Cosell Talks: “He’s a Winner” (1 Viewer)

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

If we can't come up with a solid picture based on Peyton's career, then we're all just wasting our time even talking about it.

True, but if people were trying to come up with a solid picture based on his career we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.But instead they seem to be trying to have this discussion based on their own subjective opinion of only 19 games, so here we are.

 

[GregR]

It isn't that we don't "grasp the concept", we just don't see evidence that it exists at a level anywhere as meaningful as people make it out to be. We can predict who others will think is clutch just as well as you. I grasp the concept of what a ghost is too, but I have yet to see a reason to believe in them, either.

A question that's been raised several times, including in Cossell's article, that no one has bothered responding to is the most telling for me. A player can have a great comeback and if his team wins he'll get labelled clutch and if they lose through no change in anything to do with him, his performance won't be considered as clutch. Like the example with Brady and his first Super Bowl.

It should be common sense if everything related to a performance stays exactly the same, then an evaluation of it should stay the same too. If our evaluation changes because of completely separate factors, it's a good sign there's a flaw in the way we're evaluating.

 

[GregR]

19 games seems like enough of a sample size to me. That's more than a full seasons worth of games. What would you consider a meaningful sample size in this context?

If someone came into the league, played 16 games as a rookie, won 8 and lost 8, had some game-winning drives in the wins, laid some stinkers in the losses, would you be ready to declare him either a choker or a clutch player? If someone flipped a coin 19 times and got 14 heads, would you be ready to declare him a great heads flipper?Peyton Manning actually has a better playoff QB rating than Tom Brady, so his actual performance in those games, as a QB, has been at least as good as Brady's.

Payton Manning wasn't a rookie in 16 of those games though. That's part of the reason I think it's enough. There are enough games spread out over a long enough duration of his career that we can get a decent picture of his playoff performance. I guess my point is that if Peyton's career and 19 playoffs games isn't enough for you to come up with a conclusion than it seems like nothing will. 19 playoff games is a lot for any QB. I'm not sure where it ranks all time, but I'm sure it's a great deal more than most. If we can't come up with a solid picture based on Peyton's career, then we're all just wasting our time even talking about it.

Think back to the half-dozen threads a year we had about Brady vs Manning. Even all the playoff games don't get to be used in the evaluation. Only those that match preconceived notions do. They pretty much all went like this.If Peyton lost regular season to the Pats, it was a big game that counts towards clutch and he was a choker.If Peyton lost regular season to the Pats despite playing well enough to win but a teammate handed the game away, it was a big game that counts towards clutch and he was a choker.If Peyton won regular season against the Pats, it wasn't a big game that counts towards clutch because it wasn't the playoffs.If Peyton lost a 1st round playoff game it was a big game that counts towards clutch and he was a choker.If Peyton won a 1st round playoff game, it wasn't a big game that counts towards clutch because it's only a 1st round game.Etc. The only game that counts in Peyton's favor towards clutch is a Super Bowl win. Which as squistion was good enough to point out, to some still may not count because it was against Rex Grossman.But any loss counted against him even if they should have won based on his effort. Other players who already are viewed as clutch the opposite is true and they are given the benefit of the doubt that any bad game is not meaningful towards their clutchness. Not until they do something like Brady getting booed at home during a playoff game and losing a pair of Super Bowls. Never mind what it says positively about him that he even made it to the Super Bowl again twice. His legacy is stained more for making a championship game than it would have been if he'd failed to make the playoffs.This is why I don't believe in clutch the way people try to sell it.

 

[Time Kibitzer]

It isn't that we don't "grasp the concept", we just don't see evidence that it exists at a level anywhere as meaningful as people make it out to be. We can predict who others will think is clutch just as well as you. I grasp the concept of what a ghost is too, but I have yet to see a reason to believe in them, either.A question that's been raised several times, including in Cossell's article, that no one has bothered responding to is the most telling for me. A player can have a great comeback and if his team wins he'll get labelled clutch and if they lose through no change in anything to do with him, his performance won't be considered as clutch. Like the example with Brady and his first Super Bowl.It should be common sense if everything related to a performance stays exactly the same, then an evaluation of it should stay the same too. If our evaluation changes because of completely separate factors, it's a good sign there's a flaw in the way we're evaluating.

