Introduction:
Well, I still need money for equipment and I don't feel like making more power rankings when nothing really changed in the weeks since I last wrote one. Instead, I decided to continue my friendly rivalry with @kckolbe and our dueling quarterbacks. As most everybody knows, he has a QB statistics article series about TANY/A and I wanted to combat that by developing my own, mostly for the joke Virgin vs. Chad, but also because I could continue the series when I'm desperate for money next.
I likely took longer deciding what to call my metric than the time it took to actually develop the metric itself. I wracked my brain trying to think of somebody named Tanya with an obvious rival, because I could then use that rival's name as the name of my metric. After some googling, the best I came up with was Tonya Harding, a famous figure skater from the early 90's. Luckily for me, she had a pretty obvious rival named Nancy Kerrigan. The rivalry got intense enough that Tonya's ex-husband even hired some thugs to attack Nancy in an attempt to break her leg before the National Championship and the Winter Olympics. Tonya herself pleaded guilty to hindering the investigation in 1994. Wikipedia Article on all that.
So with that information, I decided I needed to call my metric "Nancy", and then find some combination of words that I could use in the acronym that could reasonably be related to the stats. For now, the best I came up with is "Net Average NSFL Contribution / Year". As one could surmise from the name, my metric will have something to do with average, but the name is a little misleading. I'm going to make the metric similar to the "Value Over Average" metric, where I rank my QBs based off their performance against average NSFL values.
Methodology:
I gathered all of my data from the index for each season and compiled it all into excel so I could play around with the raw data. I gathered all 11 seasons, but I plan on doing a NANC/Y Rating for each QB based on historical data, as well as current season data. In some of the historical data, there are a few samples that have far less yards, completions, attempts and all that fun stuff simply because they didn't play the full 14 game season. To normalize these numbers, I decided I would base the Completions, Attempts, Yards, Touchdowns and Interceptions statistics off of per game numbers. Completion percent and QB Rating aren't dependent on large sample sizes (many games) so I think they'll be sufficient enough to still be used for some of the outliers that only played a handful of games at QB, and won't need to be normalized on a per-game basis (especially because that would lead to some weird ass statistics that mean nothing).
Interesting Findings:
This section will outline some of the interesting information I was able to gather about the statistics. Most of these will apply towards the final goal of a NANC/Y Rating, but are interesting tidbits on their own. I'll round up to the nearest one hundredth for the following statistics.
Completions/Attempts/Completion Percentages:
Since the beginning of the National Simulation Football League, the average passing attempts per game is 34.87, while the completions average per game is only 20.18, for an average completion percentage of 56.49.
Being as it is now Season 11, it could be assumed that the numbers would be slightly better than the historical average, especially because most of the QBs have a couple seasons under their belts and aren't suffering through the growing pains that the QBs in Season 1 dealt with. The numbers back this up slightly, as each is slightly higher than the historical average for S11.
In S11, the passing attempts average rose to 40.34 per game, while completions average per game also rose, this season to 23.78. Completion percentage rose to 58.85.
Yards/TDs/Ints per game:
Historically, the average NSFL QB has thrown for 240.31 yards per game, with 1.45 Tds and .99 Interceptions. The dreadful look of those statistics can hopefully be attributed to the growing pains mentioned previously about completions, attempts and completion percentages.
Looking at the pass-happy meta of S11, we can see this is fairly true. S11 QBs averaged over 30 more yards per game, coming in at 270.95, with 1.72 TDs and 1.10 Interceptions per game. As I assumed, we'd see an increase in yards and touchdowns per game as the league becomes pass-happier. I wasn't sure what to expect for interceptions. Logically, the QBs are getting better so there should be less interceptions, but there are also more attempts being thrown so interceptions would be more likely. For fun, I calculated the average interceptions per attempt. About 3% (2.73%) of attempts per game lead to an interception for S11. Historically, it remains at about 3% (2.84%), but as we can see, it was slightly higher due to the less-polished quarterbacks playing throughout NSFL History.
QB Rating:
The last stat I took into consideration while developing NANC/Y was QB rating. Historically, QBs have had an average QB rating of 77.04, while the S11 QBs averaged 81.51. The trend continues as the S11 QBs are farther along in their development than many of the other QBs throughout the NSFL.
NANC/Y
Finally, to the juicy bits! I'm not going to divulge my exact formula (so I can change it at whim to make Fitzpatrick look worse and Showbiz look better obviously.) I'm also getting lazier, so I'm going to only do the NANC/Y based off the average of S11 on this media piece (I'll compare it to historical data later). The numbers are going to look big because reasons. Basically, I weighted Completions and Attempts fairly low, while weighting TDs and Interceptions high. If your performance was outside the standard deviation for the individual stat, you also got a multiplier (if you were above average and outside the standard deviation, your number gets a higher multiplier for that stat. I added the extra multiplier for standard deviation because it's a good indicator on if you performed much better (or much worse) than the competition.
