Big Lead Sports Bar

6/18/2007

Peter King Has Officially Lost Me

I've written about SI.com's Peter King many a time in this little piece of the internet called Mondesi's House. In fact, if you click the little link beneath this post that says "Peter King", you'll get every mention of his in site history. Some days, he's interesting. Most days, I totally disagree with him. Either way, I end up reading his stuff, and why, I still haven't figured out.
But this morning, Peter's already-shaky credibility with me took a major blow when he released his "2007 QB Rankings". It's two pages from the mouth of SI's Football Grand Poobah devoted to nothing but QBs and QBs only.
If I've learned one thing from the internet, it's that people love lists. And if I've learned one thing from King today, it's to make your list as completely irrational as possible, because every website and sports talk show from coast to coast will mention it. As the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Although I think Michael Vick may disagree with that particular saying.
Where should I start? How about King's proclamation of Ben Roethlisberger at #17 and going from there? Here are a few QBs that King has ranked higher than Big Ben, along with my thoughts on his choices:
7. Vince Young. As it's been proven time and time again, if you want to win a Super Bowl, you need a running quarterback.
8. Phil Rivers. Might be someday, but has a lot more to accomplish.
9. Jon Kitna. I think this was a misprint. Has to be.
10. Jay Cutler. How can you argue against his 2-3 career record?
11. Tony Romo. Waaay too much hype with this guy. He's a football version of any player on the Yankees or Red Sox.
12. Donovan McNabb. No Super Bowl wins, two seasons ended by injury, a team drafting for the future at the position...sounds like a recipe for the 12th-best QB in the league to me!
13. Steve McNair. You know, the same McNair he bashed last year.
14. Brett Favre. No comment necessary.
15. Chad Pennington. 2006 was the first season of his seven-year career in which he's played all 16 games. And if you think it's impossible to play a full season without getting hurt, look at Mr. Consecutive Games Played at #14 and be reminded that yes, it is possible.
16. Jake Delhomme. He has such a lock on the QB position that the Panthers signed David Carr.
What, no room for Michael Vick ahead of Ben?
In fairness, let's allow Pete to defend his ranking of Roethlisberger, which he correctly calculated as one that would generate controversy:
• Ben Roethlisberger 17th? What gives? From Year 1 to Year 2 of his career, his completion percentage dropped 3.7 points; from year two to three it fell 3.0 points. His TD-to-interception ratio, plus-eight in 2005, dropped to minus-five last season. He is profoundly inconsistent. I say he's a C-plus player until I see six or eight straight weeks of the same guy.
Yeah, genius. He also had a motorcycle crash, an appendectomy, and a concussion, which you casually failed to mention. But I'm sure that had nothing to do with his interception ratio.
Here's the explanation for how King constructed this farce...I mean, list:
As for how I arrived at my picks, other than with a divining rod, I used a few measuring sticks. I value wins from my quarterback, and that helped Manning and Brady, the leaders in victories over the last two years. I value postseason success, and their seven combined wins over the past two years is significant. Completion percentage and yards-per-attempt are the two passing stats I value the most because they tell you how often a quarterback succeeds in efficiently moving the chains through the air. Finally, intangibles. Brady led all passers with a 10 on a 10-point scale, because he's a coach, an offseason facilitator, a free-agent recruiter -- and he does it while retaining respect from the guys he often has to lean on hard.
King, always a proponent of the "rings are all that matters" school, has apparently forgotten that the 25-year-old Roethlisberger led his team to the AFC Championship in his rookie season and won a ring in his second season. Of course, as I constantly point out, everyone else has already forgotten those minor career accomplishments, so the Steelers should probably start looking at his replacement in the 2008 draft.
Think about this: King will knock Roethlisberger for completion percentage, then he says he values postseason success. Here are the playoff resumes of everyone he listed ahead of Roethlisberger, who has 5 playoff wins and a ring:
1- Peyton Manning - 7 career playoff wins, 1 Super Bowl
2- Tom Brady - 12 career playoff wins, 3 Super Bowls
3- Drew Brees - 1 career playoff win
4- The Great Carson Palmer - 0 career playoff wins
5- Marc Bulger -1 career playoff win
6- Matt Hasselbeck - 3 career playoff wins
7- Young - never in the playoffs
8- Rivers - 0 career playoff wins
9- Kitna - 0 career playoff wins
10- Cutler - never in the playoffs
11- Romo - 0 career playoff wins, and botched the only playoff game he played in
13- McNair - 5 career playoff wins
15- Pennington - 2 career playoff wins
16- Delhomme - 5 career playoff wins
That's right. The only guys who've has more postseason success than the 25-year-old Roethlisberger are Manning (31 years old), Brady (29), and Favre (37). It's worth noting that he ranks the 3-ring Brady behind Manning, proving once again that football fans and writers have very short memories. Apparently the only postseason success King values is what happened in the 2006 season.
I guess he values postseason success, but not as much as completion percentage. Personally, I'd take a winner with less-sexy stats than a loser who puts up 400 yards a week 100 times out of 100. But that's enough on Ben. My blood pressure has already risen too much. Let's get to the next thing I'd like to talk about regarding this list. That would be the fact that King ranks intangibles on a scale of 1-10.

