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.

The Spoiler Effect--Is it Real?

With this year's Presidential candidates not exactly inspiring confidence in the voters, the typical talk of third party candidates tends to come up in political discussions. This of course inevitably leads to topics like the spoiler effect and first-past-the-post-voting. The common wisdom is that you are throwing your vote away if you vote third party. Worse yet, you are actually helping the mainstream candidate you are the most ideologically opposed to because you are taking a vote away from the candidate you would have voted for had the third party candidate not run. This sounds scary, but is it true?

One of my favorite political podcasts is Abe Lincoln's Top Hat, hosted by comedians Ben Kissel and Marcus Parks. I was listening to an episode the other day where Kissel claimed that if Perot hadn't run in the 1992 election, Clinton would have still won because Bush would have needed 100% of Perot's votes to beat him. Since this statement was against the conventional wisdom, I decided to investigate the claim.

First, let's talk about what actually happened in 1992. Perot had dropped out of the race, but returned. After election day, Clinton was the winner with 370 Electoral votes. Bush won only 168 Electoral votes, and Perot won no Electoral votes. Here's the strange thing, though: Clinton only won 43% of the popular vote. Yet, he beat Bush in the Electoral college by more than a 2-to-1 margin. How was this possible?

As I'm sure the reader is well aware, the American people don't directly vote for the President. The states do. The states vote for the Electors who actually cast the ballot for the President. The problem with the Electoral College is that the 538 votes are not distributed evenly by population. Every state (and the District of Columbia) gets 3 votes, right off the bat, regardless of its population. The rest are distributed proportionally by population. The result is that states with lower populations, like Montana, are actually over represented in the Electoral College, while highly populous states like California and Texas are under represented.

Additionally, the vast majority of states (with the exception of Nebraska and Maine) are "winner-take-all" states. That means all a candidate has to do is get the largest share of voters in any given state and they get all of that state's electoral votes. In a two-party race, it sort of represents the will of the people most of the time because a candidate has to get at least 50% of the popular vote to carry that state. Even so, there are several incidences where the winner of the popular vote was not elected President because the results of the Electoral College differed. But as my data will show, this problem is greatly exacerbated when a third party does unprecedentedly well, as we saw in 1992.

In 1992: Bill Clinton won a number of states with less than 50% of the popular vote. Those included:

California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Iowa
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Montana
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Tennessee

That's a lot of states, and many of them weren't states typically won by a Democrat, not even in 1992.  So the question is, would Clinton have won those states had Perot stayed out of the race? Which would he have won and lost?

The problem with answering questions like these is quite simply that we don't know what would have happened because it didn't happen. The best we can do is guess, based on the available information. So what do we know about Perot voters?

Perot was running as an economic conservative. In much the same vein as Donald Trump, he was vehemently against Free Trade Agreements, NAFTA being the hot-button topic of the time. I think it goes without saying that Perot's supporters had more in common ideologically with Bush than with Clinton.

Thus, it stands to reason that most of them would have voted for Bush. The question of how many is difficult, because again, there's no way to know that for sure. I am unaware of any polls indicating what Perot voters' "second choice" would have been. There's also a good reason to believe many of them would have stayed home rather than vote for either Bush or Clinton. And yet again, there's no way to know how many would have.

So, I decided to make a spreadsheet, listing all of the state's Clinton won, how many electoral votes each of those states had in 1992, and how many actual votes each of the three main candidates received. Then, I calculated a number of scenarios. Which were as follows:

1. Clinton and Bush share Perot's voters equally: 50/50
2. Bush gets 50% of Perot's voters, Clinton gets 25%, and the remaining 25% stay home on election day. This, I believe, is the most realistic scenario.
3. Bush gets 75% of Perot's voters, Clinton gets 25%. This is another believable scenario in my opinion.
4. Bush gets 100% of Perot's voters. Unrealistic in my opinion, but not impossible.

So what were the results?

Scenario 1: Bush and Clinton Share Perot Voters 50/50

Map of Scenario 1. Also the actual results of the 1992 Election 

In this scenario, nothing changes. Clinton still wins all of the states he won, and Bush wins all of the states he won. Clinton still wins.

Scenario 2: Bush gets 50% of Perot Voters, Clinton gets 25%, 25% Stay Home

In this scenario, Clinton still wins, but it's close. Bush gains Colorado, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin. But that only gets him to 255 electoral votes, 15 shy of the 270 needed to win.

