Pointless Stats

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Stacks42

Is this driving anyone else insane? The commentators bringing up these completely pointless stats, there is now a stat for everything. ex. (first qb to throw for a 25 yard gain in the last minute of the third quarter in four consecutive games since 1985).

I agree, it's a pain in the ass.

To accurately use stats to understand football, one must sift through the ones that have no outcome on the game.

Hey Stacks, did you know that teams that kneel the ball 3 or more times during the course of a game win more than 99% of the time? Man, the Redskins should really consider taking more knees....

Pretty much any time a stat includes "if such team does this...then they will win X % of the time"....you can be pretty confident its a bad stat. I mean, there are some examples of the above that have basis in reality such as avoiding/creating turnovers, and scoring in the redzone, but those are just obvious ones. And then you get into what consitutes a turnover. Technically if a team drives down the field into the opponents territory, and fumble inside the redzone, thats a turnover, whereas going 3 and out from your own 20 and punting to give field position to the opposition at midfield is NOT a turnover, however clearly worse for your team.

It's all about finding the stats that correlate to success.