Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Kevin Cole explains his analytics QB rankings and where Kirk Cousins ranks

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Matthew Coller and Kevin Cole from Pro Football Focus discuss his "analytics" quarterback rankings that are based on Expected Points Added. Kevin explains why Kirk Cousins ranks 15th. Why is his EPA lower than some of his other PFF stats like his grade and accuracy? Which areas would he need to improve to gain ground and improve in 2020? Plus Kevin did a study on situational football. How much does the Vikings' run-first mentality hurt their production in certain situations? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here. The show is always presented by Scout Logistics. And a quick note before we get to our guest, going to be off the rest of the week. Enjoy your July 4th week. I know that all of you in Minnesota are at your cabins or playing golf or doing things of the like. So when we return from the rest of this week off on vacation,

it'll be hardcore training camp previews. But before vacation, I wanted to connect with Kevin Cole, data scientist from Pro Football Focus and the host of the Unexpected Points podcast. Because dang it, Kevin, your work has been so interesting lately. What's up, buddy? I'm doing well. Yeah, I mean, good. It's good for the holiday.

I know a lot of people say this is a dead season. But for me, I find it a little bit refreshing to actually be able to just completely open up the spectrum of what you can dig into during this part of the season and not really have to worry about, you know, week seven. Will Aaron Rodgers be on the Packers? Yes or no. What is on his Instagram post? That sort of stuff. So I can just I can skew all that and then go into some nerdy stuff that maybe isn't appreciated when we get to the day-by-day blows of what's going on in news. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And for a reporter like myself, I could take some time to do some interviews for some bigger stories that are on the way and things like that.

And the Vikings generally give us a few weeks of a break, although with the Vikings, you never really know when someone is going to get traded, arrested, whatever it might be. We've had the entire litany of things that are possible. But I wanted to start with you because we had a discussion on the show maybe a week ago or so about statistics, quarterback statistics. I got a great question from fans about how we should evaluate quarterbacks and i had a rant about eli manning's prime being actually really good and how his longevity killed eli manning when it comes to looking up his box score stats but you wrote such an interesting piece where you rank quarterbacks by sort of the analytic rankings and you use expected points at it and i like to use expected points at it as well. But I also think it's hard to explain sort of how it works and how we apply it to individuals.

So maybe we can start there as it pertains to quarterbacks, how we look at expected points and then sort of transpose that onto our quarterback analysis. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, OK, the way I would think about it is to say that the complaint about expected points added would be it's a team stat, right? It's measuring what a team does on a particular play. But then again, our passing yards, not a team stat, our passing touchdowns, not a team stat. I mean, everyone is playing into those stats to the offensive line has to block the receiver has to catch the ball. It depends on what defense you're playing all that sort of stuff so there is a difference between expected points added and pff passing grades and we try to really isolate the throws mostly for what the quarterback is

doing so but to go back to expected points added it's just a way of framing those stats in a way that you can apply across the board to every position. And it tries to be a little bit more accurately waiting. If I tell you someone takes a five yard sack on first and 10 versus someone does the same thing on third and 10, what do we know about the difference of it? Well, it's a lot worse to take it on an earlier down because you're going to impale that, that drive. So that's basically what it's doing is before every play,

it's figuring out how many points can you expect this offense to score on this drive? it's a little more complicated than that but let's just say that based upon down distance field position then the play happens you recalculate everything based upon the new down the new distance the new field position and then you know on that play how many points were added based upon what happened on that play so by compiling all those things into a quarterback stat, it is a quote unquote team stat, but as the longer you go, the quarterback being the most important position on the field, you can get some good insight from that.

And I think that's really the important thing that you're getting there is you're weighing, you know, some quarterbacks take sacks, but we don't think of it that much. Some quarterbacks fumble the ball on a sack, which is a hugely negative play. But when we're only looking at TD in interception ratios, we don't calculate those things. And some quarterbacks are really good at running the ball on a sack, which is a hugely negative play. But when we're only looking at TD in interception ratios, we don't calculate those things. And some quarterbacks are really good at running the ball and that doesn't necessarily play into it. So we can also weave running the ball into it on the same exact scale, which is points at it. So when PFF sort of discovered that quarterbacks are responsible for their own pressures and sacks, it's sort of like changed my life a little bit. And I remember, well, I remember having Sage Rosenfels on former NFL quarterback and he was

