Stat Sheet Misconceptions

Our primary goal here at Pro Football Focus is to evaluate players to the best of our ability. We spend countless hours making our assessments because we know that so much of the current way that players are evaluated is flawed and only a more detailed inspection will help. In essence, we want to make football statistics that can more accurately estimate just how good a player really is.

The only way to truly understand why we need better metrics is to have a look at what’s wrong with current football statistics. Just about every number found in a box score can (and has been) used in ways it shouldn’t be. The faults of some statistics have been mentioned around here before, but I think it’s time we shine some light on the flaws of even the most commonly used data. In this series, I will dig into specific statistics and show you why they don’t exactly say what you think they do.

I’ll begin with a look at completion percentage. On the surface, we’d like to think it tells us how accurate a passer is, but so much is beyond the quarterback’s control, that it fails to paint the real picture. Read the rest of this entry »