Should wins be attributed to QB's only? | Page 3 | FinHeaven - Miami Dolphins Forums

Should wins be attributed to QB's only?

Originally posted by uncle_joe
A backup QB could come in on the finaol play of the game and win the game for his team, earning himself the victory, as a repky to your 'laughable' statement.
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Actually, it seems that the QB who starts the game is the one who gets credited with W/L according to whoever determines this crap. This is why Brian is said to have gone 3-2 this year even though Jay came in and made the difference in the Redskins game.

As to your other points: Saying that guys like Marino and Favre get credit for wins is like saying that we should count wins for Pedro and Clemens but not for the Eric Miltons and Mike Maroths of the world. It's far too arbitrary a system to even suggest.

I'm not going to fault Dilfer for the loss to Miami in Baltimore's championship season because Tony Banks was the QB at that point. It's clear that the switch from Banks to Dilfer was what took this good team and made them into a Super Bowl calibur team, so I have absolutely no problem with crediting Dilfer with the wins he got. Look at the following year, too. Grbac wasn't so good, was he?

You're always going to be able to point out a game like the Patriots-Dolphins game and ask whether a QB deserves credit for that one just like I'm going to always be able to ask if Billy Koch really deserved a win for pitching an inning and blowing a save during the June 28 game against the Cubs. Sometimes, statistics are wacky. Teams threw away from Darrell Green for most of his career, and this inflated the interception numbers for the corner who started opposite him because QBs felt it was less risky to throw into tight coverage on that side of the field than to even consider throwing to Green's side. Do we say that that guy didn't deserve his interceptions? No.

I think your mind was made up on this issue before you ever created this thread, and I know my mind has been made up by participating in this thread. I highly doubt you're going to find the above any more persuasive than I found what you said to be...
 
Pitchers v. QBs

Seems like no one is going to be conviced by anything anyone says on this subject.

Here's why I line up with those who say that it's justifiable for pitchers, but rarely for quarterbacks, to get credit for w/l records.

An average NFL team passes about 55-60% percent of the time. If our offense is working the way we want it to, we throw it 40% of the time or even less (against Dallas we ran 44 times and passed 20). So, to start with, the QB has a minor role in close to half his team's offensive plays. He has no role in any of his team's defensive plays or special teams plays. In aggregate, then, a quarterback has a critical role no more than 20% of his team's plays. Pitchers, by definition, play a role in at least half their team's "plays". Substiution doesn't affect this. A pitcher playing 2/3 of a game is still participating in a higher proportion of plays than a QB who plays all four quarters.
Now let's look at pitchers' and qb's relative importance in the plays in which they DO play a critical role. A pitcher throws to a stationary target, a catcher. He either gets a strike, a ball, a foul (which is a strike unless there are already two strikes), a wild pitch, a passed ball, or a ball hit in play. Out of all those categories, none involve anyone on the team other than the catcher except a ball hit in play. Even on balls hit in play, there are a great many routine fly balls and soft grounders that pretty much any major league fielder can handle. At the other extreme, there are home runs, screaming line drives and perfectly placed hits that NO major league fielder can handle. It is only the in-between balls where the fielding makes a difference, and they are few. As anyone who read Moneyball can attest, this is the reason that fielding is devalued compared to hitting among the smarter GMs.
Now let's consider the QB. On a pass play he doesn't even get to throw the ball necessarily, since there are anywhere from three to eight guys trying to get to him to prevent him from doing so. If he doesn't get good protection, it doesn't matter how good he is. If he does throw it, he isn't throwing to a defined spot like a pitcher -- he's throwing to a running target, who is himself being covered by defenders. If the route isn't run right, or if the receiver drops the ball, or if the guy playing defense is particuarly good, again, the QB may not have a chance. Of course the catcher has to catch the ball too, but he hardly has to move to do it, and no one is trying to keep him from doing so. This is why every time a ball gets by the catcher and a runner advances, it's charged as a passed ball or wild pitch -- an error -- while there is no corresponding judgment passed on an incomplete pass.
 
If we're going to start talking skill, I think it has to be pointed out that hitting a round ball with a round bat is considered to be one of the hardest things to do in sports. That is why even good hitters generally only succeed 1/3 of the time. That kinda lessens the pitcher's importance in the situation, doesn't it?
 
hitting the ball

No, it doesn't. It would if hitting successfully were random, but of course it's not -- there are people who are much better at it than others. That is why Jason Giambi makes huge amounts of money even though he is one of the worst-fielding first basemen in the American League. Similarly, there are pitchers who are much better than other at preventing batters from getting hits. So the fact that hitting a baseball is difficult doesn't diminish the value of striking someone out versus having them hit a home run in the slightest.
 
Re: hitting the ball

Originally posted by Keypusher
No, it doesn't. It would if hitting successfully were random, but of course it's not -- there are people who are much better at it than others. That is why Jason Giambi makes huge amounts of money even though he is one of the worst-fielding first basemen in the American League. Similarly, there are pitchers who are much better than other at preventing batters from getting hits. So the fact that hitting a baseball is difficult doesn't diminish the value of striking someone out versus having them hit a home run in the slightest.
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Ah, now you're talking about variations in the quality of pitching. That's just as irrelevent to the topic of who gets credited for wins and blamed for losses as it is in football.

Jason Giambi succeeds at getting a hit 3 times out of 10 according to his career batting average numbers. That means that pitchers in the aggregate succeed in getting him out 7 times out of 10. This aggregate includes pitchers who are great, average, and awful. All of them are eligible to be credited for wins and to be blamed for losses. You can argue that this isn't fair much as it isn't fair to compare Marino's W/L record to Fiedler's. The problem is that there isn't really a good way to use statistics to solve this problem. You can try to come up with a "quality win" and a "deserved loss" statistic, but the results are really going to be rather arbitrary because there isn't any objective basis to rely upon for your landmarks.

