I don’t think a single advanced football stat has really made it. The closest, I think, are the simple ones like “quality wins” and passing yards per attempt. I don’t want subjective stats like whether a WR is to blame for a route mistake, but I’d like to see a basic listing of INTs off deflections by a WR. One could argue about a ball off the fingertips but right now the INT number is too gross to be meaningful.
Even something basic like passing yards is not a great stat. The qb gets credit for the same number of yards regardless of whether he throws a 40 yard bomb or a 1 yard quick out when the receiver then runs for 39 yards after the catch.
And I think it is crazy for kneeldowns at the end of the game to be counted as -1 or -2 yards rushing, although nobody cares about qb rushing yards for the most part.
@Lergnom, I agree such a stat is subjective, but baseball has the equivalent stat when they call an error. I think a stat for “caught and should have been caught” passes would make a lot of sense. Perhaps they could leave out the question of whether the throw or the route was wrong, and just quantify passes that actually reach the receiver, but which the receiver bobbles/drops.
There are stats kept now for drops: http://www.sportingcharts.com/nfl/stats/drops/2015/
However, this stat, like errors in baseball, requires that the player touch the ball. A ball that a player should have been able to reach but didn’t touch is not counted. A ball the player touched, but in someone’s judgment was “too hard” to handle, is not counted. So it is still somewhat subjective and not as informative as it could be.
Here’s an attempt to quantify tipped and dropped interceptions:
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2015/2014-adjusted-interceptions
George R.R. Martin: [“Life is miserable and full of pain”](http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/2015/11/17/george-martin-after-patriots-beat-giants-life-miserable-and-full-pain/fqOTXxp9eOOdPBksy8LiqJ/story.html?p1=story_hp)
Yes it’s football-related. 
Should there be stats for players who could have been a lot better if only they’d been on a better team, a receiver who would have caught 100 more passes if his quarterback had been John Elway instead of the guy from Podunk State? Or stats for the number 2 or 3 receiver on a team who would have been number 1 on another team?
Life isn’t fair.
There are reasonable stats for YAC - yards after catch - but my focus on INTs is because that single metric is so important for judging QB performance. Drops are tough to call and aren’t like errors because we don’t know the route call, where the WR was supposed to be, where the ball was supposed to be, whether it was thrown hard enough or too hard, whether the view was obscured by an LB or DB, etc. In baseball, the ball is hit and you see it and you either get to it and catch it in your glove or you don’t. That has led to UZR and other defensive metrics for range but we understand that errors by x mean “could catch and didn’t” instead of maybe should have reached it but didn’t.
Example. In the Monday night game, there was a key miss/drop when the young WR stopped running and the QB led him. The commentator said the WR has the choice but that’s not really true: if the QB sees him moving, he needs to keep moving while if the WR has stopped then the QB is supposed to put the ball where he’s stopped. This particular case looked to me like the WR looked to the QB and then stopped, which is a blunt mistake. But we can’t know unless we’re in the meeting on Monday.
There are many crazy outcomes in game stats but it’s weird to me to say a QB gets an INT when the ball goes through the WR’s hands, hits him in the face mask and caroms to a defender. Or in the Edelman example I started with, Julian actually batted the ball in the air by accident.
Now there’s news that there may not be enough bowl-eligible college teams to fill the 80 available slots? Two more bowl games were added this year for Orlando and Tucson. Huh? There are too many college bowl games already! Thus we have the possibility of a 5-7 team being invited to a bowl game. Why would anyone want their alma mater to head to a bowl games, especially if it’s a losing proposition financially, to play a 5-7 team? If the game is in Hawaii or San Diego I’d give it some thought. Otherwise…blah.
“Should there be stats for players who could have been a lot better if only they’d been on a better team, a receiver who would have caught 100 more passes if his quarterback had been John Elway instead of the guy from Podunk State? Or stats for the number 2 or 3 receiver on a team who would have been number 1 on another team?”
