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[h1]How Good Is Andrew Luck? [/h1]
7:20 AM By Neil Paine
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Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck before an NFL playoff game against the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Mass., in January 2014.

Stephan Savoia / AP
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As he prepares for his third season in the NFL, Andrew Luck of the Indianapolis Colts is already regarded as one of the league’s premier quarterbacks. ESPN’s Mike Sando polled 26 NFL front-office and scouting types this month, asking them to sort every current starting quarterback into one of five tiers; Luck was in the top group, ranking fifth overall.

In terms of justifications, the Colts’ record under Luck speaks for itself. Since installing Luck as its starting QB before his rookie season of 2012, the team has won nearly 69 percent of its games (posting a pair of 11-5 campaigns). Luck also looks like a prototypical quarterback. At 6 feet 3 inches tall and 235 pounds, Luck’s size jibes far more with the preconceived notion of what an elite QB should look like than, say, Seattle’s Russell Wilson (who stands 5 feet 11 inches). Further, Sando’s scouts are probably the same people who regarded Luck as “the top quarterback prospect to come along in the past 30 years” when he was at Stanford. Research in psychology has shown that it’s incredibly difficult to alter people’s first impressions, so it might have taken a Ryan Leaf-esque flop for scouts to change their opinions about Luck’s potential superstardom.

In terms of individual statistics, however, Luck has hardly been a top-five quarterback. Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt  (ANY/A) — which quantifies a quarterback’s passing efficiency while taking into account his touchdown passes, interceptions and sacks – ranks Luck 18th in the NFL over the past two seasons. He finished 16th in 2013. By that measure, Luck hasn’t even been an average passer thus far in his career.

Depending on the stat or the scout, Luck is mediocre or good. Or great. Or average.

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What’s going on?

Even by the standards of individual football statistics, ANY/A is a rough metric. It doesn’t account for strength of schedule, and it treats all yardage as equal regardless of the situation. Other metrics, like ESPN’s Total QBR  (in which Luck ranked ninth a year ago) and Brian Burke’s Expected Points Added  (eighth) and Win Probability Added  (sixth), regard Luck more highly, suggesting that he’s performing well in QB rushing and clutch play, which conventional yardage-based passing metrics don’t effectively measure.

Indeed, Luck’s running game is often overlooked. In its Defense-Adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR) metric, Football Outsiders ranked Luck as the top rushing QB in the NFL last season. But even if we add Luck’s rushing DYAR to his passing tally over the past two seasons, he ranks 12th among quarterbacks in total value added above replacement.

The same goes for Pro Football Focus’s play-by-play grades — by their estimation, Luck was third among QBs in rushing value added above average. But those grades also rate Luck as barely better than an average QB as a passer. Again, if we combine passing and rushing (plus penalty avoidance) and convert those grades to assess value against replacement (instead of average), Luck has been the 14th-ranked quarterback over the past two seasons.

In both sets of value-over-replacement rankings, Luck narrowly places ahead of the Carolina Panthers’ Cam Newton, who makes for a particularly interesting point of comparison. Statistically, the two quarterbacks offered similar production a year ago, but their reputations couldn’t be more different. Luck is widely known as a “winner“; Newton has been dogged by criticism as a “stat-padder” who doesn’t deliver in big moments. Those sentiments probably played a large role when Sando’s execs placed Newton in the third tier despite having a quantitative résumé similar to Luck’s. Backing up that viewpoint, Christopher Price writes in Football Outsiders’ 2014 Almanac: “Newton is a very talented quarterback, but nobody in the league would take him over Andrew Luck right now.”

Of course, the biggest reason professed by the executives for their high placement of Luck was his team’s success despite a weak supporting cast, which gets at the fundamental limitations of evaluating individual NFL players with metrics and the eye test. “The evaluators think Luck has carried a subpar roster to a 22-10 record without much help,” Sando writes.

Football Outsiders has a great caveat about individual advanced stats that goes along these lines:
“In 2013, Andrew Luck had 650 DYAR. But what we are really saying is ‘In 2013, Andrew Luck, playing in Pep Hamilton’s offensive system with the Indianapolis offensive line blocking for him and Donald Brown and Trent Richardson providing rushing support, had 650 DYAR.’ “
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The truth is that in football, perhaps more than any other sport, a player’s statistics depend greatly on the talent around him. And the common perception is that Luck’s supporting cast is similar to that which went 2-14 with Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky and Kerry Collins under center in 2011. That might not be entirely true, but it’s largely beyond our statistical capabilities to test assertions like those empirically.

We can attempt to measure the talent and experience level of isolated parts of an offense, but in the end we’re left with rough estimates. And what do we do if Luck’s early career ends up mirroring that of John Elway — a prestigious QB with surprisingly ordinary stats? We’ll be left wondering whether it was a coincidence if his stats jump when the 2024 versions of Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey come along. (Or think of Tom Brady, the poster child for a quarterback’s statistical production not matching his reputation … until Randy Moss arrived in New England.)