Scenario 3: Bush gets 75% of Perot Voters, Clinton gets 25%

Map of Scenario 3

This is the turning point. If Bush had gotten 75% of Perot's voters--a very realistic possibility in my opinion--he would have won the 1992 election in a landslide. In addition to the states he picked up in Scenario 2, he would have gained Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. That would have put him at 377 electoral votes to Clinton's 161, easily winning his second term.

Scenario 4: Bush gets 100% of Perot Voters

Map of Scenario 4

Though this isn't a very realistic scenario, it's certainly possible. Had all of Perot's voters voted for Bush in 1992, Bush would have won re-election with Reagan-level margins. He would have gained a whopping 486 electoral votes to Clinton's paltry 52. Clinton would have only retained Arkansas (his home state), D.C., Maryland, and New York. He would likely had been nothing but a footnote in history, regarded as another Walter Mondale.

Of course, none of these scenarios would have been exactly what happened. No matter how many scenarios I could come up with, I could only get close to what would have actually happened. These scenarios are snapshots.

In my opinion, scenarios 2 and 3 are the closest to what actually would have happened. This, of course, is unhelpful in deciding whether or not Bush would have definitively won the election had Perot remained out of the race, since scenario 2 has him losing by a narrow margin and scenario 3 has him winning by a large one.

I continued playing around with scenarios, but there are a number of variables that cannot be accounted for. I did discover that Bush would have needed 67% of Perot's votes in every state across the board at the minimum, if the rest of them had voted for Clinton.  Bush's chances improved the more Perot's voters stayed home.

So would Perot dropping out have changed the results of the election? We just don't know, and there is no way to know for sure without speculating. There is a good case for both sides, but my opinion is that it did. I base this on Scenario 2 being such a close race, and Scenario 3 being a landslide for Bush. If you average the two, Bush comes out on top.

If you'd like to view my spreadsheet, click here.

UPDATE: I was recently made aware of some peer-reviewed research in this matter. According to this research (Economics 737), 49.5% of Perot voters would have voted for Bush, and 50.5% of Perot voters would have voted for Clinton. This distribution means the election results would have been unchanged and Clinton still would have won.

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Citation(s)

Economics, Issues and the Perot Candidacy: Voter Choice in the 1992 Presidential Election. R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler American Journal of Political Science Vol. 39, No. 3 (Aug., 1995), pp. 714-744

Why Iowa is Irrelevant

There is a massive media machine built to convince all of us that the Iowa Caucus is the holiest of holy holidays in the world of a political junkie like myself. This is mostly because the Caucus is the first time anybody gets to actually cast a vote for President of the United States in each election cycle. Admittedly, that's kind of a big deal.

Ever since I learned about the Iowa Caucus, the one burning question in my mind has always been thus: "Why does Iowa get to go first?" The answers are varied somewhat but they all essentially boil down to this: "Iowa is the most accurate cross-section of America and is a great predictor of Party Nomination winners."

The first part of this answer doesn't pass the smell test with me. Iowa an accurate cross-section of America? Really? Iowa is almost completely Rural. It doesn't have a particularly large population. It doesn't ever seem to matter in the general election. It is historically a swing state, yes, but its 6 electoral votes are rarely an attractive prize when there are much more populous swing states like Ohio and Indiana nearby. In fact, if there were any state that provided the best cross-section of America, it'd be Ohio. It bristles me to say that as a Michigan native, but the fact that no President has won without Ohio in over half a century is hard to argue with.

The second part of the pro-Iowa claim (that it predicts primary winners) takes some examination. So let's do that. Since the current arrangement with Iowa starting first began in 1972, the election results have been thus.

First, for the Democrats.

Year	Winner	Margin	Race Type	Predicted Winner
1972	Edmund Muskie	+13	Contested	No
1976	Jimmy Carter	+15	Contested	Yes
1980	Jimmy Carter	+29	Uncontested	Yes
1984	Walter Mondale	+32	Contested	Yes
1988	Dick Gebhardt	+4	Contested	No
1992	Tom Harkin	+72	Contested	No
1996	Bill Clinton	+97	Uncontested	Yes
2000	Al Gore	+26	Contested	Yes
2004	John Kerry	+6	Contested	Yes
2008	Barack Obama	+8	Contested	Yes
2012	Barack Obama	+96	Uncontested	Yes

At first glance, it looks like Iowa does pretty well. Of the 11 Iowa Caucuses held since 1972, 8 have accurately predicted the winner of the Democratic Nomination. That's a 72% success rate, significantly better than chance. 