That is always the thing about football, it is such a team oriented sport that it is hard to tell who is truly great and who is lucky. Put it this way, the great running backs, the Faulks, Billy Sims, Jim Browns, and so forth, usually had great offensive lines to work behind (it doesn’t mean they weren’t great running backs, all of them were, but rather that if they had weak offensive lines, they likely would not do as well as they did; and there are some running backs out there who had the misfortune to have bad O lines, and thus didn’t do well. There have been mediocre qb’s who won superbowls (Yes, you, Trent Dilfer), and great ones who never got close. From an older generation, two QB’s I think of were John Hadle of the Chargers (AFL/AFC) and Sunny Jorgenson, who had the misfortune to play for Redskins teams that were even more crappy than the Dan Schneider disaster areas of today. I remember reading a kind of round robin between a number of QBs of the era, and they said if Sonny Jorgenson had been on Green Bay, they likely would have won more superbowls, and conversely, they said the greatness of Green Bay’s teams made Starr look much better than he really was.
Football with stats is difficult, again, because it is a team sport. I maintain that if a pick happens because a receiver can’t hold on and a defender gets it, or a defender strips it, it should count against the receiver, not the QB (one year Eli Manning had half his picks in this category) . O found it kind of weird that in his last game, if Peyton Manning had spiked the ball every pass he attempted, he QB rating would have been 40…I think statistics are a lot more valuable on a team basis then they are on an individual for that reason. It is why individual stats can mean so little, Kyle Orton was a stats monster in fantasy football, yet isn’t necessarily remembered as a good quarterback.
So is @romanigypsyeyes going crazy right now? 
Wow, Michigan State over Ohio State in the last second. Exciting.
We were watching while preparing a Friendsgiving. We’re half and half Michigan and Michigan State fans. Michigan needed OSU to win. Emotions were high (but in good fun).
It was a fantastic game. MSU beat U of M and OSU after leading for a grand total of 0 seconds combined. That’s cool but my heart can’t handle it.
@romanigypsyeyes, I love the concept of a Friendsgiving! Do you do Turkey or something else?
@nrdsb4 I’m a vegetarian so I left the meat decisions to someone else. We ended up having a big snow storm and many weren’t able to come (and the rest were snowed in so we had a VERY long Friendsgiving- not that I’m complaining!) so we scaled back what we cooked but it was:
-Pork roast (I can’t be more specific because I have no idea)
-Chili
-Garlic mashed potatoes
-Cranberry-orange sauce
-Homemade apple sauce
-Assortment of other fruits, veggies, and cheeses
There were other things too but that was the bulk of it. We wanted it to be Thanksgiving-esque but not so Thanksgiving-y that those who are going to have a more “traditional” Thanksgiving this week wouldn’t feel like they were getting the same meal twice.
This is something we’ve done for a few years. It started when some of my queer friends in undergrad didn’t have a home to go back to on Thanksgiving due to family disowning them. We do it the weekend before so that those who are going home can still partake.
It’s always a lot of fun- and since it usually falls on some big football game days, it’s even more fun.
Sad news. I don’t know if anyone’s been following the story of Lloyd Carr’s (former head coach at Michigan) grandson, Chad Carr, but he has passed away from his brain cancer.
Despite the tragedy, it is truly a great story of how people put aside bitter rivalries to see what was important- this little boy. Michigan State and OSU both worked with Michigan in different ways to honor Chad, his family, and work with the organization that was founded in his name that will help other children and their families with pediatric brain tumors.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2015/11/5-year-old_chad_carr_dies_afte.html
My Bengals choked again. They always choke during big games(playoffs, monday/sunday night)
I wish they’d been a bit more consistent then and choked late when they played Seattle instead of mounting a crazy, come from behind victory. I hope the choking thing isn’t contagious. :-S
They mentioned a stat last night that the Bengals are something like 1-13 in their last 14 prime time games.
Pats got some of their o-line back, so hopefully they can get to 10-0 while keeping Brady upright.
That was one of the worst officiated games of the year, and that is saying something.
I do enjoy watching Rexy throw tantrums on the sideline though.
Two more receivers go down… How much longer can their offense keep going?
Brady got hit 19 times, but seems to have escaped injury, so the wheels haven’t come completely off the bus. But jeez…
Breakdown of the Patriots/Buffalo officiating:
Can anyone who is watching the Iron Bowl clue me in to what the HECK is the problem with that Auburn assistant coach?!?!