Manipulating Mike Glennon's statistics to tell a story

Mike Glennon had good numbers as a rookie, say the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They highlighted Glennon's passer rating as a rookie, which ranked third behind Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson among rookies since 2010. That sounds good, but it's simply a result of looking at only a small part of his statistics. Annoyingly, Pat Yasinskas of ESPN decided to run with that stat anyway, claiming that Glennon's stats compare to Russell Wilson's and Robert Griffin III's.

The fact that the Buccaneers chose this stat is no surprise: teams always and exclusively focus on the positives. The fact that Yasinskas felt the need to reinforce a team blowing smoke up its own player's butt is more surprising, but Yasinskas' strengths aren't in the area of statistics. Mistakes happen -- but that doesn't mean we need to let them stand.

So, why does Mike Glennon come out looking so good in passer rating? Because the statistic ignores rushing and sacks, and heavily emphasizes the categories Glennon found success in, while ignoring or marginalizing those he did not do well in. It is once again an incomplete viewing of the statistical record, taken to be a complete representation.

The choice of Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson as the relevant player is especially unfortunate, given the duo's combined 1,304 rushing yards and 11 rushing touchdowns, compared to Glennon's 37 rushing yards and no touchdowns. That alone should tell you that this is not exactly a relevant statistic.

There's more, though. Passer rating is an over-engineered mess of a statistic, based on numbers that were average in the 1960s. Because of that, today's statistics make it go wonky in weird places. It heavily rewards high completion percentages, because the average completion percentage back in 1960 came in around 50%. It hates interceptions and loves touchdowns. It doesn't take into account sacks, fumbles or rushing attempts and actual yardage is only a small part of the formula.

Certainly, Yasinskas isn't the first one to bring up these statistics, or similar ones, he's just the most recent one. Other people may point to his eight games with multiple touchdowns -- a rookie record, sure, but another example of focusing on a very, very small portion of his statistical record.

To illustrate this point, here's a table of all rookie quarterbacks with at least 200 pass attempts from 2010 through 2013, courtesy of Pro Football Reference. Every column is sortable. Go ahead and play around with them, to see where Mike Glennon lands in each category.

Glennon's performance across statistical categories varies heavily. Yes, he was one of the best rookies at throwing touchdowns and avoiding interceptions, and his passer rating was really good, too (as a consequence). But he lands near the bottom in yards per attempt and sacks and his completion percentage is average. If we look at advanced statistics like DVOA and Total QBR, he was one of the worst starters in the NFL. And we haven't even touched added value on the ground.

None of this is to say that Glennon will fail to improve, or that he's definitely worse than those players, or that he had a bad season given the circumstances. It's just that this statistical manipulation has to stop.

The need to try to make his statistics seem better than they are by looking at incomplete records is a little weird, because none of this signifies anything. None of these statistics say anything about his circumstances, or his ability to improve going forward. And that's what matters, not some attempt to seek positives no matter the relevance.