Has Brady become Manning? (1 Viewer)

[DropKick]

From everything we've ever heard about the myth of clutch vs. choker it's just something you have or you don't. I've never heard someone try to describe it as some skill that is learned/forgotten like you're implying. LeBron was a monster in the finals last year. He didn't suddenly "learn" how to be clutch any more than Elway learned it or Brady forgot it. The statistics just became more complete and the sample size larger.

How do you know Lebron didn't learn to be clutch?What is clutch? What is choking? Around here, people throw the word "choke" around too easily. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Regardless, I have no doubt that people react differently to the pressure of the moment. I see this in real life; some people rise to the occasion and others panic. It's one thing to kick a Field Goal in the second game of the preseason and another to do so with the SB on the line. My definition of choking is simply letting the moment get to you enough to perform less than your ability. Not every missed shot is caused by nerves but some must be. Clutch would be the ability to overcome (or be oblivious of) the moment. This could be performing at or above your capability.

In Lebron's case, maybe he changed his mental approach to the game. In other words, "learned to be clutch".

 

[DropKick]

I've always found it odd that some will only believe something to be true if they can quantify it... Trying to prove or disprove a concept by citing stats in a vacuum; Ignoring common sense or their eyes because they only trust numbers.If you told me that, in general, QB ratings declined in the post season, I would guess that more conservative game plans were used; or the teams were likely more equal; or even weather conditions tended to worsen.What is a QB rating anyway? It must go down if a Hail Mary gets picked at the end of the half/game. It probably goes down if I throw an incomplete pass rather than take a sack. I'm sure it would be better if I throw a TD from the one rather than hand the ball off. What if a receiver drops a sure TD or runs the wrong route and I hit a defender on the numbers. Maybe the running game is working and we stick with it... A win is the only thing that matters and often even that is out of the QB's control.Observe any QBs year to year rating. It's probably not very consistent. Are they a different QB each year?

 

[Devine Intervention]

Brady hasn't been very good or at least consistently good in the playoffs lately. Still, if Gronk doesn't get hurt or Welker brings in a ball last year, he has another ring, and nobody is talking about this.

There is no guarantee of that. For one, the Brady bad throw/Welker drop would not have ended the game. The Giants could have still held them to a FG and got the ball back with about two minutes left, trailing by 5, and went down and scored to win the game. We just don't know. As for Gronk, sure, he is a difference maker, but the game plays out completely different if he plays. It's not as simple as, "his presence would have gotten the Patriots 5+ more points, and they lost by 4, so if he plays, they win." It's not that simple. If the Patriots O is doing better, maybe the Giants don't settle for field goals on their first two scoring drives of the second half. Maybe the game is still close enough for them to go down and win it at the end like they did anyway. Again, we just don't know. We could play the "change this play or that play" in tons of playoff games and change the Super Bowl winner of most NFL seasons. But what matters is what happened, not what could have happened The fact that Brady has three rings and that his team is always a top contender to win it all practically every year alone speaks volumes of how great he has been and how important he is to that team.

I think the "what ifs" actually would work against Brady's success. Like what if he didnt have a clutch kicker, or a hall of fame coach. Or the tuck rule, or Lee Evans drop an easy TD. I could go on...Also, I find it funny how everyone talks about Brady being the best ever on wins and loses until he starts losing and then its now a team game. Brady is finally getting to feel what its like to be Manning and have to carry his team. In the first years he was a Russel Wilson who they created a great game plan for him to be successful but could count on the rest of his team. Now that they have to count on him, he's no Manning.

 

[KellysHeroes]

I'm not going to read the whole thread, but truth is once the Pat Defense got old and broke down - no more Super Bowls

 

[SacramentoBob]

I wouldn't have identical lists. I think it's ridiculous to think that there is no such thing as "choking" or "clutch performers". The fact that you are putting those two categories in there with "pixies and goblins" is completely ridiculous.

There are some who step there game up in big situations and some who don't quite play as well.

Peyton is clearly one who doesn't quite get things done at the same level in the playoffs. It's statistical fact. Are we too harsh in labeling Peyton a choker? Maybe so. But that's a term that can't be quantified. I've seen enough big Peyton mistakes in big games to feel secure in saying he often chokes in big playoff games. If you disagree, fine. I don't care anymore. I guess us "dummies" will call Peyton a choker, and you smart stat nerds can use fake coin tosses to make you feel better about his joke of a post-season resume.