like, oh yeah, yeah, it's definitely the quarterback. It's not, I mean, it is the offensive line, but it's also like, I can get rid of the ball. I'm responsible for that. And I was just poking around yesterday and discovered Peyton Manning in 2009 was sacked 10 times. Like imagine the value of being sacked 10 times in a whole season for Peyton Manning in 2009 was sacked 10 times. Like imagine the value of being sacked 10 times in a whole season for Peyton Manning. So now the reason that I sort of started using expected points added to look at how effective passing games were in a given season was I noticed that every year since Peyton Manning's abysmal 2015, the two teams in the Superbowl are always in the top five in passing EPA. And that really like caught, caught my eye. So I wonder when you looked at the quarterbacks and

you're saying like putting them down rankings and using EPA, um, what is it that certain quarterbacks have or do that you're looking for, for like skill set and PFF grade and these other things that would result in the expected points added. So result in the most telling statistic. I hope that question makes sense. No, that question definitely makes sense. I mean, so I think you want to think about it. Sacks is a big thing, right? Because they're that's probably the biggest disconnect between how we may view certain quarterbacks versus what their expected points added will say. Because of the fact that sacks are much more costly than we think, we're attributing it to the quarterback in that circumstance, whereas a lot of people wouldn't be doing that.

I mean, Russell Wilson is probably a perfect example of someone who just year in, year out, he's going to take a lot of sacks, and that makes a difference. That means that versus someone like Patrick Mahomes, who actually doesn't take many sacks, despite the fact that he holds on to the ball and he moves around a lot of sacks and that makes a difference that means that versus someone like Patrick Mahomes who actually doesn't take many sacks despite the fact that he holds on to the ball and he moves around a lot he's basically going to be you know 40 points behind according to expected points added for the season almost automatically you almost know that straight up at the beginning of the season that the sacks is going to happen so that that is really important and even when it comes to things like interceptions there are certain times where interceptions are much more costly than other times.

And I know we have the concept of like the arm punt, and you can kind of think about it in that sort of fashion, where it's much less costly to attempt to convert a first down. So throwing the ball downfield, using those air yards on a third down, especially a long third down, you don't have to worry as much about an interception on those plays

because we are learning that the real negative is the possession, losing possession. That's the real negative. The field position the team has on the other side, it's incremental. It's not the biggest deal. So I think that's a big factor is whether or not teams are willing to convert these third downs because those are the big plays where you're

going from a negative situation to now a first down, which is a positive situation. So you're adding a ton of EPA on those. So often we'll see quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers last year, who were very, very good at doing that. And there are other quarterbacks who are not quite as good. Actually, Kirk Cousins is one of these guys who's not quite as good at converting those. And some of that has to do with pressure play, which you can also divide up. And I think that gives you a lot as to whether or not it's unstable,

but you need a quarterback to be able to do that, to be elite on a longer term basis. Right. So in applying Kirk Cousins to these now in your quarterback, sort of, I'm just going to use analytic rankings and sort of my finger air quotes because there's just so many,. This is what drives me crazy. When one person who works for PFF has our ranking and then, oh, PFF hates my favorite quarterback. Like, Hey, it's just one person.

It's a real. Yeah. The Lamar Jackson thing is funny. Cause he's rated very high on there, but yet everyone's killing, killing Eric right now. Yeah. He's saying analytics rating is kind of like saying, here are my film ratings, like your film ratings, my film ratings doesn't really matter. I guess a little bit of the difference though. And it's a little opaque what I'm doing. I'll admit that, but there is at least a methodology that you can point to somewhat more easily with, with something

like an analytic rating, as opposed to a film rating. But again, it all depends on how, how you're building in, how you're making the cake cake there and as a person who has attempted to rank things many times it's not it's not easy like you get to who and this was i was talking with eric about this the other day it's just like you get to who's seventh versus who's tenth you're like ah you know that kind of thing but But so when I say your analytic rankings, it just means your list using EPA, you know, Kirk is 15th, right? And so that is just okay. And it's kind of what you would expect. And I think that the difference between Kirk and his box score stats and something like EPA and why EPA would be a little more telling about how he actually played matching up with, I was there at all the games would, would be the things around the edges that you're talking about.

