ESPN is putting on a full-court press for the statistic that they hope will replace passer rating: Quarterback Rating or QBR. Passer rating is a horribly outdated statistic, based on 40-year-old data and failing to take into account crucial aspects of a quarterback's play like sacks, running, how effective a pass was and other aspects. Still, it wasn't all bad: you could use it at a glance to see which QB approximately had a better season or game. It wasn't perfect, but it sufficed for that purpose. 

ESPN's new QBR is a lot more complicated, and includes a lot of new things. Sacks, rushing yards, effectiveness of passes (8 yards on 3rd-and-9 is less valuable than 2 yards on 3rd-and-1), yards a pass traveled through the air vs yards a receiver gains after the catch: all of these things are incorporated. And all of it is weighted by a 'clutch' adjustment, which is a poorly chosen term for explaining they look at how much the pass or run helped a team win a game. If you want the full explanation, follow this link. All this doesn't mean the new rating is perfect, it's just another tool to evaluate players, as with every statistic. Interestingly, the stat is very similar to Football Outsiders' DVOA, without opponent adjustments and with a few game-charting based additions. 

All that said, it's interesting to see that this new statistic values Josh Freeman pretty highly. In 2010, he was the NFL's 10th best quarterback by this measure, ahead of established players like Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo and Matt Schaub, though still lagging behind Matt Ryan and Eli Manning as well as the standard list of elite quarterbacks. In fact, ESPN now has Freeman ranked as the most efficient running quarterback in the NFL, though that's hardly the most important part of a quarterback's job.

The fact that Freeman does well in these rankings isn't entirely surprising, of course. According to the old Passer Rating he was even the 6th best quarterback of 2010, while Football Outsiders had him ranked as the 9th best quarterback. In fact, it seems the new QBR values Freeman a little less than other measures. 

All this to say that there is now a new tool to evaluate quarterbacks statistically, and it's better than passer rating. Along with Football Outsiders' DVOA, Advanced NFL Stats' different measures and of course more traditional statistics, there are plenty of statistics to choose from to support any argument about quarterbacks. 

Josh Freeman had a fantastic statistical game last Sunday. He completed 75% of his passes, threw for 241 yards and 10 yards per attempt, scored two touchdowns and added a first down on the ground to his statistics. He had a Passer Rating of 134.2, and Football Outsiders listed his day as the 5th best of the weekend, which is quite an accomplishment on a weekend where Tom Brady, Michael Vick and Kyle Orton had 3 of the best games of the year. And that production led to what was the 5th best game in terms of yards per offensive play in Buccaneers history, and the best such game since 2000. 

That kind of game is a credit to Josh Freeman and the work he put in to improve during the offseason. This year he's started 9 games so far, just as many as he started last year, but he's looked like a completely different quarterback this year. Coming into the year I expected improvement, but he's surpassed any expectation I may have had. So let's look at that improvement, how much better do the numbers really say he is? 

We'll start with the conventional numbers from Pro Football Reference, you'll find his rank among all NFL QBs with at least 100 pass attempts in parentheses:

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With UNFNole reminding us that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have hit the midway point in the year (already?), it seems like now would be a good time to assess the defensive side of the ball.  Having built our reputation as a defensive team in the late 90's and early 00's, the defense will always receive a fair amount of attention here.  The system is relatively the same, at least out of base sets, andwe will seem to work with the same mentality, bend but don't break.

As we look at the defense, we'll combine your favorite stats and my favorite stats and try to figure out just what we're looking at.  And if Coach Morris is reading this, sorry coach, I'm a loser.

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Raheem Morris hurts my feelings every time he talks.  Saying stats is for losers is like kicking puppies.  Well maybe it's not that bad, but it's coach speak that holds zero water.  We get it Rah, the team is 5-2 despite what any traditional or advanced stats say.  And he's right, ultimately the "W" is the most important part of the game. But don't tell me stats are useless when you start to throw numbers around.  And even though football isn't played on a spreadsheet or calculator, those numbers can be very important.  Why else do teams run on 3rd and 1.  Because it is statistically more probable to pick up a first down that way. 

Anyways, off the high horse, on to some numbers.

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As some of you know, I've been recently added to Bucs Nation as a writer, so I'd like to thank Buc Wild and Craig T for bringing me on board. Some of you may know me from the community here, but if not you'll get a good taste of the kind of writing I'll bring to the site in this post. I'll do my best to contribute regular and quality articles to the community. If you have anything to say about this post, whether it be style, spelling, grammar, content or jokes please do so. I encourage any criticism, because it can only improve the level of my writing and hence the quality of Bucs Nation. Having said that, let's get on to the subject!

Many players on the current Buccaneers roster are the subject of plenty controversy: Michael Clayton for dropping balls, Sabby Piscitelli for whiffing on tackles and coverage and Jeremy Trueblood for his penalties. But Barrett Ruud seems to split the community like no other player: while some think he's a horrible linebacker who can't shed a block and will only make tackles 8 yards downfield, others think he's a great player whose stats suffered because of poor D-line play. 

Barrett Ruud's regular 2009 statistics look impressive: 142 tackles, tied for second with London Fletcher and behind Patrick Willis for the most tackles in 2009. Some of that is due to the poor play around him, which means he's often the first one to actually tackle opposing players. However, that's not all of it: Ruud has great range and diagnoses the play very well. According to Football Outsiders he was in on 19% of all Bucs defensive plays in 2008, which was the highest percentage of any player in the league. In 2009 he was in on 18% of all plays, which was 7th highest in the league. Whatever his 2009 faults were, he was good at getting to the ball before the play was over.