What it comes down to is that no player in any team sport deserves to have W/L applied to them on the purest of levels. This goes for goalkeepers as well. In reality, we like to be able to assign these victories to somebody when possible. In hockey and soccer, it's easy to choose the goalkeeper. In baseball, it's easy to choose the pitcher. In racing, it's easy to choose the driver. In football, it's easy to choose the QB because QB is the single position with the most opportunities to shape the game (which is the criterion also used for the other sports, btw). The only major team sport that defies this classification is basketball, and that is because the tasks in basketball are far more homogenous between positions. All the players dribble. All the players shoot. Centers occasionally have steals, and guards occasionally have blocks. This clearly isn't the case in the highly specialized NFL, so why try to make this squarish peg fit in the round hole that basketball has created?
 
In my opinion, the only person in football that should be given W's or L's is the coach. I don't believe that the QBs shape the game as much as some people want to credit them with .I think that the most shaping factor in the game is line play, and that's the epitome of a team activity.
 
Even if the line plays a bigger role as a unit than the QB does, that role is shared by five men. The QB still has the largest single chunk of the responsibility for the game's outcome. If that is your standard, the QB has to get the W/L responsibility. I respect that some of you have a different standard, though. I don't agree with it, but we all get to have our own opinions on things...at least until I rule the world with an iron fist! ;)

I would love to have the money to burn to do a scientific poll of Dolphins fans, NFL fans in general, and baseball fans to see what the results would be. I think this is a really intriguing debate...
 
See, that isn't my standard. I was using your argument. To me, W's and L's when applied to players is a defensive statistic, not an offensive one. I'd rather W's and L's not be applied to football players at all as an individual stat.
 
Originally posted by Jimmy James


Actually, it seems that the QB who starts the game is the one who gets credited with W/L according to whoever determines this crap. This is why Brian is said to have gone 3-2 this year even though Jay came in and made the difference in the Redskins game.

As to your other points: Saying that guys like Marino and Favre get credit for wins is like saying that we should count wins for Pedro and Clemens but not for the Eric Miltons and Mike Maroths of the world. It's far too arbitrary a system to even suggest.

I'm not going to fault Dilfer for the loss to Miami in Baltimore's championship season because Tony Banks was the QB at that point. It's clear that the switch from Banks to Dilfer was what took this good team and made them into a Super Bowl calibur team, so I have absolutely no problem with crediting Dilfer with the wins he got. Look at the following year, too. Grbac wasn't so good, was he?

You're always going to be able to point out a game like the Patriots-Dolphins game and ask whether a QB deserves credit for that one just like I'm going to always be able to ask if Billy Koch really deserved a win for pitching an inning and blowing a save during the June 28 game against the Cubs. Sometimes, statistics are wacky. Teams threw away from Darrell Green for most of his career, and this inflated the interception numbers for the corner who started opposite him because QBs felt it was less risky to throw into tight coverage on that side of the field than to even consider throwing to Green's side. Do we say that that guy didn't deserve his interceptions? No.

I think your mind was made up on this issue before you ever created this thread, and I know my mind has been made up by participating in this thread. I highly doubt you're going to find the above any more persuasive than I found what you said to be...
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Well, I don't think that I would have created this topic if I felt against it. I enjoy discussions but I enjoy making my point known as well :) Also, for the record, the MLB is not really part of the topic, it just kinda came up.

I think, however, that this is the kind of topic that everyone has very set opinions on, maybe dependent upon what sport one likes the most.

I don't believe I said anything about great pitchers deserving wins over average pitchers. I merely mentioned that Marino and Favre did a lot w/ a little and maybe deserved victories over those QB's who won simply because of good defense(I think that's what I said). To say Pedro has done a lot w/ a little in Boston is foolish, he is surrounded by great and good players.

Look: the debate is obviously going nowhere, facts/opinions are being repeated. The whole point of this was whether or not QB's deserved W/L records and it pretty much went down from there. I don't think W/L records should be kept for individuals in football, that's all. Pitchers and goalies, yes.

I have never thought very clearly on sports-related matters. I still think that it is not fair for a QB to throw a screen pass that is taken for an 80-yard TD and the QB is credited w/ 80 yards. I think the QB should be credited w/ only the amount of yards the actual pass goes. But, I'm kooky.
 
Do you also propose that a QB get negative rushing yards to account for the location of the handoff and that the RB get positive yards right from that point?

Eh, forget that -- it's just speculation when what I should do is ask...

I'm curious -- do you have any other issues with how yardage is awarded? I actually think this might be a more interesting conversation in my opinion... :)
 
Originally posted by Jimmy James
Do you also propose that a QB get negative rushing yards to account for the location of the handoff and that the RB get positive yards right from that point?

Eh, forget that -- it's just speculation when what I should do is ask...

I'm curious -- do you have any other issues with how yardage is awarded? I actually think this might be a more interesting conversation in my opinion... :)
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No, because rushing yards are attributed solely to he who rushes. I just don't think it is right when I read in the paper that so-and-so threw an 80 yard pass to whoever for the win when the actual pass was maybe 5-10 yards. I know that it is the combined effort of QB and WR that creates that yardage but it just strikes me as wrong, odd or some other word.

I also don't think that the NCAA should subtract rushing yards from the QB when he is sacked. Because when the QB begins to scramble, that is the only time he should have rushing yards subtracted if tackled behind the line. Sacks should count against passing yards, I think. It is on a passing play, afterall.

Like I said, I think very strangely.
 
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