It's a sack on first down. His sack rate is very high. And the pressure I think that happens with poor offensive line play impacts Kirk more, because as you mentioned, the running element is very valuable when I see Kyler Murray ninth and he didn't even play that well last year, I didn't think, but he's got that running element and Lamar's running element too. And I guess with Kirk, that's the constant sort of push and pull and battle that happens with people where you have somebody searches

Kirk's quarterback rating last three years and he's right there with the best quarterbacks. But that's not really the most telling thing I think about how he's played. Yeah, I think that that's a good point. I mean, one of the things that I looked at was specifically in terms of Russell Wilson. And then as I looked at it more and more, it became obvious of Kirk Cousins, too. Now, there's another advanced statistic that especially liked to be used by Ben Baldwin, who writes for The Athletic. And it's this, and it's also used by ESPN. It's

called completion percentage over expectation. So those generally track, right? How well you do at completing the ball versus your EPA per play, because obviously that's kind of important for quarterback, right? To be able to complete passes. But there are certain players where there's a big divergence between the two. On one side, someone like Patrick Mahomes has a relatively low completion percentage over expectation, but a very high EPA per, let's say, drop back because of the fact that while he's not completing every pass, he's playing very well in these high leverage situations. He's adding scrambling.

He's not taking sacks, which are not part of it. So Kirk Cousins really fell into the same bucket as Russell Wilson, where I think every single year of his career, there might've been some years where it's tied, but if you look at his rank ordering of completion percentage over expectation versus EPA per drop back,

he's always better in completion percentage over expectation. He completes the ball. You give him a window, you give him a clean pocket. He knows how to put the ball from point A to point B. The problem will necessarily be if things get a little bit muddy, if he has to take a little bit more risk in certain situations,

if he needs his flush from the pocket, things like that. There are certain times where he will, you know, he'll take a sack rather than throw an incompletion where it'd be the opposite there. And that's what it ends up coming around. And he has some of those bigger plays. So I think that's the big difference from him. If you're looking at a throw by throw basis, and sometimes that matches up with our grading,

which has been pretty good for cousins, especially in 2019 and a low volume season, but he did extremely well. Like the throws are there. It's just bring together all the little things that don't go into something like completion percentage or grade that he doesn't quite put together on that same level. And this is where I feel like the statistics and the truth are coming together because when, I mean, he is a great thrower of the football. I mean, and previous receivers,fan diggs wanted him to throw it

more often instead of taking sacks and throw balls up for grabs but the throws you don't make what is the uh wayne gretzky slash michael scott like you whatever shots you don't take or something like that well that that's what that's kirk cousins he misses the shots that he doesn't take and i think when you look at how long he holds the ball versus average depth of target, you're sort of surprised that those two things also don't really match up because you usually would expect the guy who is going down the field to hold the ball longer. But he holds the ball longer and doesn't generally take a lot of shots down the field. And it sort of goes back to what Jay Gruden said about him, where he said something like, I can't make everyone wide open all the time. And I, and I feel like when we talk about Kirk and your, your analytics ranking list has him sort of middle of the pack. This is why he is in the middle of the pack and not one of those

top guys. It's not because he can't put up quarterback rating, completion percentage, all those statistics, and make the throws that he needs to make. It's really the throws that he doesn't make. Yeah, yeah, I think that's part of it. I mean, you could say it's a talent issue. I do think there's also something, and now I'm getting into maybe a little too much psychology here. I don't want to, like, Freud him about his parents or something.

But, like, there's probably something of someone who was a fourth round quarterback i believe for for cousins who isn't the like no one says him and says oh this is like josh allen you know type of talent guy right where you where you can get away with doing these things where probably there's part of the mentality of how he's grinded to the point that he is grinded to is by not making mistakes because if a guy like him makes mistakes you you see the pine you're going to the bench whereas if a guy like him makes mistakes you you see the pine you're going to the bench whereas if a guy like Josh Allen makes mistakes it's like okay he was

trying for it you know we know he can do things like that so I think there's an element of that too of probably that's the way that he's always played because maximizing minimizing the downside has been a little bit more important even for how coaches react to him and teammates react to him in a way where he just shouldn't be as afraid to make quote-unquote ugly plays but from someone in his standing with his draft capital that was a little bit more of a problem now he has you know he's got some he's got some cheddar behind him behind him now so they're probably not moving anywhere in the near future but I don't know if you can just switch over that type of mentality if you've been playing one way your entire life and not only that but the one offensive coordinator that kind of opened it up for him he had strip sack and

interception issues in 2018 and then drove mike zimmer absolutely insane and so they went to an offense that was run first play action to really and this is the the thing why cousins and and zimmer are just not really a fit together because you have a coach who is afraid of his quarterback making mistakes, which he inevitably will do. It's in Kirk's DNA to make a play that just blows your mind. Like, uh, where was that going? Or what was that? What happened there? Um, and, and yet, so I've, I've sort of coined the phrase of like lean into the Kirk, like he's going to have these, like, there's no way around them. He takes the sacks and throws the interceptions at the same rate, whether you throw it 400 times or 600 times.

