Jul 20, 2007

How Many Wins is Manning Worth?

In a recent comment at another site, someone mentioned that "Peyton Manning was good for at least 10 wins a year." I thought that sounded about right.

Using the QB rule-of-thumb I made the other day, I'll estimate how many wins Manning is good for on the basis of his accuracy alone. By accuracy I mean his completion percentage and interceptions.

Manning's completion percentage over the last 4 years hovers around 65.0% while the league average is 59.4%. His interceptions average at 9.8 per year while the NFL average is 16.4.

Based on the coefficients from the efficiency-win model, we can do some quick math.

Cmp%: 65.0 - 59.4 = 5.6% * 0.18 wins/cmp% point = 1.32 wins
Int: 16.4 - 9.8 = 6.6 Interceptions * 0.11 wins/int = 0.62 wins
1.32 + 0.62 = +1.94 wins

So about 10 wins, compared to league, average is right. There are also other unquantifiable factors, such has his leadership or audible calling that probably contribute to his success. But all other things being equal, Peyton Manning is worth (at least) 10 wins, right out of the gate.
By Brian Burke

2 comments:

  1. It occurs to me that intangibles aren't necessarily absent from the stats. Stats tell you what happened, and it's up to us to interpret why things happened using, among other things, stats. Peyton's completion percentage is likely so high *because* of his football knowledge and ability to audible the appropriate play to pick apart the defense. That's part of his skills in addition to his physical talent.
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  2. I know I'm really late on this.. but shouldn't receiver effectiveness be factored into this? For example the other Manning, Eli, threw 3 interceptions in week one this year. All of which were very catchable balls for HIS wr's and two of which were certainly drops. If we were to just try and figure out a quarterbacks effectiveness wouldnt we have to find a way to factor out receiver mistakes?
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