 

[CalBear]

19 games seems like enough of a sample size to me. That's more than a full seasons worth of games. What would you consider a meaningful sample size in this context?

If someone came into the league, played 16 games as a rookie, won 8 and lost 8, had some game-winning drives in the wins, laid some stinkers in the losses, would you be ready to declare him either a choker or a clutch player? If someone flipped a coin 19 times and got 14 heads, would you be ready to declare him a great heads flipper?Peyton Manning actually has a better playoff QB rating than Tom Brady, so his actual performance in those games, as a QB, has been at least as good as Brady's.

Payton Manning wasn't a rookie in 16 of those games though. That's part of the reason I think it's enough. There are enough games spread out over a long enough duration of his career that we can get a decent picture of his playoff performance.

19 playoff games are no more statistically significant than 19 regular-season games. If you wouldn't draw conclusions about someone's inherent abilities based mixed results from 19 regular-season games, you shouldn't draw them from 19 playoff games either. Statistically, that is.

I guess my point is that if Peyton's career and 19 playoffs games isn't enough for you to come up with a conclusion than it seems like nothing will. 19 playoff games is a lot for any QB. I'm not sure where it ranks all time, but I'm sure it's a great deal more than most. If we can't come up with a solid picture based on Peyton's career, then we're all just wasting our time even talking about it.

Of course we're wasting our time talking about it. That's what we do.I do think that before he went out with a neck injury, any GM in the league would have been happy to have Peyton Manning leading his team with 2 minutes left in the Super Bowl, needing a TD, and that he'd be the #1 choice for a large percentage of the GMs.

 

[squistion]

It isn't that we don't "grasp the concept", we just don't see evidence that it exists at a level anywhere as meaningful as people make it out to be. We can predict who others will think is clutch just as well as you. I grasp the concept of what a ghost is too, but I have yet to see a reason to believe in them, either.

A question that's been raised several times, including in Cossell's article, that no one has bothered responding to is the most telling for me. A player can have a great comeback and if his team wins he'll get labelled clutch and if they lose through no change in anything to do with him, his performance won't be considered as clutch. Like the example with Brady and his first Super Bowl.

It should be common sense if everything related to a performance stays exactly the same, then an evaluation of it should stay the same too. If our evaluation changes because of completely separate factors, it's a good sign there's a flaw in the way we're evaluating.

Well, OK, but that statement indicates to me that you really don't grasp the concept - or rather, it is that you are non-intuitive by nature and simply can't view something that way unless there is the statistical evidence to support it.And this is not like saying ghosts exist or other aspects of the supernatural. Our brains are programmed to recognize patterns, it is evolutionary and important to survival. Unfortunately, patterns we grasp on a less than conscious level (the sub conscious has been proven to exist) present themselves to us as an intuitive feeling which we can't articulate consciously (we sense that we are right, but the synapses don't fire correctly in the brain and tell us why we know what we think we know).

Greg Cosell doesn't quite seem to grasp it either, so you are in good company. And by the way, Albert Einstein, considered among the most linear of thinkers (E=Mc2) was quoted as saying that the most important thing is intuition. So go ahead and laugh say that this is like believing in ghosts, but those of us who consider ourselves intuitive feel we are blessed in a way that our minds pick up on things that other people who are more linear in their thinking don't (and are probably incapable of). Are we always right? No, but I have gone against my intuition enough times to be burned to trust it over what logically one would think is right from thinking in a linear perspective.

 

[Time Kibitzer]

It isn't that we don't "grasp the concept", we just don't see evidence that it exists at a level anywhere as meaningful as people make it out to be. We can predict who others will think is clutch just as well as you. I grasp the concept of what a ghost is too, but I have yet to see a reason to believe in them, either.