So that's always an interesting element. But I think you're, if you think about who he came up with Mike Shanahan, I did a story on his first game that he ever played and he ran play action 60% of the time in that game. It's like Shanahan and McVay and, and these guys who like to be the button pushers and just do what I tell you to do. Not the guy who says, Hey, Deshaun Watson, go back in the shotgun, run around and make a play. And, but I also do think there's a physical limitation here when we talk about ranking quarterbacks and how you would do it in a number of different ways there is a physical limitation there where if he is off balance that ball is just not getting any juice on it if he is on

he can be on the rollout but not like dancing you know what i mean so there's there's the element of he's not case keenan where he's just going to wing it to somebody but there's also the element of this is not a big strong guy and there was a throw last year where he had Justin Jefferson against Tampa Bay and he was just a little bit off balance and the throw ends up going light and high and Jefferson can't make it it's like one of those things that is very very like you need a microscope to see it but once you look for it you'll see it all the time oh yeah yeah we're gonna get I sure we're going to get to Justin Jefferson cryptic tweet season pretty, pretty soon. Maybe, maybe not, maybe not this off season, but pretty soon. Actually, you know, one player I want to bring up, and this is

probably a good example. We're talking about similar system, similar philosophy who falls on the other end of the spectrum. And maybe it shows the risk of, of, of being a player who's a little bit more aggressive is Jimmy Garmy garoppolo right so he does things that are very like what like head scratchers and he makes really bad plays his interception rate is a little bit higher than for players like kirk cousins he's totally the opposite on his completion percentage over expectation versus his epa per play because he's pretty good at converting third downs he's they get a lot, but then everyone wants to attribute everything to the system while it's Shanahan

is giving him all these great, that's part of it. Part of it, I do think is that he like, is willing to just take risks and just throw the ball in and look really, really bad sometimes. Now, I don't know if that is what got him, you know, benched in the fact that Shanahan had to hide him or if it was really the fact that he's just been injured a lot but if you look up on an epa per play basis uh from i guess when he

started well i got let's cut out the first couple years we barely played but i think it's from like 2016 through now i think he's third or fourth behind guys like aaron rogers and patrick mahomes uh during that time period now a lot of that that was that great stretch run he had a few years ago. But still, the results have been there for someone like him. But no one would think that because they think about the really ugly plays that he has made sometimes. So I could see if Kirk Cousins transitioned, he probably looked something more like what Jimmy Garoppolo has looked like.

Yeah, no, that's right. And Garoppolo, I think, is a little more physically gifted, being a second-round pick. He's taller. He's got a stronger arm stronger arm i think but that's a great point and this is very handsome very very good looking no question about it um so when we see the uh that'll be the next ranking that drives everyone nuts uh who are the sexiest quarterbacks who's the who's the ugliest quarterback it's ben right roth was i'm gonna have to no comment on this one yeah i'm not gonna go back to that that thing where we're putting everyone through the app and then making them

into women and then and then talking about what they look like i don't want to go back to that season again that was extremely uncomfortable but i do think that i do think that um ben roethlisberger would be very comfortable with being called the ugliest quarterback presently uh well that's that off-season picture with the beard and everything else he's definitely leaning into it right he's not even trying at this point so uh what now what this actually circles back to the eli manning discussion that we're having because yeah manning's a good example of a guy who does really dumb things sometimes and he leans into it exactly and when he was at his best when he was at his physical peak and his team and he had good wide receivers and stuff his willingness to take risks sort of shows up in those

playoff games that he wins and you could i think tie those things together philip rivers the same way where i think philip rivers threw five interceptions against the vikings or four one day and he said something like, yeah, at the end of the game, I was just basically like throwing it out there. And that is a very much the opposite of what Kirk cousins will do when down 20, when Kirk cousins is down 20, it will be completion, completion, completion, completion, and they will lose by 10 as opposed to losing by 30 because he threw a couple more interceptions and I I think that that is a very interesting sort of psychological element of it of a guy who is like a trained