But "clutch" and "choke" ARE in the same category as pixies and goblins, at least at the NFL level. They're figments of our collective imagination, fairy tails, stories mankind has summoned out of a desire to explain and it's dissatisfaction with the idea of random chance driving results. All of this is easily demonstrable. The guys in the sabermetric community have been looking at it in baseball for decades and they always come back with the same answer- there's no such thing as "clutch" or "choke". Lest you think baseball is fundamentally different from football, that those adjectives are meaningless when it comes to hitting a small ball with a long, narrow wooden cylinder, but magically meaningful when it comes to hurling an oblong ball down a grassy field... well, read this.The gist- Neil took Vegas spreads and estimated how many games a QB should have won, then compared against how many he actually won. QBs that overperform are the guys we would consider "clutch"- guys like Flacco, Eli, Sanchez, and Brady. Guys that underperform are "chokers"- your Peytons, Ryans, Marinos, etc. The money quote comes from the last paragraphs. Basically, Neil found that the correlation between "clutchness" prior to age 27 and after age 27 IS NEGATIVE. In other words, the more "clutch" you are early in your career, the more likely you are to be a choker late in your career. This is not just Brady, either- plenty of other QBs have trod this path, too. And then the really damning part is when Neil compares "clutchness" in even numbered years to clutchness in odd numbered years. He gets a correlation of 0.05- which is essentially zero. In other words, there is NO CORRELATION WHATSOEVER between how clutch a QB is in even years to how clutch he is in odd years. What more proof do you need that "clutch" is just a made-up adjective we apply to players with absolutely no predictive value whatsoever? It's totally random.

Besides, I have a major problem with the idea that guys like Peyton Manning and Matt Ryan struggle in big situations. What's the proposed mechanism, here? Are we assuming that the pressure gets to them and causes them to choke? Because it's not like playoff games are the only pressure cookers in the NFL. Peyton Manning is the NFL's career leader in comeback wins. Matt Ryan is the NFL's career leader in comeback percentage. You don't think 4th quarter comebacks are nerve-wracking? Are we to believe that Manning and Ryan really thrive under pressure, until that pressure reaches a certain very precise level (which correlates to playoffs), and then they go from the clutchest guys in the league to bumbling buffoons (except for all the times they don't)? Really, I'd stick with the "magic pixies" explanation- it sounds far more plausible.

Where have I said that "just shouldn't happen"? QB's change. Brady looks to me like he's "pressing" out there right now. I have no way to "quantify" him pressing. It's just how he looks. He looked that way against the Giants last year, and definitely against Baltimore. I have no idea why.

Elway earned the "choker" label earlier in his career by putting up huge duds in the super bowl. That doesn't mean he was destined to "always" be a choker. But he did choke in the super bowl. Yes, he redeemed himself at the end of his career, and that's great for him.

Michael Jordan didn't earn the "clutch" nickname by accident. He dominated in the NBA playoffs and especially in the finals. My main argument over the past few days is simple: Peyton isn't at his best in the playoffs. That's undeniable and has led many to conclude he's a choker. You may laugh at that nickname, and you may think it's ridiculous. But you can't deny that his game takes a step back when the playoffs roll around.

Funny you mention His Airness. Easy to forget it now, but after he lost in the first round his first three seasons, then got beaten by the Pistons in each of the next 3 seasons, Jordan was once seen as a choker who couldn't win the big one. Much like Manning with his 0-3 playoff start and his inability to get past the Pats after that. Again, this should all demonstrate how stupid "clutch" and "choker" really are. Elway and Jordan were chokers, until they weren't. Favre and Brady were clutch, until they weren't. The lack of consistency really illustrates that NO ONE is clutch or a choker, we just like applying arbitrary (and meaningless) labels to people based on their most recent body of work.

Any adjective that applies to someone until it doesn't anymore is a useless adjective that does not describe anything real or meaningful.

SSOG doing work in here.

As a general rule, if you find yourself on the same side of a sports argument as Skip Bayless you should reconsider your position. And nobody blathers on about "chokers" and "clutch players" like Skip Bayless.

"Alive" is an adjective that applies to people until they are dead.

