My post yesterday made a case for why Rex Grossman, QB of the Washington Redskins, should be benched his performances became worse and worse. However, not all of the pundits agreed with me. ESPN’s Michael Wilbon made a case for Rex Grossman. Wilbon argued for giving Rex another shot based on Rex Grossman’s bipolar performances with the Chicago Bears. After all, isn’t Rex due for another good game?If he’s given another shot, he may regress to the mean.
I decided to test the hypothesis that the possibility of “Good Rex” games would warrant giving Rex Grossman another shot. Here’s what I did.
I computed Rex Grossman’s QB rating if he continues to start, with each of his games yielding numbers equal to those in his first game of the season (a “Good Rex” game — see yesterday’s visual). Therefore, additional games would let “Good Rex” dilute the “Bad Rex” performances. I assume that Bad Rex will not return in the future (a big if), which means that this is a best case scenario. The results are illustrated below. The current 5th and 95th percentiles for QB rating are shown for reference.
Rex’s current QB rating is shown as the point with an x-axis value of zero additional games with Good Rex. With one more good game, Rex ‘s QB rating becomes almost acceptable (his rank would be 29th instead of 31st). Two good games would improve Rex’s QB rating rank to 23rd in the league. With four good games, his QB rating would be ranked in the top half of the league. If Rex consistently have good games, his stats would become respectable rather quickly.
Washington coach Mike Shanahan announced that Rex Grossman will not start on Sunday, so we won’t know if Rex just had a couple of bad games and regresses to the mean. What’s your take?
Punk Rock Operations Research 
October 19th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Well, considering some within the Redskins organization don’t even recognize John Beck, the new starting QB (http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/John-Beck-was-unrecognized-and-turned-away-at-Re?urn=nfl-wp3923), perhaps Rex should continue to start just in case John Beck doesn’t make it through stadium security.
Wilbon is correct about Rex. During Rex’s 13-3 regular season and Super Bowl appearance with Da Bears; Rex had a QB rating of 100+ seven times and a QB rating of 50- five times (with a 0 rating in Week 17).
I do find it silly that people criticize NFL QBs for not being a “Top 5” or “Top 10” QB in the NFL. To say that Rex is not elite is correct when comparing him to his peers. Unfortunately, his peers just happen to be the best 32 (or 33 if you count Andrew Luck) QBs in the world.
But I digress … go Cowboys!