Mike Shanahan

[GTripp0012]

Originally Posted by Paintrain

I don't have time to do it but I'd love to see someone do a points deficit analysis on Grossman's turnovers. The parameters are how many of his turnovers this season were inside scoring range (within the opponents 35 yard line) and how many of his turnovers directly led to points on the ensuing possession or as a TD return. I'm not a math guy at all but I was thinking minus 3 (minimum for an assumed score on a FG) for any scoring range turnovers and add the points up that resulted from his turnovers to determine the figure.

I think even with our limited talent surrounding him, a quality QB would have been worth at least 4 more wins.

3 points per turnover is a pretty solid estimate of what one costs. I'm not going to go deep and actually look at the WPA/EPA effect of every single Grossman turnover, but if he's got 26 turnovers or whatever, than that's about 70-85 net point differential lost on those plays.

Of course, the quarterback who doesn't commit any turnovers doesn't exist of course, so if a Tom Brady would have only committed 12 turnovers in the same offense, the difference would be about 35-50 points of point differential.

That's more than one win, two wins at the high end of the estimate. But unless that quarterback is also better at throwing for yards and points than Rex Grossman is, you still don't have a playoff team. 4 wins is too high of an estimate. You're looking at a solid win that Grossman cost us with his turnover tendency, but there's only about a 2 win difference between Grossman, one of the most culpable turnover machines, and Alex Smith, the quarterback who has commited the fewest turnovers in 15 starts this year.

And Grossman threw for more first downs, points, and yards than Smith did this year. Bottom line, there's no realistic way to add more than a win at the QB position next year without also raising the performance of other players in the offense. The QB isolated stats won't allow that. And then when you allow for the fact that we played a really weak schedule this year, it's not even likely we can improve the QB position next year no matter who we get.

-EDIT- without improving offensive passing stats, that is. You can always find a guy who can light up the scoreboard. Or just buy Grossman a top receiver or something.