Mactbone: My impression is that Rex Grossman
performs well when the team is up and plays poorly when the Bears are
losing. I'm curious if his DVOA/DPAR is higher when the Bears are
already up by 7/14 and lower when they're down 7/14 points. Of course,
he could just play well when he has a short field and poorly when he
actually has to put a drive together. Just trying to get a handle on
the reason the Bears will win or lose in the playoffs.
Aaron Schatz: Thanks for the excellent question, Mactbone. It turns out that you are absolutely correct. When I measure scoring gap, I generally use 8 points as the guideline, since that's the maximum score you can get on just one drive. Here are Grossman's stats when the Bears are up by 9+ points, losing by 9+ points, or within 8 points either way.
Lose >8: -17.0 DPAR, -70.7% DVOA, 4.3 ypa, 4 INT Within 8: 1.8 DPAR, -10.6% DVOA, 5.9 ypa, 7 INT Win >8: 39.3 DPAR, 82.2% DVOA, 9.4 ypa, 0 INT
Wow, that would concern me if I was a Bears fan. Evil Rex seems to come out whenever the Bears are losing, and they're more likely to fall behind a good team they'll meet in the playoffs than they are to fall behind some team like Detroit.
How does this compare to other quarterbacks? I ran two other random guys with somewhat similar total value this year:
Here's Tom Brady:
Lose >8: 10.2 DPAR, 22.4% DVOA, 5.5 ypa, 0 INT Within 8: 15.4 DPAR, 5.0% DVOA, 6.5 ypa, 8 INT Win >8: 18.5 DPAR, 36.3% DVOA, 6.1 ypa, 1 INT
Brady seems to play looser in close games -- more yards, more turnovers -- but better overall when he either is coming back from behind or has a nice lead. Here's Steve McNair:
Lose >8: -0.2 DPAR, -14.0% DVOA, 6.5 ypa, 3 INT Within 8: 11.8 DPAR, 2.0% DVOA, 5.7 ypa, 5 INT Win >8: 5.0 DPAR, 2.8% DVOA, 5.0 ypa, 1 INT
I have no idea if this is actually a real trend that represents the Chicago offensive style, or Grossman himself, or if it is just random chance. One of the projects I hope to do for next year's book is a study of which "splits" represent actual skills and which are basically just random from year to year.
This is interesting, and food for thought. The striking difference of course is that Grossman has 18 career games and the guys you're comparing with have 90 and 149.
Love the stats, and it shows how much Grossman has to grow. As a Bears fan, I hope we'll see some more of his growth this weekend. After Arizona and Miami, he did a lot better under pressure from the Jets. I'm sure he'll see more on Sunday.
Does the score change the way Grossman plays, or does Grossman's play change the score? As of right now, I'd think it's the latter, since there hasn't been a game where Grossman played well and the score was still close. If Good Rex shows up, the Bears will be ahead, and by a lot. On the other end, the Miami and Arizona games went the way they did almost solely because Bad Rex showed up.
Some of those stats must represent whether he lands on his behind when sacked or holds onto his skirt and falls to the ground daintily. Quaterback ratings have got to capture it all ya know. I think the officials are too soft on the girls. They should let them be a bit more manly. It's taking away from the game because there's to many calls if you don't put the fairy finger on them. Knocking them too the turf gets you the flag. So the stats must represent the difference between yesteryear when men played quarterback and now when obviously it's M.C. Hammer "can't touch this". There's a difference when even Marino stood and delivered, to these wimps. Those are some serious new stats. There's no forced errors because you can't rush at them that hard to make that. So shouldn't they have better stats than those of yesteryear, instead of bad stats and big crocidile tears. And where is the scramble factor like golf. Oh I forgot you can't rush at them that hard to make them scramble so skip that factor too. I'm serious, some one's gonna rush one of them and catch a flag, terms will sound like "it could be presumed that if the tackler had made contact with the QB it would have broke the fairy rule."
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