 

[SSOG]

The explicit monitoring theory provides an explanation for athlete’s under-performance at the precise moment they need to be at their best. Beilock and Carr suggest that “pressure raises self-consciousness and anxiety about performing correctly, which increases the attention paid to skill processes and their step-by-step control. Attention to execution at this step-by-step level is thought to disrupt well-learned or proceduralized performances.”[1]

I know for sure I've seen this one 1st hand. My senior year of high school on was on an indoor track team, ranked 1st in the state in the 4 x 200 M relay. I ran anchor leg and our 2nd best runner ran lead. At the start of the race the gun went off and our lead froze. Simply froze in the block for what seemed like an eternity but in reality was about 0.25 seconds.... Which in a sprint is an eternity. Almost every other team was half way around the turn before he even moved. We ended up not placing.

I don't doubt that some people freeze under pressure. Here's the thing, though- I bet that freeze-up affected any track scholarships he might have been offered. Maybe he doesn't get one at all. Maybe he still gets one anyway, and he goes on to college. Maybe he gets the freezing issue corrected and dominates his college track meets. Maybe he doesn't, and he never gets invited to Olympic trials. Maybe the coaches at the Olympic trials see enough in him to give him a shot, but he freezes at the trials and never makes the Olympics.In other words, yes, some people freeze under pressure. The thing is, we don't see these people at the Olympics. Guys who freeze never excel in high school, or if they do, they never excel in college, or if they do, they never excel in trials. There are multiple checkpoints along the route from "high school sprinter" to "Olympic sprinter" that will weed out all the chokers. Likewise, there are many steps from "Pop Warner football" to "NFL football" to weed out the chokers. Either they'll freeze up in high school and never get a scholarship. Or they'll freeze up in college and never get drafted. Or they'll freeze up in camps and never make a roster. Or they'll freeze up in live games and never play out their rookie contract. I'm not arguing that choking doesn't exist in the human population, I'm arguing that choking doesn't exist in the much smaller subset of the human population known as "NFL starters", and more especially among the much smaller subset of that population known as "future Hall of Famers", and most especially of all, among the much, much smaller subset of that population known as "all-time career leaders in comeback wins".

 

[SSOG]

"Alive" is an adjective that applies to people until they are dead.

Alive is an adjective that applies to someone until something causes him to die. It's not like one minute he's alive and the next he's dead with no explanation whatsoever. But that's what's happening with QBs and "clutchness". One season Elway's a choker. Two years later, he's clutch. Nothing changed about Elway. Prior to age 27, Brady was clutch. Since age 27, Brady's a choker. Nothing's changed about Brady. Three weeks ago, Matt Ryan was a choker. Today he's not. He's the same exact guy still. The fact that these adjectives apply until such a time as we decide they don't (as opposed to "until such a time as a meaningful change occurs") should be all the proof we need that these adjectives aren't describing anything real in the first place. They're just labels we slap on after a series of random events because we're hard wired to see patterns and reject randomness as an explanation.Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

Calling playoff QBs "clutch" or "choke" is no more rational than calling slot machines "hot" or "cold".

 

[The Comedian]

Brady is on the decline, I think there's very little question about that.

I do watch him week to week. I think it's pretty obvious.

 

[The Comedian]

Brady hasn't been very good or at least consistently good in the playoffs lately. Still, if Gronk doesn't get hurt or Welker brings in a ball last year, he has another ring, and nobody is talking about this.

Brady is on the decline, I think there's very little question about that. They can doze through the regular season because the Patriots are too good at gameplanning, and Brady is extremely good at executing, and they have quite a bit of talent. But when the tough teams come around in the playoffs, it becomes an iffy proposition.

If, by extension, you are suggesting that Brady has become human and plays like almost every other QB in the league than I agree with you. Going 10-0 to start his career was the anomally. Going 7-7 since is much closer to thenorm. I already posted the post-season records of a bunch of recent QBs.Playing the what if game, a play or two different and Brady could have been 5-0 in SBs (and for that matter could have been in another in 2006) and people would hail him as the greatest QB ever. But those handful of plays went the other direction and because of that he's been in decline?

I think what changed the most is that in the SB winning years, Brady was not the whole team. Other guys stepped up and allowed Brady to be average to good to win. Nowadays, if Brady doesn't play lights out, it's hard for NE to win. Sure, they can still win (look at last year's AFCC game), but that was more the exception.

