dave mcbride

Um ... wasn't that particular game the best game in Smith's entire life??

The WR corps is not good. You should be concerned.

Dareus had nearly 30 sacks in his first four seasons - as a DT! He can obviously rush the passer unless he's lost a step.

Cam Newton also rushed for 48 TDs in his first 6 seasons. That is phenomenal. He has also had two great years, not one - his rookie season (4051 yards passing and 14 rushing TDs) and 2015 (good numbers all around and 10 rushing TDs). In his rookie season, Carolina was 5th in points and 7th in yards, but the D was 27th and 28th in those categories. The previous season, the Carolina offense was 32nd in yards and 32nd in points.

I have no idea about that; I'm speaking in general terms about the site, which I firmly believe is better than nfl.com.

What I'm telling you is that PFR is a better site that is far cleaner and far easier to use (nfl.com and espn.com's sites are graphic messes). It also has far deeper historical coverage. Its AV metric (akin to bWAR) is pretty reliable too, and better than anything nfl.com has to offer. Again, I suggest giving it an extensive perusal along with its parent site, www.baseball-reference.com, which really is the granddady of all of these sites. Trust me, baseball people use baseball-reference.com, not mlb.com for stats.

This argument strikes me as a category error. Kirby is judging a player on a 30 game stretch, and you're judging a player on one.

Huh? Brees is great and should never be judged by one game. It has to be done over a long stretch, which is what Kirby is doing. The Vikes may have the best defense in the nfl, btw, although I know Seattle's is good too.

Dude. No offense, but you don't know of what you speak. PFR - which is an offshoot of the legendary www.baseball-reference.com (the best sports stats pretty much ever - e.g., bWAR), is the best football stat site around. Not even close, actually. Nfl.com pales in comparison, and I never consider using it given PFR's existence. I thought this was common knowledge, but apparently not. Do yourself a favor and check out the suite of sites it operates. You can start here for background: http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/features/the-sublime-simplicity-of-baseball-reference-com-20151028 . This too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball-Reference.com . Pfr is run by the same people. Nfl.com is for amateurs, in my opinion . Oh --and pfr has game play-by-play for every game in which such records were kept.

See my edit above about Taylor. The passing numbers are virtually identical!

I think Smith is the better qb now, but it took Smith a long time to get to where he is, and he was bad-to-mediocre for a long time. He's a genuine veteran, and this is only Taylor's third year starting. In Smith's sixth year - his first genuinely good season - his numbers were eerily Taylor-like. He led the NFL in sacks taken with 44 (he also had 7 fumbles), threw for 3144 yards with a 61.3 percent completion pct, had a 7.1 ypa average, and had a 17/5 TD/INT ratio. He only ran for 179 yards and 2 TDs, and although a good runner for a qb, he wasn't in Taylor's league that season. Otherwise, those are Taylor numbers to a tee. He did it in 16 games. In 15 games last season, Taylor threw for 3,023 yards, had a 61.7 percent completion pct, averaged 7.1 ypa, had a 17/6 TD/INT ratio, and was sacked 42 times to lead the NFL. He ran for 538 yards, had 6 rushing TDs, and only fumbled 4 times (one lost) to Smith's 7 fumbles.

Yes they do. I've been saying that for a while. Houston and TN have very good defensive personnel too, so it'll be an interesting race. That division is there for the taking.

If you have a good clip from the backside, it'd be great to see it again. I watched it 3-4 times yesterday, but during the game. I can't find one now. He was indeed hit hard, but it had already gone right through his hands by that point. He never got a hold on it, so the hit was kind of a moot issue (except perhaps for the hearing-footsteps possibility).

I take issue with the whole premise of your post.

I think it would qualify as a solid catch by Clay - not "very good." That sort of catch is made *literally all of the time* by good NFL receivers, and Clay is definitely paid like one. You think Anquan Boldin in his prime drops that? No way. It obviously wasn't a perfect throw but it was still highly catchable - eye-level with the receiver literally facing the QB and with the ball slightly to his left side. You guys have crazy high standards for catchable balls by NFL receivers if you think that constitutes a very good catch. Having said all of this, drops happen on every team, and the Bills weren't really plagued by them yesterday.

The most important thing a coach does is hire staff. Marrone has a record of hiring good defensive staff (Pettine, Schwartz).

Just gaming this out a little more: Bowles' isn't going to last, and his next job will likely be as DC. Limiting scoring opportunities will boost his team's ranking in the points allowed category, which he can then hawk to future potential employers in interviews.

Drops are a definitely "real" statistic in my opinion because they are important plays and can be measured with at least a decent degree of accuracy. I just could care less about whether it's "official." That's my point. You're stressing "official," which -- to repeat -- I couldn't care less about as it pertains to this. In any event, hadn't we switched to sacks taken? That is a "real" stat by your measure.

I think you're basically right, but keep this in mind: losing close games makes them look slightly better than losing by big scores. Coaches care about perception. I know that sounds illogical because the object is to do everything possible to win, but it happens so often that it has to be true, right?

I honestly don't care what is "real" and not "real" as it pertains to "official" status. So let's get past that right away. The reason I focused so much years ago on sacks taken is because we basically had a perfect lab experiment with Flutie and Johnson - they both played behind the same line, and while Flutie's sack rates were pretty low, Johnson's were not only record-breaking, they completely crippled the offense. However, that didn't get factored into QB rating. It did, however, get factored into team qb rating by way of yards lost on sacks. I've long felt that while sacks aren't always on the QB, the most sacked QBs deserves some of the blame because they hold it too long. It's a weakness, and indeed it's been a flaw of Taylor's. That said, some of his "sacks" are on scrambles back to the LOS rather than crippling strip sacks on blindside hits. He doesn't fumble much at all. The latter point has absolutely nothing to do with PFF, btw.

Good post; thanks.

I don't understand your question.

Not true at all. For years, I've been the one banging the drum loudest on this site with regard to the importance of sacks taken by and sack rates for qbs. To be fair, sack yardage lost is factored into team QB ratings (albeit not individual player ratings).

I strongly believe that they will, and it'll be interesting what happens to Taylor if they do. He's a legit mid-tier NFL starter, and there will be demand. Yeah, I can't believe I'm defending it either, because like you I was against in the debates about it here years ago for the same reasons. I'm just saying that drops are a real thing and should be measured when assessing a qb.

How you can gauge accuracy without a statistical measure? "I know it when I see it" doesn't work, so while I can't provide you with a link for this (obviously), simple common sense and a basic understanding of math dictates that they do in fact measure it. Feel free to discount my point through legalisms about officialness, but I think we both know that teams measure this. Anyway, to undercut my own point, I will offer this: the Jets led the league last year with 30-30+ odd drops, which means that as a baseline, the average nfl team has about 1.5 drops per game. Assuming most teams fall along the norm, the drops come out in the wash and a raw measure of accuracy pretty much tells you how accurate your qb is (because most teams' drop totals are around the same). That argument makes a certain amount of sense to me. Regardless, Clay should have caught that pass.