sort of robotic quarterback and I think that that is why he doesn't elevate into that level of like the top five type of quarterbacks even though some of his statistics would suggest that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's true. It's funny. Eli is like, it's sad for him, but he is kind of this poor man's version of his brother in some ways, because even Peyton Manning, if you, I mean, look at that rookie season, right? When he threw so many interceptions, even though, but his stats, his efficiency was actually pretty good for the fact that even though he's throwing all those interceptions and even throughout his career and games that they lost i mean i don't have the numbers in front of me but i would not be surprised if you said you looked up four interception games that payton manning would be a lot higher on that list just as an absolute number for how many he had in his career

than you think because in those games when he's way down it's like it doesn't matter at that point okay and again that's another statistic you can calculate is like this win probability added. So if you're at 5% win probability, you throw an interception, you're barely losing anything. Whereas if you're, is it like a 50, 50 game, or if you're in the lead and you're throwing an interception, it's a much bigger difference. So it's all about what you're trying to maximize in these situations. And if you're trying to maximize winning the game, there are times where you're going to have to go for it like that. And because of that, you know, Eli, you, you mentioned, I'm looking at some stats here for his EPA ranks. Yeah, I mean, he was solidly like in that top 10-ish

for a number of years there. Now, you know, we're not going to get into Hall of Fame discussions and all that stuff. It's not really good enough to get into Hall of Fame discussions, but I think a lot of people remember that latter half of his career where he was getting into the 20s consistently, and that's taken away from some of the fact that, yeah, there is value in a guy who

can get you average to above average quarterback play for for a number of years and then in the playoffs is not going to turtle uh when you need him to throw the ball down the field want to remind you to go to sodastick.com to get your original minnesota sports inspired goods if you have not seen it yet you've got to check. A couple of my favorite designs are the duck duck gray duck and the Randy Moss goat, which you've got to see. All their apparel is screen printed here in Minnesota on super soft, super comfy shirts and hoodies. You will love it. We're going to hook you up with free shipping on your next order by the way use promo code purple insider for free shipping that's soda stick s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com original minnesota sports inspired goods code purple insider for free shipping hey everyone summer is here and you're trying to get out on the golf course but if you're

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birdie golf and absolutely loved it you'll want to try the whiskey or beer float flights and every time sam and i show up at birdie golf to record our podcast we always get the boneless swings make golf a night out it's the perfect place to hold parties events fundraisers and even your fantasy football draft check out birdie golf at 494 and valley creek in woodbury just a short drive away from anywhere in the twin cities metro at birdiegolf.com b-i-r-d-i golf.com call 651-998-2200 today and I'll see you there. Right, exactly. And so if he would, if he didn't win those super bowls, clearly the giants would have moved on or he would have retired or whatever, you know, we wouldn't have seen that. It was sort of like legacy years that he got that really mess up his stats or like Willie Mays Mets type of thing. They're just like retire retire man uh but now here's a question for you when it comes to

separating these quarterbacks yeah you look at uh baker mayfield derrick carr ryan tannahill matt stafford like these guys are all sort of similar in a lot of ways and and kirk and they're all sort of like kirk jared goff jimmyoppolo. How do we pick these guys apart and sort of decide who deserves what type of, I guess, ranking or who you pay? top three quarterback this off season you would just think that like he was so great and yet I've never seen it I've covered a lot of Matt Stafford games I've seen some spectacular throws but I've also seen hilariously bad interceptions at the worst time uh and tons of sacks he got sacked 10 times once in a single game against the Vikings so pick those guys apart for me and sort of explain like these guys who are in the middle of the pack, but are actually, I mean, just like Kirk really good at quarterback backing overall. Yeah. I mean, the, the easy answer is you just go, you go with what you have, if you have them,

