NFL Open Thread, and QBs in 2015

You might expect Cam Newton being the presumptive MVP even though he’s barely above average in DVOA to be one of my pet causes around here, but really my heart’s not in it. First, I’ve always liked Newton, and I admit I like the fact that his exuberance makes professional hot takers sad. And, more importantly, the DVOA numbers are almost certainly understating Newton’s value to a substantial degree. DVOA is a useful metric, but it’s not as reliable applied to individuals as teams, and you have to be careful with it in small samples. Neither the NFL nor ESPN’s ratings have him with MVP numbers, but they don’t have him ranked behind Kirk Cousins either — they show him as not great but well above-average, which seems much more likely to be right to me. And second, none of the numbers can take into the account that Newton is playing well with a ridiculously fifth-rate collection of weapons. (I agree with Barnwell’s bottom line here, but I think he really undersells this when comparing Newton and Brady.) We can’t adjust for this in any precise way. To me, it’s pretty obvious that if you swapped Newton’s skill position talent with, say, Taylor or Fitzpatrick, he’d have significantly better raw numbers. I don’t think that you can plausibly adjust him to MVP level above Palmer and Brady someone we’re about to get to, but…I can’t really get outraged about it either.

I’m glad Barnwell beat me to this to save me some time and to deflect charges of homerism, but Rusell Wilson is as underrated as a quarterback who’s been to two Super Bowls in 3 years can be:

And even that undersells what Wilson is accomplishing. Since losing to the Cardinals in Week 10, Wilson’s numbers are surreal. It would be unfair to call them video game numbers; they’re video game numbers you might post against a particularly talented household pet. Over that four-game stretch, he has gone 89-for-118 for 1,171 passing yards. That’s a staggering 75.4 percent completion percentage and an average of 9.9 yards per pass attempt. Even more impressively, he has thrown 16 touchdowns without a single interception.

It all adds up to a passer rating of 145.9. Pro-football-reference.com has game logs for quarterbacks going back through the 1960 season, 10 years before the AFL-NFL merger.

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And, of course, there are reasons to argue that Wilson has had it harder than most. He lost the guy who was nominally designed to be his top receiver, Jimmy Graham, to a season-ending injury halfway through this stretch. Wilson’s top offensive weapon, Marshawn Lynch, hasn’t been around for the entirety of this run, having last played against the Cardinals in Week 10. Wilson lost undrafted rookie Thomas Rawls to a broken ankle early Sunday. His receiving corps currently consists of two undrafted free-agent wide receivers, a rookie third-rounder who was the 10th wideout taken in this year’s draft, a third-year tight end taken in the fifth round and a 34-year-old running back who was released in August. They’re pedes … they’re adequate.

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It shouldn’t be a surprise that Wilson managed to pull off another feat many thought him incapable of performing, given that it’s basically his stock trade by now. The arguments suggesting he wasn’t worth the massive contract he signed this offseason seem incredibly silly right now. As ESPN’s Mina Kimes rightly noted on Twitter, the critics who suggested earlier in the year that Wilson was somehow being distracted by new girlfriend Ciara have mysteriously failed to comment on how Ciara’s presence has helped Wilson during this hot streak, unsurprising for those who trotted out a tired, sexist trope.

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This year, it’s the offense that appears to be spiking for Seattle. The Seahawks have scored 29 points or more in each of their past five games. They’ve averaged 34.6 points per game over that stretch, the first time they’ve pulled that off since Wilson’s rookie season in 2012, and that was a run that included four return touchdowns. Seattle has only one in the past five weeks. Wilson’s offense is clicking better than it ever has, even without its two biggest weapons. Even if Seattle can’t win the NFC West, that’s going to make them a wild-card team nobody wants to see in January. And even though Wilson isn’t going to be league MVP, he has been the best quarterback on the planet over the past month.

I’m not saying Wilson is the clear MVP at this point — the performances of Palmer, Brady, and Wilson have been close enough you can make a reasonable case for any of them (Dalton(!) and Roethlisberger have been similarly effective per play but won’t have the playing time for MVP consideration, and since they arguably and definitely have even less to work with than Wilson you can throw Rodgers and Newton into the mix too.) But between playing with what was a historic defense and ground-and-pound sentimentality, Wilson hasn’t really been given his due credit. (Speaking of yer HOT TAKES.)

Oh, and while I’m here allow me to observe that Seattle has a very good chance of being the top DVOA team in the league for the fourth straight year, despite having borne the full brunt of the salary cap. Pete Carroll, to state what should be obvious, is a Hall of Fame caliber head coach. (Yeah, yeah, I know, his USC national championships don’t really count, you can’t walk around LA without tripping over 3 blue-chip recruits, everyone wants to play there, yadda yadda. It’s sure amazing how much better the weather is and how much prettier the women in LA are when Carroll is coaching at Southern Cal rather than Paul Hackett or Lane Kiffin.)