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Reasonable people understand he should get that. I don’t like Any of them getting credit for handing the ball off. Bryce or another guy. My issue is that the criteria for determining it is too broad and waters down whatever you might be able to get from it to the point I feel it is useless.

We aren’t even talking about him specifically at this point. Can you yourself not make everything about him and objectively look at the stat and our criticism of it?

That depends. Last year, he was fools gold mostly. He had looked so horrible that even below average play was a big step up and made him look better than he was. He never had a game like Sunday. That was so far above his average… if he can keep that up or close, I think maybe it would be safer to trust that he has had the switch come on. He has a horrible trend of following his best performance with complete poo so if he can stay out of that pattern and give us something good on top of Sunday and to finish the year I would feel a lot better. I am talking high bar, not just not totally sucking.

I am big on big picture stuff, like that idea for example. Zag when everyone else is zigging. Because you will never get anywhere being a middle of the pack follower of trends. At the root is and always will be sound football concepts. Run the ball stop the run. Been hearing that for decades and it holds true through all the shifting trends and fads. If you think about it, we are so far ahead of everyone right now. We are setting the trend of tiny weak armed QBs. Soon everyone will be chasing them then we can swoop in and grab the best out of the old fashioned ones with size and big arms and start a new trend. That has to be the plan we just couldn’t see it.

We won Sunday and he was a very large contributor. Threw the ball where the receivers could do something with it most of the time. But at the same time a lot of these games could have gotten what he contributed from a generic journeyman. We have some games left for him to stay stepped up in class, we will see if he can.

Yes Scourton is very young. Probably not even finished developing his body. Looking forward to seeing him after the year in tne NFL plus an offseason.

It is a road game. We are on a road win streak. I agree we should have a shot but am well aware of the Jekyll Hyde factor.

We have had a lot of practice at it.

Yeah that’s true. Pendulum at work. It will go back to the aerial fireworks at some point.

I don’t watch much college ball to scout draft picks. I didn’t know how right the guy was, but I did know that defense wasn’t going to give us proper value at 8. So I didn’t argue with it, but I didn’t know either.

Yeah. I always thought that ‘Brett Favre had 7 GWD in his MVP season’ or whatever, meant what you are saying. But it apparently never meant that.

Good way to frame it. Like I said somewhere, I approached it as a cheap way to pimp Bryce when I learned that the Giants win last year fit the criteria. Then I started looking at it and it is just, it has problems.

It is definitely imperfect. The spirit of it we instinctively know, but then the legalese around the gate keeping just mucks it up. And it doesn’t represent that ideal any more.

I think if you have the lead going to the 4th and then lose the lead in tne 4th, and then come back, is how that would work. You have to be down in the 4th at some point.

It is fair, but it doesn’t tell us a lot. When one guy could hand off, and the other guy smoke a 2 minute drill, they get the same achievement. I hope for better.

Right, nothing requiring it be the last possession. I went for the longest time thinking it was one thing but it isn’t.

I thought that too but no. And that is what got me started looking more closely at it Give this a look, it is from Pro Football Reference.com. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/about/comebacks.htm ——— A Game-Winning Drive (GWD) must involve these: team must win game team must, at some point, have possession of the ball tied or down by one score (1-8 points) in 4th quarter or OT the offensive scoring drive must conclude in the 4th quarter or OT. It can begin in the 3rd quarter so long as scrimmage plays that are part of the drive are run in the 4th quarter. This means you can't kick a FG on 1st play of 4th quarter to take lead and have it count as GWD. the scoring play to put the winning points on the board must be the result of an offensive drive ——- That page also has 4th qtr comeback which is different I haven’t looked at that yet.

Like I was saying somewhere, it can be unfair to him as well. He did a legit GWD, that they tied it back up after. And then did the actual one, in OT. He could have a drive like that, and some other QB handed the ball off a couple of times, and gets the same stat. Whatever side you view it from, it is inequitable.

And has been since he followed his best performance in 2023 vs the Packers with being shut out twice to finish the year. That IS the hurdle that has yet to be cleared.

It’s a process yo.

Yeah. It would be a smaller category. My beef it that it is not exclusive enough and isn’t equitable within its own qualifiers. 4 minute offense. 2 minute. However you frame it, those sorts of circumstances are tougher and it is a more impressive accomplishment. And we should have a way to designate them as such. On the other end of the spectrum, I think technically a QB could come in after a turnover and the ball at say, the opponents 40 YL. 1:50 left in the THIRD qtr, run a couple of handoffs and you are in FG range. And the 3rd qtr clock expires, now you are in the 4th qtr. maybe you take a shot down the sideline, incomplete. Kicker comes on, makes the kick. The score holds up through the end of the game and you win. That gets you a GWD. I just find it worthless.

The topic of GWD started about Bryce but for me, when I realized what it really was, it isn’t about Bryce any more it is about a bad use of statistics. You can flip it and say okey we know that x y and z games he took the team down and got the score with time running out. Another QB handed it off, early in the 4th quarter and got the same little gold star as Bryce did for what he did Sunday. It doesn’t have to be about discrediting Bryce. It could be about accurately crediting a player for what he did. I don’t see that it is doing that.

100%. Stats are just trying to communicate stuff to you that happened, and if you had seen it you probably wouldn’t need the stats so much. They are cool for record keeping like we know that 448 was a team record. I said that in an earlier post, like if I watched Bryce play Sunday and the previous Sunday, I don’t need stats to tell me he was great in one game and horrible in the other.

That is my argument on this. It is so broadly defined that it doesn’t tell you who the dawgs are and who got a participation trophy for moving the ball 7 yards into FG range by handing it off to your RB. Okay the real dawgs get credit for that handing off too, so it is fair. Do I want to use that to measure the value of my QB”s play? To get there you have to dig deeper the stat as it is defined just isn’t a good tool IMO Like getting garbage time stats and they count the same as those 448 yards Bryce earned in a tightly contested game the other day. They shouldn’t. I don’t have anything worked out that would redefine and improve the usefulness of the GWD but maybe there should be a stat for the 2 minute drill stuff, the 4 minute drill, where the QB really was challenged and responded.

Yes they are. Everyone gets awarded the GWD based on the same standards. The qualifiers My beef is it just isn’t a good stat because the qualifiers are all over the place. You can get a GWD for essentially going three and out and the bringing on the kicker, at 11:58 in the 4th quarter. And it counts the same as you got the ball on your 25 with 2:18 left in the game and one timeout and orchestrated a perfect two minute drill ending in a TD or a kick as the clock ticked off the last seconds. Those are just not the same. They shouldn’t count the same. IMO. And the only way to know that a guy’s GWD was the classic 2 minute drill for a last second kick, or if he came in after a turnover and handed it off a couple of times and the kicker came on with 12 minutes to go, and made the final margin, is to look at the drive charts.