Proper Responses to Tom Brady's Injury

On Sunday, the sporting world watched in shock as possibly the greatest quarterback in the history of the NFL went down with a torn ACL. This is a quarterback who excels in any situation (cold, snow, wind, rain, pressure situations, whatever) and a quarterback on a team that was the heavy favorite to win its 4th Super Bowl this decade.

Like him or not, you can't deny that the NFL thrived as much as it did last year because of Tom Brady last year, and was hoping to ride him and the New England Patriots for years to come. The ratings for the Patriots games at the end of last year, including the Super Bowl, were record-producing. Now, it faces a Brady-less season and possibly a Patriots-less postseason.

How should we respond to the injury of Tom Brady and the prospect of a losing Patriots squad? What are the appropriate measures we need to take? These are my thoughts:

10. Have a giant countdown in the scoreboard of every stadium to week 1 of next season.

9. Have defenses playing the Patriots only be able to put 10 players on the field so the Patriots still have a high-flying offense.

8. Have the Pats start at the 50 whenever they get the ball.

7. Let the Patriots get 10 points per touchdown.

6. Change the name of the Super Bowl to the "Tom Brady Game"

5. Have Roger Goodell step down as NFL commissioner and let Brady be commissioner for just one season.

4. Have Gisele Bundchen posters hung around Gilette Stadium so people remember Tom Brady (ratings would increase due to the posters as well).
3. The winner of this year's Super Bowl should have an asterisk attached to their name in the record books (reading: "did not beat Tom Brady and Randy Moss").

2. Have the Colts, Cowboys, Chargers, Steelers, Jaguars, Saints, Packers, and Panthers change their nicknames to the Patriots. Change all their QB's names to Tom Brady.

1. Have Matt Cassel get plastic surgery so his face looks exactly like Tom Brady's face, and have him change his name to Tom Brady.

P.S. I am a Pats fan and am devastated right now.

Eli Manning--A Long Way to Go

Eli Manning is a much improved quarterback. I can't deny it, as overrated as I think Eli is. However, that doesn't mean he's good, it just means that he isn't as horrible as he used to be. He's far from a top-15 quarterback in the league.

I know Manning supporters will say numbers don't tell the whole story, but let's start off by looking at them anyways. If you are feeling a little queasy, feel free to skip past the following table, which shows his performance the past three years.

Year QB Rating Comp Pct Y/A TD INT Fb Lost 2005 75.9 52.8 6.8 24 17 9 2 2006 77 57.7 6.2 24 18 9 2 2007 73.9 56.1 6.3 23 20 13 7 rank in 2007 25 T-29 T-26 11 T-1 T-2 T-2

What's most amazing about those numbers is that the Giants have always surrounded Eli with talent. This isn't Tom Brady in 2006, where his best receiver the whole season (by a long shot) was Reche Caldwell (and Brady still posted solid numbers). Eli had Tiki and Jacobs in 2005 and 2006, and replaced Tiki with Derrick Ward and Bradshaw in 2007. Plax, Shockey, and Toomer have also been around for all three years. Many of Eli's good plays were a result of just somehow getting it to Plax, whether throwing a jump ball or seeing Plax break tackles.

Plax Jump Ball TD

Eli Manning supporter: Yeah, but look at the postseason last year. Eli's turned it around! 95.7 QB rating, 6 TDs, 1 INT, 7.2 Y/A, a decent 60.5% completion percentage. The drive against the Pats to win the game! How can you deny that Eli Manning has finally come around and deserves respect now?

It's true, Eli had a great postseason and posted good numbers en route to a Super Bowl title over the only team to ever have gone 16-0. However, the defenses that he succeeded against in the first couple rounds basically packed the line and dared Eli to throw the ball into single coverage. In short, Eli only did well because teams gave him easy opportunities to throw the ball. Teams expected to be playing a horrible quarterback, and Eli played above average.

Meanwhile, in the Super Bowl, the Giants defense had a much larger role than the offense in winning that game. The winning drive easily could've ended in interceptions a couple times, especially the ball Asante Samuel failed to come down with on the sideline. Also, while Eli did a good job evading tacklers on Tyree's catch, are we really going to give him credit for lofting the ball to the middle of the field into coverage?

Now that teams might be more wary of Manning's arm (they still might not be), let's see how Manning performs in 2008. If the first game was any indication, the "new" Eli isn't any different than the "old" Eli. Yeah, the Giants beat the Redskins 16-7, and Eli rushed for a TD, but let's take a closer look at his performance. Eli threw 5 passes that easily could've been interceptions (including a sure pick six).

Eli has a long way to go before establishing himself as a good quarterback in the NFL.

