Vick and Hits
Posted: September 29th, 2011 | Author: Tommy Lawlor | Filed under: Philadelphia Eagles | 24 Comments »I haven’t really gotten into this subject since it is covered so thoroughly by every news outlet this side of Diego Garcia. Vick was frustrated and said stuff he shouldn’t have on Sunday. Even if he believes it to be true, you don’t bring that subject up in that setting. It gives fodder for critics (I thought the NY Post cover was hilarious).
NFL officiating guru (and major jackass in my opinion) Mike Pereira wrote a column “proving” statistically that Vick didn’t get less calls or that Brady/Manning got more calls. Of course he completely skewed the situation by cherry-picking numbers to prove his point.
A reader sent along a much better study written by someone else. The author doesn’t seem to have any kind of agenda, which always makes me more trusting of the information. The author also understood that in order to evaluate the situation you had to take into account the number of hits, penalties, and plays. You can’t just see who drew the most flags. That’s ridiculously bogus for understanding the true situation.
Kudos to Franklin for his outstanding work on this subject. Enough of my talking. Go check out what he had to say. Good stuff.
Yea Pereira’s statistics were completely useless. How does the number of times the guy throws the ball vs. the number of roughing the passer penalties mean anything? Is he lazy or just think that readers are that stupid?
I’m guessing he got into a subject he thought would be easy to handle. Oops.
As a trained sociologist, if there is one thing I know for certain it’s this… Numbers Lie.
As a philosopher, one of the greatest (and most undeniable principles) is this… “There is no such thing as a standpoint from no-where.”
My thoughts on the subject.
– Didn’t have a strong opinion on Pereira, only that the section when Fox bring him in is useless. But his comment on the Eagles complaining the most sounds like he just want attention and create controversy
-Vick shouldn’t complain on sunday
– I have don’t know if he should have more roughing the passer penalties but I will say that after almost every pass he’s laying on his back.
My statistics sense is tingling. I’m not loving the independent study, but it is much better than Pereira’s asinine/insulting piece. The independent approach is good, but the sample size is just too small. Had Vick gotten one more call, he would be very near average. I may have to do some Exceling of my own….
Do it. I dare you. Send it to me and I’ll post it. Here are the conclusions I want:
Mike Vick never gets calls, especially from Mike Pereira.
The Eagles will win the SB.
Brian Rolle is the new Seth Joyner.
Tommy, you need to install a “love” button… stat.
I watched many Eagles games from Diego Garcia during their SB run in 2004 during my military days. I agree Vick shouldn’t have said those things publicly but he does have a point. He can’t last all year taking some of the hits that he has. At this time, I have very little faith in both backups if they have to fill in for more than a game or 2. I think the team should be focused more on solving the defensive problems to get back to winning. I’m keeping my faith in them for now. Go Eagles!!!
Cool point of reference. Didn’t expect to find out any readers had actually watched the Eagles from DG. Just wanted to pick out a remote location for the sake of humor.
Looking at the data a little more, something seems fishy. Manning only had 2 penalties drawn last year??? I thought he got at least 2 in the Eagles game alone. Roethlisberger isn’t on the list. He didn’t draw any penalties???
I think statistics are going to be hard to use and trust, both for and against Vick (or against and for Pereira). Because the penalties are subjective to begin with, the lack of a call is also a subjective conclusion. When you compare Vick to many other QB’s using the eye-test, he gets less calls in my, admittedly non-objective, opinion. If someone brushes Peyton’s helmet it’s a 15 yard penalty. If someone hits Vick right after he throws as he backtracks or rolls out, he’s not gonna get the call.
I’m still optimistic about the season. I’ve mentioned before that as long as they don’t play themselves out of the post-season early, it’s very reasonable to expect them to be an improved team come December, which is really when you want to be playing your best ball, anyway. I don’t see anyone in our Division running away and hiding. You could argue we’ve actually outplayed our opponent every week so far, and even though there are no moral victories, it at least provides evidence that the foundation is there and that with more playing time together the team will be a strong contender at the end.
Watching the “football life” episode tonight, and thinking about missing ingredients on our defense… Makes me wonder why our front office didn’t bring in Seth Joyner to be our LB coach. Something tells me that he might know a thing or two about how to get the boys motivated to make some tackles.