Peter, here's the definition of "intangible":
1. not tangible; incapable of being perceived by the sense of touch, as incorporeal or immaterial things; impalpable.
2. not definite or clear to the mind: intangible arguments.
3. (of an asset) existing only in connection with something else, as the goodwill of a business. –noun
4. something intangible, esp. an intangible asset: Intangibles are hard to value.
Again, here's his definition of an "intangible":
Finally, intangibles. Brady led all passers with a 10 on a 10-point scale, because he's a coach, an offseason facilitator, a free-agent recruiter -- and he does it while retaining respect from the guys he often has to lean on hard.
That's not an intangible. No, it's not a statistic either, but there's a better way to categorize it than "intangible". How about a 1-10 ranking of "buying into and exemplifying the team's philosophy"? No, we'll just dumb it down call them intangibles.
Before I conclude, I must add that I planned to make a brief mention of this, but I received so many irate emails from Steeler fans that I believed a commentary was necessary. We should start the nominations for a "National Football Writer Most Disliked by Steeler Fans" award. Right now, King and Pete Prisco are neck-and-neck.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Shouldn't he be more worried about the fact that his daughter is a whore and broadcasts it to the world on her facebook/myspace page? (I forget which, 9 months is long time to remember anything after playing rugby for years.)

Louis Lipps is my homeboy said...

Vince Young had a solid rookie campaign, but aside from his running skills, it wasn't really special. I didn't think he deserved offensive rookie of the year at all.

He benefitted a lot from the residual hype of the Texas v. USC Rose Bowl.

And why is everyone afraid to talk about the fact that, after his admittedly great start, Tony Romo kind of sucked?

Trust me when I say this: Tony Romo is to the Dallas Cowboys as Tommy Maddox was to the Pittsburgh Steelers 5 years ago. Guy that came out of nowhere, played out of his mind for a few weeks, then crashed back to earth.

I'm not saying Big Ben is god of QBs, but that ranking is a bit unfair.

Burnside said...

Mondesi,
You have failed to give your own opinion about where Big Ben should be ranked...do you think top 10, 5? Right behind Peyton & Tom?? It is easy to poke holes, you should correct the rankings accordingly. Like in school, if the statement is true, say so, if the statement is false, explain why it is false and correct it so it will be true.

Louis Lipps is my homeboy said...

I'd put him in the 6-9 range.

If none of the other ratings were adjustable, I'd definitely put him right in front of Vince Young at 67.

And the fact that Ben is possibly the 7th best QB in the NFL says a lot more about how shitty NFL QBs are right now than how great Ben is.

By the way, Hasselbeck isn't so great. His three best years (and two of them were barely even noteworthy) came when he feasted on a gawdawfull NFC West, and just a poor NFC in general.

The year he took Seattle to the Super Bowl was possibly the worst year for the NFC in history. The 6th seeded AFC team was a favorite over the 1 seeded NFC team in the Super Bowl, and no one even batted an eye at it!!

Hasselbeck's a mediocre QB, and his success is a product of the conference, division, and era in which he plays. His three seasons as a supposed "elite" NFL passer coincide with the NFC's three worst seasons in history.

I will give King this, the criminally underrated Marc Bulger at least gets some props here. His Rams teams aren't quite as successfull as Warner's, but he doesn't have as much talent around him as Warner did either.

Louis Lipps is my homeboy said...

I meant ahead of Young at 7 by the way.

AJ said...

Mondesi - Who cares about all this QB talk?... please just tell us which airport Starbucks screwed up his latte this week!

I'm also over this guy.

Anonymous said...

Peter King is responsible for most of the crop circles in the UK.

Burnside said...

I like Ben before Vince at 7. And you're right, King robbed Bulger. I also agree with Hasselback, Holmgrem is very good at what he does. A lot can be said for a QB's knowledge of the system that also fits his strongest assets. (See: Green, Trent, MIA)

The Duke from Dukes Court said...

Here is the rationale behind Peter Kind's article/QB list. The list will give radio sports talk show hosts and bloggers a like something to talk about, and if it pisses off some people it will only generate more buzz behind Peter Kind and SI.

mission accomplished Mr. King, mission accomplished.