We've seen other great QBs where a greater burden of the load fall on the QB that had aissues in the playoffs (Peyton, Marino). Brady just set the bar high by winning so often so early.

I don't really think this is true. Brady has an array of weapons right now, all complimentary, all of them pretty good. Welker is great at what he does, Gronkowski is probably the most difficult match-up in football. The defense isn't great, but it's not as bad as it's been in the past. I think the time that Brady had to "carry the team" was when he had Deion Branch as his #1 receiver, and then Reche Caldwell, et. al. There's a lot around Brady right now, but they have not been able to get it done against good teams.It's easy to say "Well if Welker holds on to that ball, we're not having this conversation." And that's true. But that doesn't mean Brady would have played great in that SB; he didn't, at all. I won't even get into the intentional grounding in the end zone.

Yeah, Brady hasn't had the best defense. But they scored 17 points in the '07 bowl, 14 points last year. They got bounced this year with a grand total of 13 points. I think they put up 21 points against the Jets in 2010. The Baltimore game is really the only playoff loss that you can point to and say the defense was terrible, yet even that loss was aided by an early offensive turnover.

So really, I don't really get the argument that Brady is getting it done, and just being let down because everything is on him. The offense has been failing in these games, if that's not on Brady, then I don't know what to say about it.

 

[David Yudkin]

Brady hasn't been very good or at least consistently good in the playoffs lately. Still, if Gronk doesn't get hurt or Welker brings in a ball last year, he has another ring, and nobody is talking about this.

Brady is on the decline, I think there's very little question about that. They can doze through the regular season because the Patriots are too good at gameplanning, and Brady is extremely good at executing, and they have quite a bit of talent. But when the tough teams come around in the playoffs, it becomes an iffy proposition.

If, by extension, you are suggesting that Brady has become human and plays like almost every other QB in the league than I agree with you. Going 10-0 to start his career was the anomally. Going 7-7 since is much closer to thenorm. I already posted the post-season records of a bunch of recent QBs.Playing the what if game, a play or two different and Brady could have been 5-0 in SBs (and for that matter could have been in another in 2006) and people would hail him as the greatest QB ever. But those handful of plays went the other direction and because of that he's been in decline?

I think what changed the most is that in the SB winning years, Brady was not the whole team. Other guys stepped up and allowed Brady to be average to good to win. Nowadays, if Brady doesn't play lights out, it's hard for NE to win. Sure, they can still win (look at last year's AFCC game), but that was more the exception.

We've seen other great QBs where a greater burden of the load fall on the QB that had aissues in the playoffs (Peyton, Marino). Brady just set the bar high by winning so often so early.

I don't really think this is true. Brady has an array of weapons right now, all complimentary, all of them pretty good. Welker is great at what he does, Gronkowski is probably the most difficult match-up in football. The defense isn't great, but it's not as bad as it's been in the past. I think the time that Brady had to "carry the team" was when he had Deion Branch as his #1 receiver, and then Reche Caldwell, et. al. There's a lot around Brady right now, but they have not been able to get it done against good teams.It's easy to say "Well if Welker holds on to that ball, we're not having this conversation." And that's true. But that doesn't mean Brady would have played great in that SB; he didn't, at all. I won't even get into the intentional grounding in the end zone.

Yeah, Brady hasn't had the best defense. But they scored 17 points in the '07 bowl, 14 points last year. They got bounced this year with a grand total of 13 points. I think they put up 21 points against the Jets in 2010. The Baltimore game is really the only playoff loss that you can point to and say the defense was terrible, yet even that loss was aided by an early offensive turnover.

So really, I don't really get the argument that Brady is getting it done, and just being let down because everything is on him. The offense has been failing in these games, if that's not on Brady, then I don't know what to say about it.

My point was that in general, much more falls on Brady having a great game than ever before. Back in the day, the team could win based on the strength of their defense and many games riding the running game. These days, the defense rarely shuts people down completely, and more importatnly, they usually can't get a stop when they absolutely need it.I'm not saying that Brady is without flaws, as he has plenty. The last few years, the Pats offense seems to hit an opponent that they have issues with. They get away from the run, they have Brady try to thorw it 50 times, and most importantly they don't make adjustments. Overall, I thoink the Pats are great at scheming and game planning BEFORE games, but they are not that great adjusting and changing up on the fly IN GAMES. Basically, they are front runners and play much better with the lead and either what they schemed works or it doesn't, with little change on game day.

