Vince Young overrated?

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Defensewins

Let me spell this out for you since you are obviously a little hyper sensitive and emotional about this. You mistakenly took my post as an attack. The expression 'Stats are for losers' comes from the situation of a player that plays on LOSING TEAM and has nothing to point to but his own individual stats, despite his teams being a big failure. So I was not attacking or calling your friend Jsarno a loser, I was calling the Cardinal TEAM losers. FACT #1.

FACT #2 is we are different when it comes to sports. I played a ton of sports during my life time. I played this game to win, not to be #1 in the stats department. By the way you cling to stats as the end all of fact, you might be more of a sports fan than an actual player. Stats are very misleading. Look at the Pats game this weekend. Randy Moss was doubled and received most of the attention of the Cowboys Defense. So his teammates benefited from it and a guy like Wes Welker had a career day. Well according to your non-bending "Stats Never Lie" theory Wes Welker is a better receiver than Randy Moss. We all know that is not the case. All of the Pats WR's benefited from playing opposite R. Moss and that does not show up on a stat sheet. Moss was statistically was 4th in receiveing that day, stats by themselves are not fact. You also have to consider who you are playing against when looking at stats.
Please don't take this as an attack on you. You asked me to back up my points with fact and I have. I am just stating a different opinion on the whole stats issue. However your comments on your highly emotional post challenging my football knowledge and calling me "blissfully ignorant" is a personal attack. Someone starting a thread every two weeks calling a QB on a winning team and singling him out is also an attack.
Football players are paid to win, not be #1 in stats.

Firstly, you did attack Jsarno for making an arguably unessecary but solid argument highlighting Vince's struggles until this point. My post was more of a defense of Jsarno than an attack on the you, and so far you've kept it clean and professional so I have no reason to be irate. Please don't mistake my passion for anger.

The problem is you have no idea what my stance even is. I use facts to analyze players to best evaluate them. I never use stats to make a bad argument, because that is completely counterproductive to what I'm trying to accomplish to be ultra analytical. Thus you get the "blissfully ignorant" part of my comment. Ignorant is not a dirty word, nor an insult. I hope no one takes it as so. It's merely an observation I make that you clearly have no idea what it is that I do.

Firstly, you make the assumption that I never played sports simply because I like to analyze so I am not ignorant. Secondly, you assume I take the "stats never lie" position and thirdly you defended it by giving an argument that I clearly don't support, nor have ever claimed to or referenced. Since you are wrong on all three accounts, that's ignorance. Not stupidity or evilness or anything even remotely bad. I personally don't even care that you misunderstood me, but if it goes on a public fourm, then I have to defend myself.

Nothing you said is fundamentally wrong, per say, but I believe it reflects on a very narrow persepcion of the game. I have often defended a many of your posts in the past as very good nuggets of knowledge, so obviously you know what you are talking about often. I wish you were willing to possibly look at other viewpoints when they make sense, but to each their own I guess.

I am not bitter and I'm sorry if I offended you.

[TheBigD]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Nothing you said is fundamentally wrong, per say, but I believe it reflects on a very narrow persepcion of the game. I have often .....

LOL...man it took me some time to figure out what you were trying to say there. Please don't think I am insulting you or something.

Now, about stats and since you say you can't stand when people ignore stats and get "edgy". How come you and Jsarno tend to omit or minimize the importance of the most important stas of all, in my opinion at leas, which is WINS? You said Leinart had a better rookie year than Young, says who? You are saying that based on the fact that Leinart had better passing numbers because he had Boldin and Fitzgerald where Young had, at best, a banged up Drew Bennett. Young had more wins last year than Leinart. That is what I, and probably DefenseWins, think is what matters. Last time I checked, they don't award the SB to the the team whose players got the best stats but the team that has the most wins in the playoffs.

[mheisig]

Originally Posted by TheBigD

LOL...man it took me some time to figure out what you were trying to say there. Please don't think I am insulting you or something.

