Bad Quarterback League: Scoring Analysis

Despite our league's earlier tweaks to the BQBL draft and weekly matchup structure, we used the Grantland standard scoring rules, mostly because Grantland's weekly posts tabulate the score for us--plus, none of us wanted to go through the exercise of coming up with an alternate scoring system, and we wouldn't know how to "fix" it even if the balance were off. Throughout this season, though, a few imbalances in the scores became especially clear.

1. Too much difference between "interception" and "interception return for TD"

Maybe a receiver runs a wrong route, maybe he just gets beat, or maybe he catches a bad break, but there's some element of bad quarterback play in just about every interception. But whether a pick turns into a pick-six isn't just on the quarterback. It's a function of very many things including field position, proximity of other players, and speed/size/ball-handling skill of the intercepting defender, not to mention a bit of luck.

In other words, the quarterback has basically nothing to do whether an interception is returned for a touchdown or for no gain whatsoever. It's not as if the egregiously terrible throws result in defensive touchdowns while the merely bad throws result in simple interceptions.

This is the Bad Quarterback League, though, and we do want to reward miscues, poor decisions, and errors by the QB that hurt the team. There's no question that a pick-six hurts a quarterback's team more than a regular-flavor pick--and there's no question that it's more fun to watch Brady Quinn put points on the board for the other guys than for Kansas City--so some premium for "interception return for TD" over "interception" makes sense. But the standard scoring for an INT-TD, 25 points, is much higher than the score for an INT, 5 points. That seems like too much of a premium for something largely out of a quarterback's control.

2. Too much difference between "interception return for TD" and "fumble return for TD"

An interception and a fumble are functionally the same: both are rooted at least in part in poor decision-making or bad ball control, and both result in your team not having the ball anymore. That's bad, and it results in 5 BQBL points in both cases. An INT-TD and fumble returned for a touchdown are functionally the same, too: both cost your team six points.

In standard BQBL scoring, though, the INT-TD is worth 25 points, while the fumble-TD is worth a mere 10. They're equally harmful to your team, and they result from equally bad quarterbacking, so it only makes sense that they should have the same BQBL value too.

3. Sometimes you earn more points for fumbling than for keeping the ball

Mark Sanchez is backed up against his own end zone. He drops back, looking for some receiver downfield but doesn't find one. Eventually, he hears the foreboding footsteps of a 280-pound defensive lineman bearing down on him, and he knows he has no play. Sanchez takes the sack, goes down in the end zone, and gives up two points. He earns your BQBL team 20 points!

In another version of this sad tale, Sanchez tries to make a play, pitching out to Shonn Greene, but dropping the ball on the ground instead of completing the lateral. The astute defensive lineman falls on the fumble, and Sanchez has now given up six points. But he only earns your BQBL team 10.

Like we've just talked about, a fumble returned for a touchdown is worth 10 points in BQBL, regardless of how long that return happens to be. Getting sacked for a safety in the end zone is worth 20. That's an especially bad quarterback play, because a quarterback on top of his game should always throw the ball away rather than take the sack and the safety. But here's another case where the BQBL score doesn't necessarily accurately reflect just how badly a quarterback has been playing. Giving away six points is always worse than giving away two, so a lost fumble in the end zone should always be worth more than getting sacked for a safety.

4. Completion percentage doesn't always tell the whole story

There's a nice little BQBL windfall (5 points) for completing less than half of your passes, and even more points for completion percentages under 40 (15 points) or 30 (25 points). And clearly, there needs to be some cutoff if the BQBL is going to award points for poor completion percentage. But is a quarterback who completes 18 of 35 passes really having a better day than the one who completes 17 of 35? How about the one who completes 4 of 10?

Consider Sam Bradford's Week-5 brilliance, in which he completed 7 of 21 passes. Seven. On twenty-one attempts. Bradford did get the rare sub-40-percent bonus, but so would a quarterback who completed 17 of 43, which is awful but somehow doesn't seem as bad. The 17-for-43 guy at least tried the whole game. Mr. 7-for-21 might not have.







5. "Benched" needs a more consistent definition

Sometimes, "benching" is obvious: John Skelton's 4 interceptions and 18.2 quarterback rating earn Ryan Lindley a ticket into the game. That's worth a cool 35 BQBL points. The Seahawks' 35-point lead in the same game earns Russell Wilson a trip to the bench and Matt Flynn some playing time; that's worth zero points.

It's not always as clear, though. Aaron Rodgers' 219 yards and 81.9 rating were probably among the worst in his career, but pulling him with 5 minutes to go in the game had as much to do with the Packers' offensive futility and not wanting him to get injured as with his mediocre play. Blaine Gabbert's 7-for-19 and a whopping 53 yards was a truly miserable performance, but his giving way to Chad Henne in the 4th quarter had at least as much to do with a legitimate injury as with his stats.