I think one of the other things that happens to the Pats defensively is that in the regular season they feast on turnovers, but in the playoffs they don't seem to get opponents to cough up the ball as much.

2012 HOU 1, BAL 0

2011 DEN 1, BAL 1, NYG 0

2010 NYJ 0

When you lose the tuirnover battle (for any team), you generally are going to struggle to win games. Their defense is not strong enough to just hold teams on stops and minimize yardage. I realize that there have been games when the defense has played well enough to win (the two SBs againt the Giants come to mind), but the offense struggled to get points on the board. That likely ties in to the lack of turnovers forced and good field position (only 1 turnover forced in the first NYG SB).

Bottom line, the Patriots in the post season are not the same Patriots as they were in the regular season for any number of reasons.

 

[jurb26]

Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

This is a bad analogy. Slot machines, or machines in general, do not have psychology or emotion. Humans do. You are trying to make this all about numbers and statistics and removing all of the human element to it. While agree with many of you’re points, I don’t agree that the encompassment of them is as simple as you are saying. Psychology and emotion are undoubtedly factors in sports. They are simply harder or near impossible to measure. There is a reason scouts look for guys with “natural leadership ability” when looking for QBs. Who actually measures that though? The answer is not black and white as you or others on the “choke” side would like to argue. The answer is somewhere in-between and much harder to measure than just placing stats into a formula. This, IMO, is the worst thing about the SP. It seems we always only have “stat” guys bumping heads with “gut” guys and there is never a balance.

 

[DropKick]

Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

This is a bad analogy. Slot machines, or machines in general, do not have psychology or emotion. Humans do. You are trying to make this all about numbers and statistics and removing all of the human element to it. While agree with many of you’re points, I don’t agree that the encompassment of them is as simple as you are saying. Psychology and emotion are undoubtedly factors in sports. They are simply harder or near impossible to measure. There is a reason scouts look for guys with “natural leadership ability” when looking for QBs. Who actually measures that though? The answer is not black and white as you or others on the “choke” side would like to argue. The answer is somewhere in-between and much harder to measure than just placing stats into a formula. This, IMO, is the worst thing about the SP. It seems we always only have “stat” guys bumping heads with “gut” guys and there is never a balance.

Ignoring the mental aspect is simply foolish. Gathering Statistics is one thing; Interpreting their meaning is another.

 

[Popinski]

Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

This is a bad analogy. Slot machines, or machines in general, do not have psychology or emotion. Humans do. You are trying to make this all about numbers and statistics and removing all of the human element to it. While agree with many of you’re points, I don’t agree that the encompassment of them is as simple as you are saying. Psychology and emotion are undoubtedly factors in sports. They are simply harder or near impossible to measure. There is a reason scouts look for guys with “natural leadership ability” when looking for QBs. Who actually measures that though? The answer is not black and white as you or others on the “choke” side would like to argue. The answer is somewhere in-between and much harder to measure than just placing stats into a formula. This, IMO, is the worst thing about the SP. It seems we always only have “stat” guys bumping heads with “gut” guys and there is never a balance.

Ignoring the mental aspect is simply foolish. Gathering Statistics is one thing; Interpreting their meaning is another.

How do you suppose we acknowledge the "mental aspect", when the post you agree with states that it is "simply harder or near impossible to measure"? Aside from statistics attempting to validate or refute such claims about players, what is the better solution?

 

[jurb26]

Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

This is a bad analogy. Slot machines, or machines in general, do not have psychology or emotion. Humans do. You are trying to make this all about numbers and statistics and removing all of the human element to it. While agree with many of you’re points, I don’t agree that the encompassment of them is as simple as you are saying. Psychology and emotion are undoubtedly factors in sports. They are simply harder or near impossible to measure. There is a reason scouts look for guys with “natural leadership ability” when looking for QBs. Who actually measures that though? The answer is not black and white as you or others on the “choke” side would like to argue. The answer is somewhere in-between and much harder to measure than just placing stats into a formula. This, IMO, is the worst thing about the SP. It seems we always only have “stat” guys bumping heads with “gut” guys and there is never a balance.

Ignoring the mental aspect is simply foolish. Gathering Statistics is one thing; Interpreting their meaning is another.