But I still argue that Iowa is not a good predictor of nomination winners. Why? Because not all Caucuses are the same. Let's start with the 1980 Iowa Caucus. Jimmy Carter wins the nomination by a large margin. But he's the sitting President in 1980 seeking re-election. Not since the Iowa caucus started has a sitting President or Vice President lost his party's nomination. The same is true for Clinton in 1996. He was the sitting President. These contests weren't really the same as the contests we're seeing this year in 2016. Thus, I argue that they should not count toward Iowa's record, since those races are not contested within the Party. This leaves 1972, 1976, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, and 2008 as the only Contested races and the only true tests of Iowa's predictive power.

That is 8 total contests and 5 where Iowa predicted the winner. That is 5/8, or a 63% success rate, almost within the margin of error of chance with such a low sample size. Essentially, you could get the same results by flipping a coin 8 times, easily. But what about the Republican matches?

Year	Winner	Margin	Race Type	Predicted Winner
1976	Gerald Ford	+2	Contested	Yes
1980	George H.W. Bush	+2	Contested	No
1984	Ronald Reagan	+100 (unopposed)	Uncontested	Yes
1988	Bob Dole	+12	Contested	No
1992	George H.W. Bush	+100 (unopposed)	Uncontested	Yes
1996	Bob Dole	+3	Contested	Yes
2000	George W. Bush	+10	Contested	Yes
2004	George W. Bush	+100 (unopposed)	Uncontested	Yes
2008	Mike Huckabee	+9	Contested	No
2012	Rick Santorum	< 1	Contested	No

Vice Presidents have a slightly more difficult time gaining the nomination than President's do. They are almost always successful, but not always. Determining if a race is uncontested or contested in that situation is a bit more nuanced. The 1976 GOP Nomination saw Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon's Vice President and sitting President win by only 2 percentage points in Iowa. Ford did win his party's nomination, but barely eeked a win against Reagan. The results of that nomination process were close enough for me to judge it as Contested, even though a sitting President was seeking his own party's nomination. Additionally, in 1988, George H. W. Bush was the sitting Vice President, but initially struggled in the early part of the nomination process. Though he ended up obtaining the nomination easily, the early part of the contest was close enough to consider it Contested as well, especially since we're discussing the Iowa Caucus in particular.

There were three uncontested GOP nominations in Iowa's record: 1984, 1992, and 2004, all with popular sitting Presidents running unopposed. Therefore, these contests are not applicable to 2016. Out of 7 Contested Primaries since 1976, the Iowa Caucus has predicted the eventual GOP nominee accurately 3 times, a 43% success rate.

From the data, it appears that Iowa's claims of predictive power over the nomination process are overblown, at best. Dismal at worst.

Tattoo

Saturday I violated Leviticus 19:28...

So I got a tattoo...

I've been out of the JWs for seven years and I've wanted one for a while now, but I've been bound and determined not to get one until I absolutely know for sure what I wanted. Tattoos to me are a commemorative thing. Plus, I've always had this hope that I would somehow get mummified and scientists a thousand years from now will dig my body up and use my tattoos to figure out things about me. It probably won't happen as I don't live near any peat bogs nor am prone to falling into them, but a guy can dream, can't he?

This past weekend it finally hit me...I wanted a tree. Why a tree?

Being a Jehovah's Witness was a very isolating experience for me. Everybody outside our tiny group of faithful was "off-limits." No friendships, no relationships, no meaningful connection was allowed with "worldly" people. Now, having a non-JW friend wasn't something you'd get excommunicated for, but it was definitely a black mark on your reputation in the congregation.

I had very few real friends as a kid. At school, I had people I sat with during lunch. Every year, the cast rotated. Summer would come, we'd lose touch because I no longer had the excuse of being in a mandated educational institution to justify playing kickball with them, and we'd just drift apart. There were kids my age in the congregation, but almost all of them wanted to hunt and fish and play outside all the time, which was not appealing to me at all. So, yeah, loneliness and disconnection were the norm for me.

I remember the day I had decided/realized that I was not going to continue in the path set before me by my parents and peers at that time, and I felt--along with an overwhelming sense of relief that the world was not about to be destroyed by God's fiery meteors--connected to everyone else in the world for the first time. I was no longer barred from their lives. I no longer had to keep them at arms' length and make excuses to why I couldn't come over for their annual barbecue. For the first time in my life, standing in my one bedroom apartment at 26 years old, I felt like I belonged. I felt like I belonged to the rest of the world, along with everyone else. I was finally a branch on the great tree of humanity.

The tree was perfect. It symbolizes that major milestone of my life. So, I began to look at pictures of trees. I had a few picked out, and after some feedback from the artist, I chose the Tree of Gondor from Lord of the Rings. The large branches with decent separation ensured minimal blurring, and I am a fan of fantasy/sci-fi so it was perfect. The above picture is about 2 hours after completion.