Most decisions in the BQBL are obvious because they're quantitative, but this one is a little subjective, so awarding it is a tougher call. For a player to earn "benched" points, he must have been pulled by the standard of sufficiently poor play. That requires a judgment call, and it's important that the judgment be applied in the same way in every case.

Recommendations for future BQBL seasons

• Reduce INT-TD scoring to 10 points. This brings it in line with fumble-TD and reduces a scoring discrepancy based largely on factors out of the QB's control.
• Keep "sacked in the end zone for a safety" scoring at 20 points, but add the condition that if a quarterback fumbles as he's sacked, he gets the full 20 points anyway. This eliminates the QB "incentive" for losing the football.
• Add a scoring mechanism for completing a sufficiently small number of passes, perhaps "fewer than 10 completions: 10 points".
• Retain the 35-point score for benching, but don't award it in cases of injury or when the benched QB's team has no chance of winning the game anyway. Maybe "benched before the 4th quarter" or something similar.

Did anyone else out there run a BQBL this year, with standard or modified rules? Any other recommendations or improvements you've identified?

Bad Quarterback League: Awards Ceremony

It was a decent season for me in "real" fantasy football. Abandoning the Ravens defense after the tragic and simultaneous loss of Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb, stomaching the up-and-down lurches of Reggie Bush, tolerating the merely mediocre consistency of Ray Rice and Jimmy Graham, and riding the surprising success of Robert Griffin III right into the playoffs, I lost the championship game but still managed a respectable second-place finish in our eight-team league.

But riding the unsurprising failure of the Kansas City Chiefs offense to a similar second-place finish in the Bad Quarterback League was almost as rewarding, not to mention much more hilarious. With the NFL's regular season finished, most of our bad quarterbacks' seasons are too, and it's high time to award the most distinguished teams by draft performance, weekly wins, and overall score.

For a recap on how we set up our BQBL league, see the introductory post; for a reminder on how scoring works, we used Grantland standard scoring.


Draft Performance

To evaluate draft performance, I developed a metric called "Draft Strength". In brief, Draft Strength measures the difference between where a team was drafted in our draft and where a team ranked by total points at the end of the season, i.e. where the team should have been drafted if we all had perfect information and complete foresight at the beginning of the season.

A positive Draft Strength means that a team was a "steal" (drafted in a late spot but scored well), while a negative Draft Strength means that a team was a "bust" (drafted early but didn't produce). A Draft Strength near zero means the team was taken near where it "should have" been. Each of the sixteen teams we drafted has its own Draft Strength, and each player has a Draft Strength that's simply a sum of their two teams' scores.

It's a useful metric because it rewards having found the "hidden talent" late in the draft that wasn't necessarily available early on. For example, a team that was picked first overall and scored the best would have a Draft Strength of 0, but a team that was picked tenth overall and scored fifth-best would have a Draft Strength of 5.

Top performers by Draft Strength were the Kansas City Chiefs (drafted 9th but scored 2nd; DS = 7), the Tennessee Titans (drafted 13th but scored 7th; DS = 6), and the Jacksonville Jaguars (drafted 7th but scored 4th; DS = 3). The highest-scoring undrafted team was the Chicago Bears (scored 5th). The worst Draft Strength went to the Washington Redskins (drafted 16th but scored 30th; DS = -14). Our top scorers by player were


1. Josh Howe, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, DS = 2
2(t). Alex Harkey, Arizona Cardinals and Oakland Raiders, DS = 0
2(t). Matt Pavlovich, St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs, DS = 0


Weekly Wins

Each week, every player's two teams' scores were added together to give a player's weekly score. Weekly Wins measures how many weeks each player had that week's highest score. While a single three-hundred point performance might have catapulted a team and a player into the season victory, the number of Weekly Wins awards consistently bad quarterback play every single game.

Top teams contributing to Weekly Wins were the Arizona Cardinals (highest score 4 weeks), the Miami Dolphins (highest score 2 weeks), and the St. Louis Rams (highest score 2 weeks). Undrafted teams that won the highest score in a week were the Baltimore Ravens, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, and San Diego Chargers. Winning the most weeks in our draft were

1(t). Josh Howe, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 4 weeks
1(t). Alex Harkey, Arizona Cardinals and Oakland Raiders, 4 weeks
3. Matt Pavlovich, St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs, 3 weeks


Total Score

The grand prize in the BQBL was the Total Score, the sum of every interception, fumble, sub-100-yard passing game, and mid-game benching across the season. No averaging for consistency or correcting for draft position here, Total Score takes into account every poor decision and blown play from the entire season.