How do you suppose we acknowledge the "mental aspect", when the post you agree with states that it is "simply harder or near impossible to measure"? Aside from statistics attempting to validate or refute such claims about players, what is the better solution?

I don't know what the best way to measure the mental aspect is. Perhaps there is no way to objectively do it right now. At least not from the positions we all sit in as arm chair fans. I'm sure the teams, coaches and professional talent evaluators who have much greater access to these players are more in toon with these things.I don't see how we should blindly ignore these things and lean solely on stats because we can measure the mental part though. It's like some people are willing to come to a complete conclusion on admittedly incomplete parameters. How exactly does that make sense?

 

[David Yudkin]

Bye Bye Brady?

 

[maxwelledison]

Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

This is a bad analogy. Slot machines, or machines in general, do not have psychology or emotion. Humans do. You are trying to make this all about numbers and statistics and removing all of the human element to it. While agree with many of you’re points, I don’t agree that the encompassment of them is as simple as you are saying. Psychology and emotion are undoubtedly factors in sports. They are simply harder or near impossible to measure. There is a reason scouts look for guys with “natural leadership ability” when looking for QBs. Who actually measures that though? The answer is not black and white as you or others on the “choke” side would like to argue. The answer is somewhere in-between and much harder to measure than just placing stats into a formula. This, IMO, is the worst thing about the SP. It seems we always only have “stat” guys bumping heads with “gut” guys and there is never a balance.

Ignoring the mental aspect is simply foolish. Gathering Statistics is one thing; Interpreting their meaning is another.

How do you suppose we acknowledge the "mental aspect", when the post you agree with states that it is "simply harder or near impossible to measure"? Aside from statistics attempting to validate or refute such claims about players, what is the better solution?

I don't know what the best way to measure the mental aspect is. Perhaps there is no way to objectively do it right now. At least not from the positions we all sit in as arm chair fans. I'm sure the teams, coaches and professional talent evaluators who have much greater access to these players are more in toon with these things.I don't see how we should blindly ignore these things and lean solely on stats because we can measure the mental part though. It's like some people are willing to come to a complete conclusion on admittedly incomplete parameters. How exactly does that make sense?

It doesn't. Being witness to sheer physical prowess holds some merit, but if reacting to challenging situations and opponents was solely about measurables I doubt sport would still be culturally relevant.

 

[Ghost Rider]

Bye Bye Brady?

No way will that happen. Given his age, I doubt Belichick wants to be a part of another rebuilding project, so he and Brady will be joined at the hip till Brady retires (and then Belichick will probably soon follow). Brady is still one of the top 3 QBs in the league, and you just don't know trade that away.

 

[The Comedian]

Back in the day, the team could win based on the strength of their defense and many games riding the running game. These days, the defense rarely shuts people down completely, and more importatnly, they usually can't get a stop when they absolutely need it.

Yeah, I think this is a myth. The defense hung in with the defense until mid-3rd quarter, the Patriots offense hadn't done squat. They dominated the time of possession battle in the first half, largely because the defense stuffed the Ravens, and yet it was 13-7 at half-time, mainly due to New England ineptitude in the red zone. Neither side of the ball had a great second half, but the offense was shut out. I have no idea how you can watch that game and come away thinking that the defense was the problem. In both SB losses, the defense let up under 20 points. Yes, in the first SB loss, Brady scored the go-ahead touchdown with 2:20 left or whatever, and the defense couldn't hold it. But it's 2013, I am not arguing that he was losing it 4 years ago. I think way too many people make excuses for him, which is understandable. If Jay Cutler through away that 4th and 4 play, or sailed theat pass over Hernandez's head, or had all of these intentional grounding calls (in the end zone no less), people would be killing him.He has enough around him and is still good enough that they have some window left here, but he's clearly on the decline in my opinion.

 

[SSOG]

Another example of adjectives that apply until they don't is slot machines. Listen to compulsive gamblers talk, and they'll go on and on about "hot" machines and "cold" machines. Hot machines are always hot until they aren't anymore. Cold machines are always cold until they aren't any more. The truth is the machines never change- they're neither hot nor cold, they're just machines which, by the nature of their programming, will sometimes return similar results several times in a short time period. Some gamblers will swear on certain betting patterns (always max, always min, alternate max and min, bet one line, bet three lines, bet max twice on one line and then min once on three lines). Those betting patterns don't change their odds. The outcomes are always random, but the human mind can't live with that, so it looks for similarities and finds patterns among all the meaningless data, hearing noise and interpreting it as signal.