Overperforming/Underperforming Baseball Teams According to Pythagorean Expectation

In this blog, I have decided to look at which baseball teams records that reflect their overall performance, and which teams have records that don't.

Using the Pythagorean Expectation formula used by Bill James (win pct=RS^2/(RS^2+RA^2)), I determined the expected win percentage of all MLB teams. However, I replaced the coefficient of 2 with 1.81, which is supposedly more accurate. Understand that while the Pythagorean Expectation is quite accurate, it doesn't take into account good managing and clutch performances. Still, it is a useful and telling statistic for the most part. It could help to answer questions such as if the Rays are the real deal or not.
Here is the data:

AL East	RS	RA	PCT	P1.81	Diff
Tampa Bay	639	546	0.618	0.571	0.047
Boston	729	580	0.587	0.602	-0.02
NYY	671	630	0.536	0.528	0.008
Toronto	603	531	0.518	0.557	-0.04
Baltimore	704	739	0.457	0.478	-0.02
AL Central	RS	RA	PCT	P1.81	Diff
ChiSox	696	611	0.558	0.559	-0
Minnesota	703	623	0.558	0.554	0.004
Cleveland	669	629	0.489	0.528	-0.04
Detroit	695	703	0.478	0.495	-0.02
KC	562	686	0.423	0.411	0.012
AL West	RS	RA	PCT	P1.81	Diff
LA Angels	633	573	0.613	0.545	0.068
Texas	768	836	0.486	0.462	0.024
Oakland	533	574	0.457	0.467	-0.01
Seattle	581	690	0.391	0.423	-0.03
NL East	RS	RA	PCT	P1.81	Diff
NY Mets	684	604	0.561	0.556	0.005
Philly	669	576	0.547	0.567	-0.02
Florida	647	681	0.504	0.477	0.027
ATL	639	669	0.432	0.479	-0.05
Washington	535	686	0.381	0.389	-0.01
NL Central	RS	RA	PCT	P1.81	Diff
ChiCubs	750	566	0.612	0.625	-0.01
Milwaukee	663	577	0.58	0.563	0.017
St. Louis	673	621	0.54	0.536	0.004
Houston	624	653	0.525	0.479	0.046
Cincinnati	588	686	0.442	0.431	0.011
Pittsburgh	618	754	0.423	0.411	0.012
NL West	RS	RA	PCT	P1.81	Diff
Arizona	634	609	0.507	0.518	-0.01
LAD	578	568	0.496	0.508	-0.01
Colorado	656	708	0.471	0.466	0.005
SanFran	530	649	0.428	0.409	0.019
San Diego	533	649	0.384	0.412	-0.03

As you can see, most of the actual winning percentages are extremely close to the Pythagorean Expectation. However, a few things stick out to me.
1. LA Angels Overperforming--The team that differs the most from its actual winning percentage are the Angels. According to the theory, they are actually only the 5th best baseball team in the AL despite having the 2nd best record. The cause for this is probably a combination of a few things: great managing by Mike Scioscia, winning a lot of close games (K-Rod has had 59 save opportunities), timely hitting, and getting lucky. The Angels are a good team with playoff experience, but don't be surprised if they fall quickly in the postseason.

2. Rays the Real Deal, Kind of--Are the Devil Rays truly a playoff caliber team this year? Yes. Are they the best team in the AL (currently they own the best record)? No. Behind the Angels, they are the 2nd most overperforming squard in the MLB, and haven't been playing as well as the Red Sox (who are slightly underperforming). Unless David Price provides a major spark for the Rays this month, I can't see them getting past the much more experienced, underperforming Red Sox team.
3. Cubbies are Heavy Favorites in the NL--The Cubs are even slightly underperforming, while the Brewers are overperforming. Their Pythagorean (with 1.81 exponent) Win % is >0.06 pts ahead of the Brewers. This should be the year, but of course Bill James doesn't take curses into account.
Conclusion--Admittedly, this analysis didn't show anything really eye-opening, but I found it interesting nonetheless. The postseason is short, teams get hot, players get injured, and there is a lot of natural deviation, so it's impossible to have a 100% positive pick on which team will win the pennant or a series. Most of the time, the best team in the MLB won't win the World Series.

Natural deviation has never been as apparent as last year, when the Diamondbacks scored less runs than they allowed but had the best record in the NL and swept the cubs in the divisional round.

Just adding this in as an annoyed Yankees fan: The firing of Joe Torre was a ridiculously ignorant decision. Fact is, you can't completely evaluate how good a team or a manager is by the results in a short postseason. A manager could easily lose despite making smart, educated moves, and that is what happened to Joe Torre. There is too much deviation. Bringing a team to the playoffs that many years in a row is an amazing accomplishment. If you're going to fire somebody based on postseason performance, evaluate their decisions and their preparation, but not their results.