So, in a certain sense, we still don’t know how good Luck is. He’s probably better than his raw efficiency rates suggest, but maybe he’s not quite as good as his top-tier ranking among NFL scouts and executives. It’s a fuzzy picture of individual value that NFL fans have to settle for while we wait for new ways to more effectively disentangle players’ contributions from one another.
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Reputation and hype cloud judgement? Perception is reality? Image is everything?

Not groundbreaking but another set of stats to keep in mind
 
Different topic I noticed Ben looked thinner this year. Apparently he really focused on his diet and conditioning this summer along with arm strength (didn't perceive as an issue but whatever). Contract extension talks will do that I guess :lol
 
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http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/sto...llenge-eli-manning-complete-70-percent-passes


Monday, July 28, 2014
Goal for Eli Manning: 70 percent rate
By Dan Graziano
ESPN.com

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The New York Giants are setting lofty goals for their new offense in 2014 as new quarterbacks coach Danny Langsdorf has challenged Eli Manning to complete 70 percent of his passes.

"It hasn't been done very often, so that's the ultimate goal," Langsdorf said before Giants practice Monday. "I think it's been done eight or nine times, maybe? That's an impressive statistic in the history of the league. So that's what we're gunning for, that 70 percent."

Manning's career completion percentage is 58.5. His highest mark for a single season is 62.9 percent in 2010, and it has dropped each year since -- all the way to 57.5 last year, when he led the NFL with 27 interceptions against only 18 touchdowns.

After last season, the Giants changed offensive coordinators and have installed a new offensive scheme.

Langsdorf rattled off the names to complete 70 percent of their passes in a single season -- Sammy Baugh (in an eight-game season in 1945), Ken Anderson (1982), Alex Smith (before losing his job to Colin Kaepernick in 2012), Drew Brees (2009 and 2011), Steve Young (1994) and Joe Montana (1989).

And Langsdorf knows Manning has the list, because he made sure to go over it with him this offseason.

"He's well aware of who's done it in the past and what the system can get you in terms of completion," Langsdorf said. "So we're trying to focus on that and really trying to do a good job of taking care of the ball and hitting open receivers."

The New York Giants have challenged Eli Manning to join this list of the highest single-season completion percentages for NFL QBs (min. 180 attempts):

When Langsdorf refers to "the system," he's talking about the new offense that the Giants are installing under first-year offensive coordinator Ben McAdoo. The passing game is likely to rely more on short, higher-percentage passes than the old Kevin Gilbride-coached offense did, and the theory is that Manning's completion percentage will rise for that reason alone.

"I don't know about the history here; maybe they took more shots downfield," Langsdorf said. "I think we've added some more completion throws, some quick gains."

A passing game that relies on shorter throws would seem to help any quarterback. And guys like Young and Montana in their 70-percent seasons were working in West Coast offenses whose principles are ancestors of what McAdoo helped run when he was in Green Bay.

"I think that number has always been used by this offense as a standard," head coach Tom Coughlin said of the West Coast-style offense being implemented by the Giants. "Not that it's been achieved very often, but it's a goal."

As Manning pointed out Monday, there's still a long way to go before the Giants even feel as though they know how to operate the new scheme.

"I think guys are just starting to understand the tempo of the offense, the timing of the routes, the kinds of plays we can get into, and I think it's coming faster for the quarterbacks also," Manning said. "We've got to keep working, and I think we're getting more of the install in, but there are still more plays, more concepts to be put in, so we've still got some ways to go."
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You don't need advance stats for qbs imo.

TD to Turnover ratio
Short, Intermediate and Deep ball accuracy
Redzone effectiveness
And ultimately can you win in the playoffs

I think advanced stats are great for things we really don't know about coverage, o-line & d-line play,

QB play is about eye test imo.
 
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HerbShuttles15 said:
You don't need advance stats for qbs imo.

TD to Turnover ratio
Short, Intermediate and Deep ball accuracy
Redzone effectiveness
And ultimately can you win in the playoffs

I think advanced stats are great for things we really don't know about coverage, o-line & d-line play,

QB play is about eye test to me imo.
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How does playing the Titans, Jaguars, and Texans 6x a season factor into the "talent around him" argument?
 
100027 said:
How does playing the Titans, Jaguars, and Texans 6x a season factor into the "talent around him" argument?
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It's weird, I don't remember a single Luck fan pointing out any of those games as examples of his potential or greatness.

Do you have any examples maybe of someone hyping Luck beating the Titans, or Jags? Could I see one?
 
at the end of the day regardless of how good or bad the afc south is it's still a divison in the nfl and any team can beat any team on any given sunday, no game is an easy win or given in the league...
 
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