This is a bad analogy. Slot machines, or machines in general, do not have psychology or emotion. Humans do. You are trying to make this all about numbers and statistics and removing all of the human element to it. While agree with many of you’re points, I don’t agree that the encompassment of them is as simple as you are saying. Psychology and emotion are undoubtedly factors in sports. They are simply harder or near impossible to measure. There is a reason scouts look for guys with “natural leadership ability” when looking for QBs. Who actually measures that though? The answer is not black and white as you or others on the “choke” side would like to argue. The answer is somewhere in-between and much harder to measure than just placing stats into a formula. This, IMO, is the worst thing about the SP. It seems we always only have “stat” guys bumping heads with “gut” guys and there is never a balance.

Again, the correlation between how "clutch" someone is in odd numbered years vs. even numbered years is 0.05. There is no year-to-year consistency or carryover. Baseball guys have looked at this and found the same thing. There's a term for something with absolutely no consistency or carryover from data point to data point- that word is "random". Let's look at the subject from a different angle. Let's imagine what the world would look like if "clutch" were real, and some players were more predisposed to it. If that were the case, you could look at past results, identify the 5 most clutch and the 5 most choke QBs in the league, and then say "these 5 clutch QBs will overperform their regular season average in the playoffs by a greater amount than these 5 choke QBs going forward." And if clutch were a real phenomenon rather than a figment of our imagination, that statement would hold true far more often than not. It holds true for other phenomena- the 5 most accurate QBs outperform the 5 least accurate QBs, the 5 highest YPA QBs outperform the 5 lowest, the 5 lowest int% QBs outperform the 5 highest, and so on. But here's the rub- we can test that statement, and it does NOT hold true far more often than not with respect to clutchness. If clutch were real, the world would act one certain way. The world does not act that certain way. Therefore, clutch is not real. QED.

 

[cvnpoka]

Lebron took a lot of heat for absolutely scorching the league two years ago and then falling apart in the finals. He got the "choker" label. Did he stop "choking" last year? My answer is yes. He learned how to play in the big spots.

MJ didn't make a final or win a title until he was 28. Lebron made three finals by that age, and won his first championship when he was still younger than MJ in 1991.Why couldn't Jordan get his team to the finals in any of his first six seasons? Was he a choker?

Maybe it was because Lebron had 3 more seasons in the league by the time he was 28. Lets also look at the talent level of the NBA and free agency, teams that drafted well kept their players back then, and there were less players in the league so more talent on every team. Plus the Bulls had to go through a lot better teams then the Cavaliers and Heat have had to go though.

quite a stretch

 

[Iwannabeacowboybaby!]

In regard to the title, I'd say Brady has become Donovan McNabb. Consistently making it to Conference Championships or Super Bowls, but unable to win them. And ironically, the body swap seems to have taken place right after the Patriots beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

For me Greg, Brady will never be McNabb because Brady has won 3 Super Bowls AND he's gone to all of those divisional games. You can't just take parts of Brady's career and throw out others. McNabb's entire career was him getting deep into the playoffs and losing, that's not the legacy of Tom Brady now nor will he ever be remembered for that. He's won 3SB's and more playoff games than any other QB in NFL history, that doesn't remind me of Donovan McNabb. Maybe like some of the other NFL greats like Joe Montana, Brett Farve, and Peyton Manning who won SB's earlier in their career, but later went to the playoffs but couldn't win it again like they did earlier.

You're taking my post WAY too seriously.

Sorry, Greg. I can be a little black and white when it comes to text, plus I may have been on my 2nd cup of coffee, shoot I thought I may a good point!

 

[teamramrod]

Nope....Brady 3Manning 1Scoreboardpeace

 

[SSOG]

Brian Burke took a look at clutch, too: http://tinyurl.com/a5h2z5z

The nut graf comes early on-

The ability to over-perform in clutch situations as a persistent skill almost certainly does not exist. (More on this in a future post on year-to-year correlations in general performance levels and clutch performance levels.) But that's not to say that some players' better moments happened to have occurred when things mattered the most. Although clutch as a quality or skill does not exist, clutch as an event certainly does.