I guess if you're, if you're a team and that's probably good enough. And a lot of this is just like flipping coins. Now Stafford is an interesting guy because again, when I was looking at this relationship between completion percentage over expectation and efficiency, while Kirk Cousins was kind of like your, you know, middle income man, I won't say poor man's middle income man's Russell Wilson. Stafford was kind of like your poor man's Patrick Mahomes, honestly, like he was similar in some, in some ways, but it's just worse, like in every single way. So again, he was someone who would kind of maximize that efficiency by what he was doing, but he just doesn't quite have it in that sort of way to, to really, to really be able to do that now, maybe within the right system we'll see this year, it's going to be

interesting for him. But I do think there's too much of this concentration still on the fact he has the number one pick the tools, he sort of of guy if you're going to look at highlights you're going to get that like oh if my favorite is uh the stafford clip where it's like oh if patrick mahomes did this the media would be saying x you know that's that's like the the the favorite thing for for lions fans so there's just not enough consistency there so it's kind of like do you do you value consistency or do you value some of this upside sort of play and when it comes to baker mayfield i don't know like Baker Mayfield's such a hard guy because he was very good from a grading perspective as a rookie and he hasn't been nearly as good with actual efficiency of his play because he's had some bad interceptions some pick six sort of

situations but he's made these really great throws so that's why grading is good, but he doesn't necessarily get easy stuff. He hasn't, or whether it's his fault or whether it's the offense's fault, he hasn't done, he got a lot more easier stuff this season. But he, and he's also shown some ability to play under pressure, which I think could,

can make you a leaf, but then he's shown other times where he doesn't play that. He hasn't played that well under pressure. So I think for Baker, I would only say the upside is the biggest for him because we know the least about him probably at this point. And then, you know, I'm not going to go against consensus too much. And I have no problem with someone saying they would rather have someone like Matthew Stafford or put him close in that in that situation.

And we probably are going to find out a lot about him this year. Generally, he's given too much leeway for the fact that, you know, someone who played most of his career with Calvin Johnson and prime Golden Tate and, you know, Marvin Jones and Kenny Galladay and all these other guys. It's not like he's he's been in the worst receiver situation throughout his career. Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, Kenny Galladay and Marvin Jones just shredded the Vikings year after year. Golden Tate did the same thing. And and yet Matt Stafford would rarely beat the Vikings because there was always a bad interception on the way. And last year was a great example of that. He's a quiet, he's a quiet,

like coach killer, offensive coordinator killer, because there's been guys who have come in there and he's performed well initially. And it's been like, I remember Jim Bob Cooter came in there. It was like, Oh,

Cooter time. Like everything's great. He's throwing these short passes and everything. And then all of a sudden a year later, it's been like, I remember Jim Bob Cooter came in there. It was like, oh, Cooter time. Like, everything's great. He's throwing these short passes and everything. And then all of a sudden, a year later, it's like, oh, Cooter stinks. And Cooter was the problem. And now he's gone. So he's silent. Coach Killer, this will be interesting with McVay.

I don't know if he's on that level of Coach Killer, but we'll see. Well, that's exactly it because Cooter was supposedly genius because he went to short passes. And then Bevel was supposedly genius because he went to deep passes. and then bevel was supposedly genius because he went to deep passes it was like which is it everybody maybe it's that neither one of them actually uh was and it was always just stafford all along uh you did another study that people should go find that is very interesting about situational football and sort of how it relates to aggression uh the headline is n NFL offenses are getting smarter about situational aggressiveness. And I just know what Vikings fans said in their head. They said, not the Vikings.

How bad is it that the Vikings run on second down all the time? I mean, just like, especially when you talk about second and shortened teams passing more often. But how, let me put it this way. How much is it hurting them if they don't have this right? Yeah. I mean, I think it hurts in that it's more likely to put them in these situations where cousins is not thriving. I think that's, that's part of the problem there. And there's this weird thing. Okay. This is more, I don't have the data to back this up. So I may have to call myself out eventually on this.

But I think there is something to, people think these running offenses are like low risk in a way or low variance in a way because they're doing. But I actually think it's a little bit different than that. I think that there's an argument that you're making it a little bit higher variance. And if you think about some of the offenses, I think, like the Jaguars had, where Blake Bortles looked okay in that one season where they were running the ball.

What you're doing is you're relying on the quarterback to convert a handful of third downs. And that's how you're going to win this game, is that they can convert those third downs. Because you're putting yourself in those situations you're not going for a handful of third downs and a handful of explosive first down play action type of plays and if it's kind of like you can you can do really really well or you can do really really poorly in those situations but when you don't have confidence in your quarterback maybe you're willing to say i'm just going to risk it and we'll take the lower sample size and hope for it so i think in in that sort of way, that's really the biggest problem. It's not that it doesn't give you a chance.

