Ryan, Flacco, and Adjusted QB Wins

Nice Job. It looks like a lot of thought and effort went into this. Defense does play a large part in a team winning games. It seems like no Falcon fans want to acknowledge that Matt Ryan definitely had better skill postion players on offense playing with him. Offensive skill players have a much larger impact in a QB’s successes or failures than his defense (who’s not on the field with him….ever).

What I appreciate most about your posts is that they always add background and context to our often rant-filled discussions. Big ups, my orange friend.

Brutal statsmanship, and we have our first Editor’s Pick FanPost.

The glaring point is that Baltimores defense is the deciding factor between the two sets of stats. That shouldn’t b a surprise though as Baltimore has had a great defense for many years.

I like the article, but unfortunately for Falcon’s fans, the analysis doesn’t prove much beyond the fact that the Raven’s defense is better than the Falcon’s defense. Another inferred point or difference could be that the Raven’s offensive scheme and requirements are different than the Falcon’s offense. To say that these numbers prove that Ryan is better is false. This analysis only proves that the Falcons rely on Matt Ryan to win games (particularly in 2009) more than the Ravens rely on Joe Flacco. This point would seem obvious to me. However, we can’t infer that Ryan is better from that argument since Ryan’s record as a starter is worse than Flacco’s and the reliance on Ryan didn’t produce a better record.

A team’s strategy changes when they’re winning versus losing. Therefore, a good team will be winning most games by 1) keeping their opponents from scoring and 2) scoring enough points to win. When a team is easily suppressing the opposing offense, their offense will no longer be aggressive because it needs to score less points to actually win the game, and the objective becomes running out the clock. We can bring up individual games all day long, but they don’t really say much statistically. If Flacco wins a game by throwing when 100 yards and Ryan loses a game when throwing for 300 yards, it doesn’t really mean anything since every game is so dynamic that anything could happen. In my opinion, the most telling analysis would be to look at the quarterback’s production versus the defense’s strength/rating over a season. Naturally, one would expect a quarterback with a bad defense to be forced into more production, the offense passing more and running less. Sure, the quarterback with the bad defense will have less attempts (and probably more interceptions), but those attempts will be a much higher percentage of passing attempts. Therefore, the fact that Baltimore had the better team in 2009 but Flacco still had more production is actually a impressive on his part.

Matt Ryan’s a great, young quarterback, but there is really no statistic at this point that can prove that he’s better than Flacco. Only time will tell.

Brilliant “my orange friend” (as Dave put it) …

after peyton an brady retire o slow dwn n production ryan vs flacco will b tha new rivalry an well get a taste this season

good to see a good relationship between different fans. It is nice to see mature people (Bmoreblitz and us falcons fans) no trash talking. thats all i saw when i went to the nfl play by play during games. we would bash people or the other team would. i feel like it is bad charma. now off that randomness, great post. mb we will c the ravens in the playoffs more and get a look at the two qb’s

is that despite the .563 winning percentage of the 16-20 category, Matty Ice has been able to win all of these games, that shows how good our offense is compared to our defense