Emphasis mine, of course.

 

[GregR]

In regard to the title, I'd say Brady has become Donovan McNabb. Consistently making it to Conference Championships or Super Bowls, but unable to win them. And ironically, the body swap seems to have taken place right after the Patriots beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl.

For me Greg, Brady will never be McNabb because Brady has won 3 Super Bowls AND he's gone to all of those divisional games. You can't just take parts of Brady's career and throw out others. McNabb's entire career was him getting deep into the playoffs and losing, that's not the legacy of Tom Brady now nor will he ever be remembered for that. He's won 3SB's and more playoff games than any other QB in NFL history, that doesn't remind me of Donovan McNabb. Maybe like some of the other NFL greats like Joe Montana, Brett Farve, and Peyton Manning who won SB's earlier in their career, but later went to the playoffs but couldn't win it again like they did earlier.

You're taking my post WAY too seriously.

Sorry, Greg. I can be a little black and white when it comes to text, plus I may have been on my 2nd cup of coffee, shoot I thought I may a good point!

No problem. Just realize you're saying, "You can't throw his SB wins out"... when the entire discussion has been what has his career been like SINCE the SB wins. Which by definition means you aren't including them. And those years were very McNabb-like.And I'm not even talking about my thoughts about Brady as a whole. I was making a somewhat flippant comment as I think the whole clutch issue is overdone horribly. My opinion of him really hasn't changed at all because he hasn't continued winning SBs. Just like I didn't earlier assume he was some Clutch God because he won 3 in a short span. I expect variation, saw it took good fortune to win the ones he did (especially the first SB win when his contribution to the final game was not much compared to the defense), and bad fortune to not win the years he didn't. That doesn't really change my opinion of him as a player. A Super Bowl is just one more game, not much different than a week 10 game when it comes to evaluating a player's skill.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

Ignoring the mental aspect is simply foolish. Gathering Statistics is one thing; Interpreting their meaning is another.

Some people think that if you make an assertion there's an onus to defend your point with something other than "because I believe it's true."Especially when data is introduced that pretty solidly refutes what they're saying.

 

[SacramentoBob]

small sample sizes make people crazy

Looks like the sample size is getting bigger.

 

[Morton Muffley]

small sample sizes make people crazy

Looks like the sample size is getting bigger.

Lol, you do realize that Brady has been to three more Conference Championships and won one more Superbowl since this thread last saw action, right?

 

[SacramentoBob]

small sample sizes make people crazy

Looks like the sample size is getting bigger.

Lol, you do realize that Brady has been to three more Conference Championships and won one more Superbowl since this thread last saw action, right?

And been involved in one more cheating scandal.

 

[cstu]

Brian Burke took a look at clutch, too: http://tinyurl.com/a5h2z5z

The nut graf comes early on-

The ability to over-perform in clutch situations as a persistent skill almost certainly does not exist. (More on this in a future post on year-to-year correlations in general performance levels and clutch performance levels.) But that's not to say that some players' better moments happened to have occurred when things mattered the most. Although clutch as a quality or skill does not exist, clutch as an event certainly does.

Emphasis mine, of course.

Tom Brady himself says that the number one skill a NFL QB needs is the ability to execute under pressure. He didn't say 'over-perform' simply 'execute'.

 

[Tool]

small sample sizes make people crazy

Looks like the sample size is getting bigger.

Lol, you do realize that Brady has been to three more Conference Championships and won one more Superbowl since this thread last saw action, right?

And been involved in one more cheating scandal.

HGH.

 

[Stealthycat]

Brady still has an arm

and won a SB last year because of how well he played, not because of a great Defense and not making mistakes

 

[dparker713]

Brady still has an arm

and won a SB last year because of how well he played, not because of a great Defense and not making mistakes

Yep. I couldn't believe how well Brady broke on that slant to make the interception.

 

[spider321]

Brady still has an arm

and won a SB last year because of how well he played, not because of a great Defense and not making mistakes

Yep. I couldn't believe how well Brady broke on that slant to make the interception.

Lol.

Brady won the Super Bowl last year because Seattle didn't give the ball to Beast Mode.

 

[Jrodicus]

Brady still has an arm

and won a SB last year because of how well he played, not because of a great Defense and not making mistakes

That's exactly what I was thinking when the Pats got the game winning INT at the goal line.