Now, about stats and since you say you can't stand when people ignore stats and get "edgy". How come you and Jsarno tend to omit or minimize the importance of the most important stas of all, in my opinion at leas, which is WINS? You said Leinart had a better rookie year than Young, says who? You are saying that based on the fact that Leinart had better passing numbers because he had Boldin and Fitzgerald where Young had, at best, a banged up Drew Bennett. Young had more wins last year than Leinart. That is what I, and probably DefenseWins, think is what matters. Last time I checked, they don't award the SB to the the team whose players got the best stats but the team that has the most wins in the playoffs.

This wasn't directed at me, but I'm going to jump in anyway since...well, because I can.

The original discussion was about Vince Young as an individual QB and whether he is overrated as a QB or not. Consequently it's only fair to compare Young to other QBs in similar situations. Typically this is done with stats.

Yes, the win-loss record is an important stat. It's also a broad, overarching team stat. It encompasses an almost infinite number of factors and data and consequently is not particularly useful when analyzing an individual player. Yes, when it comes to the Super Bowl it's the only stat that matters, but arguing that the only stat of Vince Young that matters, as an individual QB, is his teams win-loss record is ridiculous oversimplification.

This particular discussion is about Vince Young as a player. We're fortunate to have the technology available to us to look up almost any stat we could possibly want on a player and use that as support for the various arguments we want to make. Ignoring all of that and reducing an analysis of a player to his team's win-loss record is intellectually ignorant and a gross oversimplification.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by TheBigD

LOL...man it took me some time to figure out what you were trying to say there. Please don't think I am insulting you or something.

Now, about stats and since you say you can't stand when people ignore stats and get "edgy". How come you and Jsarno tend to omit or minimize the importance of the most important stas of all, in my opinion at leas, which is WINS? You said Leinart had a better rookie year than Young, says who? You are saying that based on the fact that Leinart had better passing numbers because he had Boldin and Fitzgerald where Young had, at best, a banged up Drew Bennett. Young had more wins last year than Leinart. That is what I, and probably DefenseWins, think is what matters. Last time I checked, they don't award the SB to the the team whose players got the best stats but the team that has the most wins in the playoffs.

I honestly tried to respell 'perception' over and over again, and no matter what I tried, it looked even worse than the last time. I tend to be a pretty decent speller, and I don't know what hit me.

Wins are a great stat for answering a certain kind of question: something like: "who has won the most games?" Well, thats not a debate worth having since you can look the answer up online, someone is right, and then it's over.

That's why you never get that question on a fourm. So instead you get questions like "is Vince Young overrated" in which case wins are at best a stat that can support a sound argument, not actually make one.

Judging a QB by how many games he has won is no different than judging a baseball pitcher by how many games he has won. It sounds nice in passing conversation, but doesn't really tell you anything about the player.

Thus it doesn't really contribute to the "is Vince Young overrated" discussion. So when you say that jsarno is being anal because you are entitled to your opinion, you really arent providing an opinion really. You are drawing a conclusion prematurely from incredibly insignificant evidence.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of equally insignificant stats out there that people will use to argue that Young is playing awful, but a few of the key critical ones do support jsarno's argument.

So if you want to support your opinion, you'd have to provide some reasoning that the numbers presented are not an adequate predictor of Vince Young's future. And there are good reasons out there, as Matty and Smootsmack (among others) have definately brought up reasons that jsarno could be a bit off in his analysis.

Just be warned that saying that a guy wins more really doesn't answer the question "is player x overrated?"



Re: Leinart: His college career on the whole was more prolific (and more importantly, longer) than Young's and his passing numbers were significantly better as a rookie which is a lot of reason to think he will be better than Young. Your argument about him having better weapons is something I would probably have to open up a whole new thread to respond to about the effect of "weapons" on a QBs numbers, but here's the simple version: Good QBs will produce close to their expected level in numbers regardless of the talent they have surrounding them. If Young is better than Leinart, by the end of his career, his numbers will reflect that regardless of who he has helping him. If they turn out to be very, very close, then the argument that one guy had more help carries a lot of weight.

I know it wasn't even a whole year, but the difference between Young and Leinart in 2006 was quite the chasm. I do expect that trend to continue once Leinart gets healthy.