A question that's been raised several times, including in Cossell's article, that no one has bothered responding to is the most telling for me. A player can have a great comeback and if his team wins he'll get labelled clutch and if they lose through no change in anything to do with him, his performance won't be considered as clutch. Like the example with Brady and his first Super Bowl.

It should be common sense if everything related to a performance stays exactly the same, then an evaluation of it should stay the same too. If our evaluation changes because of completely separate factors, it's a good sign there's a flaw in the way we're evaluating.

Well, OK, but that statement indicates to me that you really don't grasp the concept - or rather, it is that you are non-intuitive by nature and simply can't view something that way unless there is the statistical evidence to support it.And this is not like saying ghosts exist or other aspects of the supernatural. Our brains are programmed to recognize patterns, it is evolutionary and important to survival. Unfortunately, patterns we grasp on a less than conscious level (the sub conscious has been proven to exist) present themselves to us as an intuitive feeling which we can't articulate consciously (we sense that we are right, but the synapses don't fire correctly in the brain and tell us why we know what we think we know).

Greg Cosell doesn't quite seem to grasp it either, so you are in good company. And by the way, Albert Einstein, considered among the most linear of thinkers (E=Mc2) is quoted and saying the most important thing is intuition. So go ahead and laugh say that this is like believing in ghosts, but those of us who consider ourselves intuitive feel we are blessed in a way that our minds pick up on things the people who are more linear in their thinking don't. Are we always right? No, but I have gone against my intuition enough times to be burned to trust it over what logically one would think is right from thinking in a linear perspective.

Indeed, this identifying of patterns sometimes called heuristics (experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery) and although they serve fantastic evolutionary benefits when data is not present or there is no time to sort through data, they can oftentimes lead to incorrect conclusions where specificity is important. If you have some free time on your hands, I encourage you to check out some of the work by Kahneman & Tversky; psychologists who won a Nobel Prize in Economics by elucidating how people can think and act irrationally based on rules of thumb, educated guesses, intuitive judgments, and common sense.

 

[squistion]

Indeed, this identifying of patterns sometimes called heuristics (experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery) and although they serve fantastic evolutionary benefits when data is not present or there is no time to sort through data, they can oftentimes lead to incorrect conclusions where specificity is important. If you have some free time on your hands, I encourage you to check out some of the work by Kahneman & Tversky; psychologists who won a Nobel Prize in Economics by elucidating how people can think and act irrationally based on rules of thumb, educated guesses, intuitive judgments, and common sense.

Indeed, I never claimed that intuition was infallible, just that I have learned to go against it at my peril

 

[Time Kibitzer]

Indeed, this identifying of patterns sometimes called heuristics (experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery) and although they serve fantastic evolutionary benefits when data is not present or there is no time to sort through data, they can oftentimes lead to incorrect conclusions where specificity is important. If you have some free time on your hands, I encourage you to check out some of the work by Kahneman & Tversky; psychologists who won a Nobel Prize in Economics by elucidating how people can think and act irrationally based on rules of thumb, educated guesses, intuitive judgments, and common sense.

Indeed, I never claimed that intuition was infallible, just that I have learned to go against it at my peril

I'd venture Kahneman & Tversky would argue the logical fallacy you're displaying above is the availability heuristic

 

[Ilov80s]

Brady is a much better QB but his defenses have not been as mature and tough as they were from the late 90s thru mid 2000s. Even with the defense not as good as the older Pats teams, they were a crazy Manning/Tyree play away from probably beating the Giants in 07, and a Welker drop from possibly holding off the Giants this past season.

They were also a miracle kick in the snow and a kickoff out of bounds away from maybe only having one ring in the Brady/Belichick era. It goes both ways.

Not just a miracle kick, but also benefited from a terrible rule. Everyone that knows football knows that was a fumble.