High Numbers are good, numbers near zero are about average, and negative numbers are below average. The lower the number below zero, the worse the player was.
1. Borkus Maximus III - NANC/Y=274.0286
Borkus Maximus III is the best quarterback in the NSFL, and his NANC/Y Rating backs that up. He was well above average in Completions, Attempts and Yards, above average in TDs, Interceptions (and by above average here, I mean he was better than average, as in he threw less interceptions), and he also rated better than average in QBR. Most of the better QBs didn't perform outside the standard deviation for TDs, Ints or QBR, but Borkus came rather close to outside the standard deviation for TDs and QBR.
2. Micycle McCormick - NANC/Y=247.6179
Colorado Yeti QB Micycle McCormick comes in second according to his NANC/Y Rating. Similar to Maximus III, he ranked well above average (outside standard deviation) in Completions, Attempts and Yards. What hurt Micycle most, was his above average interceptions per game in comparison to his counterparts. His QBR was among the top half of the league, but all the competitors were pretty close in terms of standard deviation, with the outliers generally being on the bottom.
Kevin Fitzpatrick - NANC/Y=223.7464
Season 11 was rather impressive for Kevin Fitzpatrick. Not because he blew other QBs out of the water with massive yardage (ranked 5th), completions (ranked 5th) or attempts (ranked 5th), but because he was extremely efficient with the ball. He tied for 1st in the league for TDs, throwing 30 on the season (Showbiz and Maximus were the other two that matched the number). What was really astounding was how well Fitz protected the ball. He was the only QB that threw above average for interceptions (as in he threw less interceptions than average) and also was outside the standard deviation for the stat (as in he threw far less than average). Nine total interceptions on the season were the greatest indication of Kevin's talent.
4. Gus T.T. Showbiz - NANC/Y=208.025
Boy oh boy did Showbiz's last 6 games of the season save his NANC/Y rating or what!? The stunning 19 Touchdowns to 4 Interceptions in his last 6 games saved him from likely being rated below average to being 4th best in the league. I personally rank TDs highly as an indicator of QB performance and Gus's 30 TDs were tied for most in the league. Unlike the tier of QBs above him, Showbiz did not rank well above average in completions and yards, but was still well above average for attempts.
5. Ryan Applehort - NANC/Y=123.1821
Ryan Applehort played well for the season, earning a positive NANC/Y. However, he looks worse than some of his counterparts simply because the Baltimore Hawks use Owen Taylor, their star running back more than most teams. The Hawks don't rely on Applehort's arm to win games, and as such he has lower stats than he likely could earn in an air-attack offense. He was better than average in most passing categories, but not outside the standard deviation needed to get some extra multipliers to his number.
6. Brad Pennington - NANC/Y=-148.277
Our first QB on the list to hit a negative NANC/Y rating, Pennington was not better than average in any of the stats listed. Luckily for him, he wasn't horrendously bad in any of them, so didn't earn any heavy negative multipliers like the two QBs below him on the list. What hurt him most was his poor TD:Int ratio. While he still had a positive ratio there, the conflicting weights nearly nullified each other.
7. Adriana Falconi - NANC/Y=-266.854
As expected, the young guns are bringing up the rear on this list. Spoiler alert, they're pretty dang close in the ratings. Adriana performed below the average that the rest of the league set for every passer stat tracked for NANC/Y. Falconi and Christ should probably be in their own tier, but oh well. Falconi's negative TD:Int ratio was the biggest indicator as to why her NANC/Y rating was so low. Her 19 interceptions (tied with Christ for most in the league) were a big reason why her performance suffered. Next season is looking pretty bright for the young lass, as she gets another year under her belt and her targets get better she should also find our rating rising.
8. Joliet Christ - NANC/Y=-275.768
Joliet struggled this season. He tied with Adriana for the league lead in throwing interceptions, but didn't have the nearly 1:1 ratio that she had. His 10 TDs on the season were the worst by far, and he was the only QB that managed a statline outside the standard deviation for TDs (and not in a good way). There is hope ahead for the young man, as his team has a lot of young talent waiting in the wings for the coming seasons. If they can grow together as their high-draft spots indicate they might, Christ looks to be in good shape to improve his NANC/Y.
Code:
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Gus T.T. Showbiz Player Page
Gus T.T. Showbiz Update Page
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Bavitz Player Page Bavitz Update Page
Gus T.T. Showbiz Player Page
Gus T.T. Showbiz Update Page
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Bavitz Player Page Bavitz Update Page