Another thing that few people will dispute: Ruud is great in coverage. He can run down the seam with most tight ends in the league and has a good feel for the underneath passing game. He doesn't show up much in the passing stats, but that can be attributed to teams throwing less to his area of the field. Of course, any MLB will still have to rely on safety help over the top, and we were woefully lacking last year in that aspect, at least when Sabby was the relevant safety.

Those aspects of his play are the least controversial, but the one aspect that has this fanbase divided on Ruud is his play against the run. In an attempt to resolve this, I'll take a look at Ruud's advanced statistics in the run game and what they say about his play last year after the jump. 

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I was sitting around reading Football Outsiders one day and looking at Freemans numbers. With their Premium subscription you can get numbers on his short throws, long throws and bombs. However, even if I were to pay for that, what does that really tell me? I still don't know his strengths and weaknesses. So I pulled up NFL.Com and started going through the play by play realizing that the only way to find this out (without reviewing hours and hours worth of game film ..... which I would love to do) I would have to start charting his pass attempts.

I want to add a few disclaimers before you jump into the graphs and numbers. First, I spent quite a while charting this. It is not perfect by any means, but it should help you get a better picture. I am confident I missed a pass attempt here or there (15 to be exact, although I did not include 2 Point conversions or obvious throw-aways) and the numbers probably won't match up to his actual stats. So, please don't hold me to it. There is about a 1-2% margin of error. However, unless you have inside access to Tampa Bay's scouting department, or another teams book on the Bucs you won't find this information anywhere else (at least not that I could find).

I was going to have a bunch of fun graphs but my years of thinking I was proficient with Microsoft Excel just came crashing down on my head.

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The boys over at Football Outsiders have unveiled a nifty new regression model to predict the sack totals of collegiate edge rushers. Basically the model evaluates four key components of a collegiate player's game, and projects their future sack totals for the first five years of their NFL career. You can check out the new system yourself by clicking here. Although it is certainly imperfect (as all new regression models are) it seems to be pretty adept at sorting through the mess that is drafting a DE or outside 3-4 backer in the first two rounds of the NFL draft (which is all they measure for now). Let's take a look at the four determining factors of what constitutes a player's SackSEER projection.

1. Vertical Leap: Long story short, they figure good vertical leap is equivalent to good burst off the line of scrimmage.

2. Short Shuttle Run: This is a good indicator of overall speed, burst, hip flexibility and general quickness.

3. Sack Rate as Modified or SRAM: This basically measures how many sacks per game the player averaged in college, but also takes several other factors into consideration. If a player played DT or LB one year of their collegiate career, SRAM takes this into consideration as those positions do not tend to rush the passer as often as a true edge rusher does.

4. Missed games of NCAA eligibilty (other than early declaration for the NFL draft): This is the strongest metric included in this model. If a player missed time for any reason: injury, suspension, academic ineligibility or sickness, then it is going to count heavily against their future prospects. The metric suggests that if a player missed significant time in college, then they are likely to miss significant time as a pro which of course leads to less productivity.

The guys over at FO have been kind enough to apply SackSEER's projections to this years class of top edge rushers and there are a few surprises. Texas Christian's Jerry Hughes leads the pack with a 5 year projected sack total of 27.7. Players similar to Hughes according to the site are Jared Allen, Terrell Suggs, and Robert Mathis. FO also points out that Hughes is far from a sure thing. His stats line up favorably with epic bust Jason Babin.

Other notable names include:

Derrick Morgan: 23.3 Sacks through Year 5.
Everson Griffen: 22.8
Brandon Graham: 22.1
Sergio Kindle: 18.8
Carlos Dunlap: 16.1

And here's the kicker. FO's SackSEER project's USF DE Jason Pierre-Paul to accumulate a whopping 3.8 sacks during his first five years in the NFL. JPP's junior college experience really hurts him in this model. I could tell you why but they say it so succinctly I think I will just give you their reasoning.

So why do junior college edge rushers struggle so mightily when transitioning to the NFL? Most edge rusher prospects who play at the junior college level miss two years worth of their NCAA eligibility, and they are understandably "raw" when they enter the professional ranks. Although many coaches believe that such a player can be "coached up," the coaching staff can only devote so much of its valuable coaching resources to a single player. Moreover, many players who go to a junior college have significant or severe academic issues, and expecting them to digest a complicated NFL playbook while also "catching up" on their fundamentals may be unrealistic.

The article goes on to list a gi-normous amount of junior college edge rushers that have failed immaculately in the NFL. So let's hope some of those mock drafts projecting the Bucs to take JPP are dead wrong, because if this model is even partially correct, he is going to be a HUGE bust. I urge you guys to check out this model and familiarize yourselves with it. It could prove to be a great tool in evaluating talent for years to come.

With all the hoopla surrounding Josh Freeman and the back and forth of his season, as well as the attempts to place him historically against other quarterbacks, I figured a look at other quarterbacks in similar situations may help us get a better idea of where Freeman is as a player and where he may be headed. (To view all graphs, you can set your viewing to "Wide" as opposed to "Narrow" or you can click on links at bottom)

In our previous looks at Freeman, we've covered completion percentage and yards per attempt and how each class of quarterback fared as well as the additional groupings we researched.  In this edition of our article Part II, we'll begin to explore the fantastic world of quarterback ratings.  The main question we are trying to answer is with Freeman having no data beyond his rookie year, where can we project him in future years?  By utilizing the 16 quarterbacks we selected and the historical seasons of quarterbacks from 1970-2009, we will try and place Freeman into a range by using quarterback rating.

If everything pans out, we will be able to come up with a statistical idea as to where Josh Freeman will end up in Years 2 and 3. 

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