Highest-scoring individual teams were the Arizona Cardinals (666 points), the Kansas City Chiefs (551 points), and the New York Jets (516 points). The highest-scoring undrafted team was the Chicago Bears (349 points), and the lowest-scoring drafted team was the Washington Redskins (31 points). Our final standings were


1. Alex Harkey, Arizona Cardinals and Oakland Raiders, 883 points
2. Matt Pavlovich, St. Louis Rams and Kansas City Chiefs, 773 points
3. Josh Laber, New York Jets and Seattle Seahawks, 674 points

4. Josh Howe, Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 664 points
5. Tom Dursch, Miami Dolphins and Tennessee Titans, 564 points
6. Alan Berger, Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Bengals, 524 points
7. Andrew van Devender, Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts, 480 points
8. Zach Baer, Cleveland Browns and Washington Redskins, 256 points


Recap

Lots of players in our draft went with questionable young quarterbacks: of the sixteen teams selected, five (Cleveland Browns, Miami Dolphins, Seattle Seahawks, Indianapolis Colts, Washington Redskins) started the season playing rookie quarterbacks and four more (Minnesota Vikings, Jacksonville Jaguars, Cincinnati Bengals, Tennessee Titans) started with sophomores. Some of the young QBs panned out, others proved to be actually good quarterbacks. But by far the standout performers this season were the Cardinals, Chiefs, and Jets, teams plagued with both injury and quarterback controversy between middling-to-bad veterans and unknown backups.

Perhaps that observation will inform the strategy for next year; I had a lot of fun tweaking the system and running the behind-the-scenes math, almost as much fun as I did rooting for Brady Quinn to commit turnovers. Thanks to everyone for playing, and I hope to do it again!

If you're interested, take a look at our final scorecard, and check back tomorrow for an analysis and breakdown of the scoring system.

Tweaking the Bad Quarterback League

Anyone who has ever managed a fantasy football team has suffered the indignity of watching the team's points decrease after the quarterback throws an interception, fumbles, or gets sacked for a safety. It's frustrating and can mean the difference between victory and defeat. But what if there was a way to celebrate the badness of your quarterback? What if interceptions, fumbles, and safeties became things you wanted to see? Enter perhaps the most important innovation in fantasy sports since our own Fantasy Olympics: the fine folks at Grantland have developed the Bad Quarterback League to do just that.

The premise is simple: assemble an eight-person league, and divide up the league's thirty-two quarterbacks by whatever draft mechanism you see fit. Then, your quarterbacks score points for everything that goes wrong in their games. You don't have to pick a quarterback in particular--so if you own Jacksonville, and Blaine Gabbert gets benched, you still get points when Chad Henne fumbles. Last year was the league's inception, and this year marked the introduction of the Failure Machine, an automatic scorer for your league.

I started a league, "What the Tannehill?", inspiring a few friends to join and coercing a few others, and set out to use the Failure Machine. But the more I played around with it, the less I liked it. Here are my tweaks to the Bad Quarterback League format:





Each player only drafts two teams. Nobody wanted to go through the motions of drafting teams with quarterbacks who can actually complete passes. And if we decided to go with a "starters/bench" league format, is anyone realistically going to play Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers ever? We limited our draft to an eight-person snake with a single bend, so once the guy with the first pick also took the sixteenth, the draft finished.

Each player can "start" both teams every week. The Failure Machine builds in a limited number of starts for each team, so you can't just ride Brandon Weeden to victory every week. But that's a lot less satisfying than being able to rack up points each time he's intercepted for a touchdown. It would be like setting up a "real" fantasy football league where you draft Drew Brees but can only start him an arbitrary fraction of weeks. Furthermore, I'd sold the league to my friends--many of whom are competing in at least one "real" league--assuring everyone that BQBL would require a minimum of effort and basically no management after the draft.

Scoring is cumulative, not head-to-head. In "real" fantasy football, each player has a head-to-head matchup against another team every week. The "winner" is determined from how many of these matchups any given team wins. That's how the Failure Machine is set up as well. But with so much of the decision-making already stripped from my version of the BQBL, the head-to-head model didn't make much sense. Instead, we'll be scoring our league in at least two ways. First, all the cumulative points scored by both of a player's teams will be added together to get the league's points champion. Second, the league's consistency champion will be the player who has the highest score in the most weeks. We may give an award to the person who drafted the best, as well.

The result is a system that doesn't mandate much strategy (or reward much strategy, depending on how you look at it) but does provide a humorous look at the game's less-renowned quarterbacks. It gives a nice respite even if your actual fantasy team has collapsed--maybe Eli Manning threw four interceptions, but at least Sam Bradford did too. Most of all, it works the same viewership magic that any expression of fantasy sports does: why else would you have a reason to watch a Raiders-Cardinals game?

If you're interested in how all this works, you're welcome to follow along with our league.