'll try something else next year.

Controversial NBA MVPs

My current process of choosing MVPs is the number of games won in which the player had a combined Game Score and +/- of 30 or more.

I was curious how this would have affected my MVP vote in years where there were controversial winners. I selected seasons from Robert Felton's 2018 Bleacher Report piece on the subject, plus 1993 (Barkley over Jordan) and 2017 (Westbrook's triple-double year).

It turns out that for three of the seasons, the data is not available. It's noteworthy, however, that the winner in those years was on a team that won more games than the other favorite (number of team wins are in parentheses). The MVP of each year is the first one listed.

1975 

Bob McAdoo (49)

Rick Barry (48)

1990 

Magic Johnson (63)

Charles Barkley (53)

1993 

Charles Barkley (62)

Michael Jordan (57)

For the following seasons, the name at the top of each year is the MVP winner, followed by another name(s) that many people have claimed should have won it. The player who would have won my MVP Chase is in bold. Beside each name is the number of wins in which the player had a combined game score and +/- over 30. The number of team wins is in parentheses. 

1996-97

Karl Malone 42 (62)

Michael Jordan 48 (69)

1999 (48-game season)

Karl Malone 18 (37)

Tim Duncan 20 (37)

Alonzo Mourning 16 (33)

2002 

Tim Duncan 40 (60)

Jason Kidd 29 (49)

2005

Steve Nash 29 (58)

Shaquille O'Neal 22 (59)

2006

Steve Nash 30 (54)

Kobe Bryant 33 (45)

Dirk Nowitzki 36 (60) (Curious how Nowitzki wasn't mentioned in the Bleacher Report article; I was reminded of his great season in a Bill Simmons podcast).

2011 (66-game season)

Derrick Rose 28 (62)

Lebron James 35 (58)

Dwight Howard 26 (52)

2016-17 (Not in the Bleacher Report piece; all players receiving votes are included in order. This year was controversial because some believe Westbrook was handed the award only because he averaged a triple-double for the season.)

Russell Westbrook 40 (47)

James Harden 34 (55)

Kawhi Leonard 31 (61)

LeBron James 39 (51)

Isaiah Thomas 25 (53)

Stephen Curry 42 (67)

Giannis Antetokounmpo 26 (42)

John Wall 26 (49)

Anthony Davis 24 (34)

Kevin Durant 35 (67)

DeMar DeRozan 20 (51)

In the seven years with data, the MVP Chase would have agreed with just two of the MVPs. There were, however, only two obviously wrong choices, in 1997 and 2006. In 1999 and 2011, the "best player on the best (regular-season) team" won. 

In 2017, Westbrook did indeed deserve the award among the top-5 vote getters. Curry was "punished" for having won the MVP the two previous years, blowing the championship series the season before (raising questions of whether he was overrated), and adding Durant, one of the three best players in the world, to his team.

Based on my last piece and the data here, I think I'm on the right track in determining the NBA MVP.

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscription and support! James is available for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.