[TheBigD]

Originally Posted by GTripp0012

Just be warned that saying that a guy wins more really doesn't answer the question "is player x overrated?"

you are absolutely right. Wins doesn't answer that question. This whole thing is very subjective. I believe we in general label people to be overrated when someone gets more credit than they deserve. Who give people credit, and who exactly knows how much of it they actually deserve. Look, Palmer is not getting much attention in the media right now, why? Because his team is losing. Brady did not get this much attention last year, and he is getting all the media to talk about him and his bastard kids more than they talk about Matt Schaub, for instance, because his team is winning. Yes, the media give Young lots of credit for the wins that his WHOLE team is earning. But that has been the case with every QB. Even though Vick's receivers couldn't catch the ball at all, he used to get blamed all the time.

The Problem here is that the media is "making you believe" that he is like superman, and YOU can't see that. I say YOU because I believe that many Titans fans would gladly tell you that he has shown THEM enough to make them believe he is really really good.

Re: Leinart: His college career on the whole was more prolific (and more importantly, longer) than Young's and his passing numbers were significantly better as a rookie which is a lot of reason to think he will be better than Young. Your argument about him having better weapons is something I would probably have to open up a whole new thread to respond to about the effect of "weapons" on a QBs numbers, but here's the simple version: Good QBs will produce close to their expected level in numbers regardless of the talent they have surrounding them. If Young is better than Leinart, by the end of his career, his numbers will reflect that regardless of who he has helping him. If they turn out to be very, very close, then the argument that one guy had more help carries a lot of weight.

Again, this depends on who and how you look at it. I look at this way. USC usually has better talent all around. Leinart played in Pac10, pretty weak when he was there, and Young in Big 12. We can go on and on about his, but when push came to shove, Leinart, White and Bush together could not beat Young. That is a head to head match up, and Young won it.

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by TheBigD

you are absolutely right. Wins doesn't answer that question. This whole thing is very subjective. I believe we in general label people to be overrated when someone gets more credit than they deserve. Who give people credit, and who exactly knows how much of it they actually deserve. Look, Palmer is not getting much attention in the media right now, why? Because his team is losing. Brady did not get this much attention last year, and he is getting all the media to talk about him and his bastard kids more than they talk about Matt Schaub, for instance, because his team is winning. Yes, the media give Young lots of credit for the wins that his WHOLE team is earning. But that has been the case with every QB. Even though Vick's receivers couldn't catch the ball at all, he used to get blamed all the time.

The Problem here is that the media is "making you believe" that he is like superman, and YOU can't see that. I say YOU because I believe that many Titans fans would gladly tell you that he has shown THEM enough to make them believe he is really really good.

The only real subjective part of it is what you believe Young is "rated" as. We all have the same evidence on the guy, and jsarno's question asked if the general perception of the player exceeded his production by a significant amount, or not.

Young's production isn't anything special, yet the media tends to perceive him as a special player. Thus, I would say by definition he is overrated.

Of course, if you are surrounded by a group of Young haters who despise the guy, you could point to his 64% completion as being nothing to spit on. In this case, he's not overrated because the perception is that he isn't good.

I tend to use the general media perception as a measuring stick for a player being over or underrated. That much is completely subjective. Young's performance is quite objective. All measures of production are to a degree, imperfect, but certain rate stats get pretty darn close.

The Titans fans are privy to the exact same evidence you and I am.

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by TheBigD

LOL...man it took me some time to figure out what you were trying to say there. Please don't think I am insulting you or something.

Now, about stats and since you say you can't stand when people ignore stats and get "edgy". How come you and Jsarno tend to omit or minimize the importance of the most important stas of all, in my opinion at leas, which is WINS? You said Leinart had a better rookie year than Young, says who? You are saying that based on the fact that Leinart had better passing numbers because he had Boldin and Fitzgerald where Young had, at best, a banged up Drew Bennett. Young had more wins last year than Leinart. That is what I, and probably DefenseWins, think is what matters. Last time I checked, they don't award the SB to the the team whose players got the best stats but the team that has the most wins in the playoffs.

OK, I said this a couple times already, but you have missed it apparently, so I'll say it again. Young is only 11-9!!!! No playoff appearances. I think you are overvalueing that stat just a tad aren't you? You are ignoring EVERY stat but saying that someone barely over .500 and no playoff appearances is a winner. HUH?
I got two words for you...REX GROSSMAN!