Off Topic: Reminder that A Football Life on Reggie and Jerome is on tonight at 10.
On Vick, I think he should probably get a few more calls than he does, but if the refs are gonna give you a second more than non-mobile quarterbacks to escape something before blowing it dead, then you have to accept that you will get hit more than Peyton or Brady.
Thank you, thank you!
Just got done watching… man brings back waves of memories. It’s hard seeing those big guys be so emotional. I can taste the frustration in my mouth when the news came down that JB had passed away. I know I may be biased, but they will always be the greatest defense I’ve ever watched.
Thanks Tommy for this post. If there’s one thing I feel this blog needs to add is a weekly statistical feature on a topic of interest, no matter who the author is (and Sam should make appearances more often, too!). On the other hand, my geography knowledge today got expanded. On this blog I learned about Diego Garcia, and on another site about Svalbard and Pyramiden…
Also, it’s great to see Tommy going somewhat loose in the comments!
Recall the hit on Vick, I believe by JPP. After the hit, Vick grabbed his helmet with both hands and seemed quite shaken. He signalled to the sideline that he had been hit on the shoulder rather than the helmet (or at least that’s what the booth told us). JPP’s helmet, however, clearly hit Vick’s helmet. Was Vick downplaying this hit in order to stay in the game? That is, since his pseudo-concussion, if Vick exagerrated the hit he may have thought that he’d be taken out of the game by the coaches. Coaches seem to be paranoid about keeping a player on the field who may be concussed (and rightfully so). Is there any chance Vick may have been downplaying the hits he was taking on the field in order to be kept in the game, despite the fact that by not complaining he was less likely to encourage the refs to make a call? Thoughts?
And if someone can please tell me why Vick was in the wrong to voice his concerns about the refereeing during a press conference, please do tell. Sure, it left a sour taste. But we live in the age of twitter (turned fist-fight) feuds. The “classy” player is a boring fiction. Get over it… maybe.
It came across like sour grapes…an excuse for losing. Had he done it after a win or great performance, it would have felt different.
Vick is the leader of the team. You want him to project that and say/do the right things. Talking about the refs after a loss isn’t the way to go.
I wasn’t a fan of Vick complaining about the refs, but I do think it was very understandable considering the circumstances. The guy was getting knocked to the ground every other play, whether he deserved any penalties or not is debatable, but it did result in him thinking at the time that he had broken his hand and would be out 3 or 4 weeks. Add to that a very frustrating loss, and there is no question he was incredibly frustrated.
And Vick’s comments came just after the game, where every player is still emotional. I think it was not a big deal. If he keeps whining then it will be a different story. But in all honesty I don’t think we’ll hear anything from Vick any more.
Mike Pereira’s column was very clearly cherry picking numbers, but I’m not sure that Franklin’s article is a ton better. In the Pereira article, the assumption is that every qb is equally likely to get a roughing the passer call on a per-pass basis. Clearly this is not true because some qbs have a very quick release or great Oline or a number of other reasons that a defensive player doesn’t get anywhere near touching a QB before he throws to even risk a roughing the passer call.
Franklin’s assumptions may not be as absurd, in fact, you could argue they are almost necessary in order to get any idea about the accuracy of Vick’s statement without going back and actually watching every hit he takes that are called a penalty vs the number of hits he takes that should have been a penalty and compare that to other QBs around the league (obviously, a task that would require some significant amount of resources and time). The assumption that Franklin makes is that there is a set probability on each hit that it should be a penalty. In other words if one guy gets hit 100 times and another guy gets hit 100 times, both guys SHOULD have the same number of times where they got hit late, hit in the helmet, hit below the knees, etc, and result in a penalty. The problem with this logic is that some QBs like to hold on to the ball to extend a play and only throw right before getting legally hit (a problem you could certainly argue Vick has and Brady/Manning do not). Even beyond just holding onto the ball, there are plenty of reasons why a QB could get hit a number of times without it being worthy of drawing a flag.
I’ll be honest, I am not really sure what the best way to statistically argue this debate would be beyond the way I described before, but so far, neither of these articles really proved or disproved anything for me.
Although Vick took back his comments we might see more flags thrown on Sunday. Well done, Michael!! 🙂
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/09/30/pereira-thinks-vick-should-have-been-fined/
-Pereira is an ass.