Thursday, August 31, 2017

Why I might not be a Lions fan by this time next year

The Detroit Lions might have made a huge mistake. Yesterday, it was revealed that Quarterback Matthew Stafford will become the highest-paid NFL player in history, at $135 million for 5 years, just going over 15% of cap.

The popular sentiment here in Detroit is that Stafford is worth it. Detractors point out his dismal record against winning teams, especially playoff teams. Still, others rebut that line of reasoning with the fact that wins and losses are a team stat, not a quarterback stat. Both arguments seem sound, but is there another way to look at this perhaps?

Stats can be pretty complicated, and misleading, but the cure for that is in context. Pointing out a stat about Stafford is meaningless until you compare him with other quarterbacks in the league. So, in an endeavor to do this, I chose the chief Quarterback stat: passer rating. By far the major contribution of a Quarterback to the game is passing. He also does other things, but the bread and butter of a Quarterback's job is the pass the ball. It's also an easily-obtainable stat.

The design of my analysis is as follows:

1. I chose to compare Stafford to two quarterbacks generally considered to be at his skill level: Derek Carr and Kirk Cousins. Carr recently signed a contract for $25 million per year (only $2 million less than Stafford per year), and it is very likely Cousins will get as much if not slightly more than Stafford.
2. I am looking at each quarterback's passer rating for each game, minus their average passer rating that season, and then averaging the deviations against winning and losing teams. In doing this, I hope to compare each Quarterback to himself, minimizing the effect the quality of the rest of the offense has on that rating, since all of the comparisons are more-or-less with the same players.

Here are the results.

Matthew Stafford: Passer rating drops an average of 12.28 against winning teams.
Kirk Cousins: Passer rating drops an average of 0.55 against winning teams.
Derek Carr: Passer rating drops an average of 2.84 against winning teams.

The time period I covered was Week 10 in the 2015 season (the first "true" game Stafford had under Jim Bob Cooter's offense) through Week 13 of the 2016 season. I chose this time frame because it has been argued that Stafford didn't really "come into his own" until Cooter became his Offensive Coordinator. Whether or not that's true, I'm going to grant that for now. I ended the analysis at Week 13 of 2016 because Stafford broke his finger in Week 14, which, in my opinion, makes his numbers suspect. Even when giving Stafford every benefit of the doubt, comparing only his uninjured time with Jim Bob Cooter with other Quarterbacks during that same time period, Stafford still comes out much, much worse than Cousins and Carr.

Keep in mind, I am not looking at Win-Loss stats. For this analysis, they are irrelevant. For example, Week 10 of 2015. The Lions beat the Packers at Lambeau Field. Even though the Lions won that game, Matt Stafford's passer rating was a full 23 points below his own average. The team did well, but their Quarterback didn't.

Another interesting thing I found is that in the sample period, the Lions played only 5 games out of 20 against winning teams. Stafford only exceeded his average passer rating in 1 of those games: Week 3 of the 2016 season against Green Bay. In comparison, the Redskins during the same time period played 7 games against winning teams. The Raiders played 10. Yet, despite all this, Cousins' performance only drops around half a point when facing winning teams. Carr is a new player, and the majority of his drop in production against winning teams happened in 2015. In 2016, his average passer rating drop was only 0.65 in these situations.

This is especially disturbing considering the fact that Stafford has been playing longer than Cousins and Carr. Carr, who has played for 3 seasons versus Stafford's 8, is already more consistent against good teams than Stafford is.

The fact of the matter is, Matthew Stafford has a major performance problem against winning teams and no matter how many times you say "Jim Bob Cooter," it's still there. And the Lions just paid him an unprecedented sum of money to be stuck with him for another 5 years.

Stafford has had nearly a decade to prove himself, and he hasn't. Is Stafford the reason the Lions win or lose a given game? Not necessarily. Is he the reason the Lions have won some games? Most likely. But, remember, I don't care about specific wins or losses. I care about the fact that, against winning teams, Stafford consistently throws much fewer complete passes, for way less yards. I don't know why, or even that it's Stafford's fault. Caldwell might be the problem. Jim Bob Cooter might be the problem. Bob Quinn might be the problem.

The point is, Stafford isn't stepping up like a Quarterback getting paid $27 million per year should be expected to. He's massively inconsistent, and it's leading Lions fans down the same foolish snipe hunt they've been pulled into over and over again since the 90s. The Lions would get an easy schedule, do marginally better, go to the playoffs, and fall flat on their faces against a better team. The next year they'd get a difficult schedule and miss the playoffs completely. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Then, for 10 years, Matt Millen made us so bad we couldn't even maintain that cycle, and we all forgot. But as soon as we got rid of Millen, and started going to the playoffs again, what happened? The same 90's cycle as before. Good year, bad year, good year, bad year. In 2016, the Lions went 8-4 the first three quarters of the season, but only 3 of those 12 games were against winning teams, and none of those games were games the Lions won.

Now, the 2017 schedule is here, and it looks...brutal. Cardinals, Giants, Falcons, Saints, Steelers, of course the Packers twice. It's hard to see any easy wins like we had last year. The team could step up, sure, and surprise us all, but I can't believe that Stafford will.