As NFL media debates whether the quarterback pipeline is broken and the quality of play is down, Yahoo’s Nate Tice believes he knows why the average fan is frustrated by QB play and scoring trends this season.
In an appearance on The Bill Barnwell Show on ESPN this week, Tice explained why box score watching has made it harder for fans to believe that a quarterback can play great and have low counting stats.
The answer?
“Fantasy,” Tice said. “I can say as much as I want that a quarterback had a phenomenal game, but if he throws for 180 yards, that’s really hard to go like, ‘no trust me bro, trust me, it was a really good game.’ I have found this out for the last four or five years being in media. It doesn’t matter how good you think a quarterback did; if you don’t point out 300 yards or 250 yards and three touchdowns, it’s really hard to build that argument unless you use nuance. It’s just hard. I understand it. Football just has so many variables to it, that the easiest one to look at is, points up, passing up, good.”
MVP candidates like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Kyler Murray are way down when it comes to passing yards per game this season. Likely Rookie of the Year, Jayden Daniels runs for nearly 50 yards per game, doing damage on the ground as well as in the air.
Beyond the evolution of how those players’ offenses run and their own dual-threat abilities, Tice pointed out that defenses have evolved as well.
“Stats are so hard to even look [at] from even game to game, much less year to year and not taking in circumstances and personnel that are being used, and all those types of things,” Tice explained. “So I think we’re getting a little bit of that, that we’re coming off of such a high that … the quarterbacks are really good right now, I still will say that, and the passing games are really good right now. It’s just that it’s never been harder to move the ball because defenses caught up.”
Earlier this week, ESPN’s Mina Kimes made a similar argument. But Kimes was even more pointed in her reasoning for why fans are so attached to previous generations of QBs, blaming it on pure “nostalgia.”
We often see fans online attacking players for not reaching stat benchmarks for fantasy and prop bets. But Tice believes that mentality has now trickled into fans’ overall view of players and teams.
“If I simply look at box score stats, which is the simplest way to look at this, and fantasy’s a part of that as well, [it’s] ‘oh man, quarterbacks stink now, scoring’s down. I drafted Patrick Mahomes as QB2, and oh my god, he’s only thrown six touchdowns so far,'” Tice said. “That can be pretty easy to point at.”
Perhaps Tice’s argument suggests there’s a bigger disconnect than ever between what fans and some media might believe about a player versus how they are valued within the NFL. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it probably is pretty infuriating for those players.
It also means that fans can miss the forest for the trees when it comes to team success. After all, Mahomes is undefeated this season despite lower numbers.
Tice’s analysis probably gets closer to the truth.