It's just in a long enough timeline, it's going to be worse. But on a short basis, it can work. And that's why I think we've seen over and over again, people get fooled by like, oh, remember Smash Mouth? I'm over it. Exotic Smash Mouth was the thing, right? It was like, we're going to revel. And every few years we hear about the smart teams what they're doing is they're leaning into the run because the defenses are getting smaller and playing against the pass and then like every year the pass percentage goes up every year

defenses get smaller every year it keeps on going on so i think that's the problem is that you can kind of fool yourself into performing well because you're giving yourself like two or three plays during the game you hit those two or three plays during the game. You hit those two or three plays, you win. And that can happen for a week, two weeks, three weeks. But over a long enough timeline is eventually the wheels are going to fall off. What I see, too, from just the eyeball is if you center everything around a running game, there will be lots of games over a year or two years or three years where the

other team just stops your running back and it's that simple you just can't run that day and every time the vikings play against akeem hicks they just can't run that day and it's i mean it's remarkable like one player just dominates the vikings running game but it's true and and then it's like what's our response to that when that's our main thing when it comes comes to a passing game, I mean, you can shut down a passing game if you have a great pass rush or great coverage unit or whatever. But from a week to week basis, go through what passing games do versus what running games do. And I feel like the chart would look like the mountains up and down and running games, whereas passing games, it would have a lot less variance from week to week. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I mean, the problem with the up and downs is just you're

not going to have the peaks also that you're on in the same level of peaks. I mean, again, this is something that I don't necessarily have the numbers to back up. But I remember in particular when I was tracking teams as far as how much they varied on their their passing percentage versus running percentage in a particular game. I'm thinking of the Patriots teams, maybe like 2016, 2017. Sometimes they would go into a game and they would just throw every single game, every single play. I was thinking about some of these games that against the bills and some other good run defenses where they would just come in and just throw.

And then the next game, they would just go and hand the ball off a lot. So if you're not, if you're just trying to be too formulaic and you're, you're just going to say, you know what, we're just going to do the running. We're going to lean the running game and then we're going to cross our fingers that it's going to work. And that's that's our game plan. Then there are issues and that can be part of it, too. I think it'd be more multiple with the passing game, too, as it sounds. I mean, that's part of the thing that I found out in the situational aggressiveness is like on second down and short and other situations and on first down a lot too teams are being less aggressive in these situations where they have

kind of more to lose but they're throwing a lot of screen passes they're throwing a lot of short passes they're doing a lot of pick plays doing a lot of other stuff you can do that or you can throw it long you know but with the running game it's not like you have a very the variance like that yeah you can run it outside or you can run it inside but it's not it's not the same sort of thing where you can say, you know what, we can really vary what we're going to do and decide how much risk we're going to take on this play. It's really just, we're going to run it and hope that it works. Hey everyone. I want to tell you about our friends. It's Scout Logistics. And I really do mean it when I say friends, they are fans of Purple Insider over at Scout Logistics.

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ScoutLogistics.com or call 855-217-2688 extension 232 to connect with them directly to find out how Scout Logistics can minimize risk and overperform and go the extra mile for your company. So if you were Clint Kubiak, and I think that Mike Zimmer is really the offensive shot caller, just how it's gone the last couple years but if you're clint kubiak how are you handling the fact that your head coach wants you to run the football wants to establish the run wants delvin cook touching the ball 30 times a game uh you know like it's emmett smith or something but still trying to make the most out of your offense. Because I think Kevin Stefanski brilliantly worked with this in 2019. But also one thing we don't talk about a lot is they had a pretty easy

schedule of defenses this year. Their schedule of defenses is not easy. So they're going to have to maximize this. If your head coach says you have to run the ball, how do you work around that? Yeah. That's an interesting one. I mean, I think you quit in some in some ways. I think that the like the second and long runs are the worst for me. Like even the first down, there is like a game theory sort of aspect to it of you run on first down and then you have knowledge as to whether or not it worked. And then you can decide on second down what you want to do.