The Tinder Women of West Michigan

So as a technically-married-but-separated man, I've discovered that it is generally acceptable to start dating as if you were single. This isn't universal everywhere you go, but where I live, people seem to be okay with it as long as you aren't shouting it through the rooftops.

So, gay men have this app called Grindr. Grindr is an app for having anonymous sex with other gay men around you, or, as the worldlies like to call it: "hooking up." How it works is that you make a profile with pictures of you and maybe some information. Then, other men who have the app can look at you and, if they find you attractive, send you a message. Some brief flirting may ensue and if both parties play their cards right, BOOM, hot gay sex ensues.

Not content to be denied something the gay community has, straight people now have a Grindr-like app called Tinder. The premise of Tinder is pretty much the same. You post a profile and look at the profiles of people around you. If you like them, you swipe right on your phone, and if not, you swipe left. If two people swipe right on each others' profiles, they are both notified and can now begin messaging each other. The rest is up to you.

The thing is, as straight people are generally not as sexually liberated as gay people (when everything you want to do sexually has been considered a kink for a large portion of history, you tend to be pretty open-minded), a lot of people (women, in my experience, since I don't see men's profiles) don't seem to understand what Tinder is, what it's for, etc. The big thing I've noticed is that women's profiles seem to funnel into relatively few categories and subcategories. Either the woman will know what Tinder is for or not, and from there, we see the subcategories form quite quickly.

I live in a highly religiously-conservative area, and I quite often find that women (again, I'm not saying this isn't also true for men, but I don't really know since I don't see mens' profiles) don't understand what Tinder is, what it's for, and honestly some of what I see is baffling.

The Jesus Freak

This woman has the love of Jesus Christ in her heart and if you don't, you better swipe left. I swipe right anyway.

The Single Mom

This one is a mother and proud of it. Which is fine. Except the problem is every picture is of her kids riding a bicycle, or playing soccer, or doing what kids are want to do. Lady, I don't want to fuck your kids. I may want to fuck you, but I can't tell because you're hiding behind your spawn. What are you even doing on here, man?

The Insecure Suburban Wife

You'd be surprised how many profiles have the phrase "My husband and kids are my life!" on it and every picture features blouses and polo shirts in front of the best backdrops Olan Mills has to offer. Yet you're on an app that helps people have anonymous sex. I get that some people may be getting some on the side, but if that's the case, why trumpet that fact through a metaphorical bullhorn?

The Waldo

Every picture is of a group of people, and you'll spend a good 10 minutes comparing pictures to determine that she is, indeed, the ugly one.

The Elephant Man

This profile doesn't actually have a picture of her on it, but instead memes, pictures of "inspirational sayings", and motivational posters. The profile clearly screams "DON'T LOOK AT ME!!!"

The Social Media Whore

She's just here to get followers for her Instragram/Twitter account.

The Husband Quester

She thinks Tinder is just another OKCupid or PlentyofFish. She WILL find a husband!

The Deja Vu

In every picture, she's making the exact same face. The Exact. Same. Face.

The Mystery/Knows What's Up

Her profile is the most promising. It sometimes features only pictures. No bio or anything. She, most likely, knows what's up. This is a hookup site. You don't need to know each others' hopes and dreams here. Some fill out a profile because, hey, most women aren't just DTF (Down to Fuck) with anyone. The gears have to be greased with conversation and flirting first (yeah, guys, you're going to have to put forth some effort). So, she'll have a brief profile filled out, but it will otherwise she knows why she's here, she knows why you're there, and it's cool. 

Introductory Post

Welcome!

A little summary about me and why I'm doing this:

I was raised a Jehovah's Witness. I faded in 2007, but was never disfellowshipped, disassociated, or anything. In 2009, I got married. I am now separated and in the process of a divorce. I also used to have a blog of the same name that got deleted. I've decided to start it up again because life has kind of started to kick the shit out of me again a bit and I've been learning a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would as an ex-Witness. I feel like this has granted me some wisdom already and will likely continue to do so.

My focus is going to be more about adjusting to a post-JW life and not so much about JW doctrines, practices, etc. There are a lot of situations, I'm finding out, that being raised as a JW kind of retards you on. This lack of experience and "street smarts" can get us into trouble, so maybe by talking about it I may be able to avoid some of the pitfalls or at the very least help others avoid the ones I already have.

So again, welcome. I promise I'll work on updating the theme at some point, but for now I'm just going to be content-focused. Bye for now!