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ArizonaRamFan
Why do it now? I don't understand. After many times defending a certain QB with a MUCH larger sample size of losses over wins and how other aspects of his team let him down, you've now defended Keenum's much smaller sample size without even a cursory mention of Gurley's breakout games, or the dual threat of him and Austin that perhaps inflate Keenum's win statistics a bit.
Because according to you, it's a team sport and not just on the QB. Isn't it?
I have a way of putting it.
His team won 6 of those 9.The win does not automatically go to the qb (which is how many still try to do it--ie. they make the W/L column a qb stat). But saying wins or losses are not automatically qb stats doesn't mean you negate what the qb contributes. Good or bad.
As often as not bad qb play contributes to losses, which is why people want good qb play. Not every loss goes to the qb of course. So you still have to look at the situation. For example in Davis's 3 meltdown games in 2014, actually 1 was a win, even though he played poorly in that game for the most part.
You want to count on at least decent qb play. That's why people say "you can win with this guy." That phrase doesn;t mean "because of this guy." It means you can count on the qb to contribute to a win.
There are of course exceptional qbs who can overcome a lack of talent around them. I would say both Brady and Wilson did that last year. You have to account for that too.
So all I was doing here was saying, basically, you could win with this guy. He can contribute to winning. He can do enough to keep your passing game going, he doesn't fall apart and cost you the game.
But all that context and situation aware stuff aside, yes, when someone says "
Keenum is 6 of 9 with the Rams" I do resist that. Keenum's a factor, and he didn't hurt them, but they did not win BECAUSE of him, meaning it wasn't all on him.
When I put it all on the qb it's in comeback situations, because the team has to depend on passing (usually) to win in those situations. The qb has to pass against a defense that knows he has to but also has to show composure and poise along with accuracy and so on. That to me is one of the big tests of who a qb is and how good he is.
As far as the sample size thing, I think that's overused and misused in situations like this. You misapply the "sample size" routine in a context like this and basically you have said you can't tell anything about the guy one way or another. That's literally what they SHOULD be saying if they are going to go ahead and misapply the sample size concept. Though usually people do that when they want to resist a conclusion they don't like...in fact that's so true so often I pretty much just take it that that's what people really mean when they use that term. Besides it doesn't apply in this sense...a so-called small sample size is usually not enough to project hard math-based predictions. For example I would never say that based on 9 games, a Rams team with Keenum starting will win 67% of the time. What you CAN do with 9 games though is get a more subjective (but not discountable) sense of who and what the player is and what MORE OR LESS you can expect from him. Though of course, things could go wrong and change.
Let's compare. People are saying (frequently) that you can't count on Keenum playing well enough for the Rams to win just because they have. Strictly speaking that's true, but there will be different views of the chances of that continuting.
But NO ONE is questioning Gurley, even though he had a slow start too. No one is saying playing 12 games is a small sample size, no one is saying he has lost it it doesn't matter what he did before.
There are a lot of reasons for that but in each case it will just get down to value judgments. More people trust Gurley than Keenum. Ultimately that doesn't mean anything in the real world---it's at least possible that Gurley HAS lost it, for reasons we don't know about yet. But we're all going to pretty much not think that.
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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/25/2016 07:22AM by zn.