Now, if you run on second down, you're not really gaining that much because you're not going to pick up the first down, most likely, if it's second and long. And now you're just putting yourself into a third down situation that could be anywhere from two yards to seven yards. And you're really giving yourself that. So I feel like on those sorts of plays, but a problem is for a conservative coach, those are the ones that they hate

because they don't want to get in third and long, right? So it's like this fear of getting in third and long. I don't know. I think it's really a tough situation because the head coach is it. I mean, let's face it. The head coach is not, this is not a democracy. This is not like a rational,

you don't take it to the Supreme Court and then overrule the head coach on what's going on. So, I mean, you try to explain to him these different concepts. You try to explain the fact that, you know, kicking a punt, you're going to say we're going to run the ball, get a third and long, not convert and then punt the ball that it's not that much better than it would be if you threw the ball a couple of times and potentially risk the interception. I think you just have to stress those different things. But I don't, I mean, I think it may be an impossibility, honestly, to talk through someone who believes in that sort of philosophy without it being like this feedback loop where it starts to work and you get lucky, you get lucky that it starts to work doing the way that you want to do things. And then you just lean into it

and get them to buy into it more and more. The problem is it normally works the other direction. The moment it doesn't work, and I think you could say that the Seahawks fell into this category last year, those coaches, they have their initial instinct and you can just flip right back to zero immediately and say, okay, I'm done with this experiment.

You just described 2018. They were, I think they were like five, two and one. And Kirk Cousins was one of the top passers in the league. And then they had a game against the Jets where it was windy and it didn't work and they were passing too much in Mike Zimmer's opinion. And then from there on out, Kirk Cousins goes mostly downhill because Zimmer got frustrated that they weren't running the ball enough. And it just became this huge conflict between him and John D Filippo because D Filippo's philosophy was more past first. So that's a, that's a great way of putting it. And it's exactly what ends up happening. So before we wrap up, just have, this has been terrific and

people should go listen to your podcast, unexpected points, check out your work at pff.com. I have three Viking quarterback seasons that I want to tell you the stat line and give you two quarterbacks. And I want you to tell me which quarterback it was. Okay? That's the game. You can do this. All right. I know you can do this. This is fun.

Okay. This quarterback had 4,264 yards, 18 touchdowns, 19 interceptions for a 79.9 quarterback rating. Was that Warren Moon or was that Tommy Kramer? Hmm. I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess. I'm going to go with the I'm going to go with Kramer only because why not? There isn't really a lot of skill to this game. I just thought I should make some statistical sort of fun game and people

could play along at home. That was actually Warren moon. I thought the interception total might throw you off because moon did have one great year in Minnesota. This, this season, 4,717 yards, 39 touchdowns, 11 interceptions. Is that Dante Culpepper or Brett Favre? I'm trying to think if Culpepper ever got to that number because it was a little bit earlier. I'm going to say Culpepper, but I'm not.

I'll say Culpepper. That is correct. That is Dante Culpepper, but I'm not uh I'll say Culpepper that is correct that is that is uh Dante Culpepper his famous 2004 my coin flipping is one for one one for two so one for two all right last last believe the analytics that's the analytics work that's right this quarterback uh I should give you the win-loss record because that's the most important thing to stats people uh two two thousand eight hundred sixteen yards 23 touchdowns 12 picks good for a 94 quarterback rating is it christian ponder or jeff george that's a good one because george had a couple of good seasons but then ponder like when those percy harvin seasons looked the early percy harvin looked okay um i'm gonna say i'm gonna say

i'm gonna say ponder ponder could only dream to be jeff george so there you go i thought that was a fun little uh let's talk about quarterback statistics jeff george's eight and two run in 1999 is if you go back and look at it it's one of the most fun you'll ever find because he just well i love i love seeing him as part of these like you see the randy moss like stuff get gets circulated more than anything else but some of the lasers that that george was throwing it's just a ridiculous because the guy like did not care at all about base or doing whatever and he doesn't necessarily look like the guy that would have that also i mean he's a tall guy but he's not uh his arm isn't like you know some sort of adonis sort of thing either but man could he just whip it right he just looks like

a dad sort of you know like and then he's just right laser is the way to do it so anyway kevin cole uh make sure you follow him at kevin cole pff you're that guy now right at kevin cole pff yep i am that guy yeah yeah but not not not uh, PFF. Yep. I am that guy. Yeah. Yeah. But not, not, not a PFF underscore Kevin. So I'm bucking a trend a little bit there. Probably hurting my career prospects there. I don't know. I think the underscores are problematic. Personally, an investigation is required. Kevin, you're awesome. Your work is great. That's why I wanted to have you on.

And I was not disappointed. So great stuff and keep up the good work. We'll talk again soon, man. All right. Thanks, buddy. This is great.