Are NFL teams overpaying for bad QB's?

Joe Flacco and Sam Bradford will be among th highest paid QB's in the NFL in 2016

This week we have seen a couple of below-average quarterbacks be signed to massive contracts. Sam Bradford was re-signed by the Eagles to a two-year $36 million dollar contract Tuesday and the Ravens gave Joe Flacco a three-year, $66.4 million extension with a $40 million signing bonus that puts him under team control through the 2021 season. However you may feel about Flacco and Bradford, statistically speaking they were both well below average in 2015. Out of 34 qualified QB's Bradford was 26th and Flacco was 30th in terms of quarterback rating. This leaves me wonder what in the world were those teams thinking with these contracts?

All the article I have been reading are defending these contracts, saying Flacco is better than his stats because he was hurt last year and his receivers were not good and Bradford will play better under a new head coach not named Chip Kelly. I say those are some pretty big unrealistic assumptions to make and to commit that much money to. I am going to look at each of these players' track records and try and show how these contracts make no sense.

Since being taken with the first overall pick in the 2010 NFL draft Sam Bradford has been thoroughly underwhelming. Bradford has only ever passed for more than 20 touchdowns once and has thrown double digit interceptions in all but two season in which he did not even play in ten games. He has a career 81.1 QBR and has battled injuries his entire career and missed the 2014 season entirely.

Since winning the Super Bowl in 2012 Joe Flacco has not lived up to the massive six-year deal the Ravens then signed him to. Prior to winning the Super Bowl Flacco had a career 86.3 QBR and after winning the super bowl he has a 82.4 QBR. He also has a 1.3 TD/INT ratio in that time.

Now these certainly are not horrible stats, they are capable NFL starters and can win a team games. However these contracts make Bradford and Flacoo some of the highest paid quarterbacks in the entire league.

Below is a comparison between 2015 QBR and salary/year for the 15 highest paid QB's.

QB	Salary/year	NFL rank	2015 QBR	NFL rank	Salary-QBR diff.**
Joe Flacco	$22,133,333	1	83.1	30	29
Aaron Rodgers	$22,000,000	2	92.7	15	13
Russell Wilson	$21,900,000	3	110.1	1	-2
Ben Roethlisberger	$21,850,000	4	94.5	11	7
Eli Manning	$21,000,000	5	93.6	13	8
Philip Rivers	$20,812,500	6	93.8	12	6
Cam Newton	$20,760,000	7	99.4	8	1
Matt Ryan	$20,750,000	8	89	20	12
Drew Brees	$20,000,000	9	101	6	-3
Kirk Cousins	$19,953,000	10	101.6	5	-5
Ryan Tannehill	$19,250,000	11	88.7	21	11
Colin Kaepernick	$19,000,000	12	78.5	31	19
Jay Cutler	$18,100,000	13	92.3	16	3
Sam Bradford	$18,000,000	14	86.4	26	12
Matt Staford*	$17,666,667	16	97	9	-6

*Tony Romo was emitted because he did not qualify for the 2015 QBR standings

**Negative numbers indicate that player is underpaid

As you can see Flacoo is horribly overpaid and Bradford is right up there too. Now I am not saying that both of these players can't improve in 2016 I am just saying that these teams probably should not have spent so much money on so big a risk. At least if Bradford busts the Eagles only have him for two years. The Ravens are stuck with Flacco until 2021 and he is already 31.

Predicting the Pirates' Top Prospects' Offense in the Majors

Pirates' number three overall prospect Josh Bell

Monday was the Pittsburgh Pirates' annual Black-and-Gold scrimmage where many of the team's best prospects saw playing time against one another. Headlining the group of position players were first baseman Josh Bell and second baseman Alen Hanson. MLB.com ranks Bell as the Pirates' third best prospect and Hanson as the number five prospect. Both may finally make their highly-anticipated major league debuts in 2016 with Hanson having a chance to break Spring Training with the big league team and Bell expected to be ready for a call-up by mid season. 

Thinking about this made me wonder just how top-prospects like Hanson and Bell would preform in the majors and so I went about predicting this (I also threw in number 12 overall prospect Willy Garcia and number 14 prospect Elias Diaz as they are both in triple-A and could be called up this season). Using each of these players' minor league numbers and trends of how recent Pirates top-prospects made the jump to the big leagues I came up with a way of predicting what each prospects' batting average and on-base-percentage would be in the majors.I looked at things like how often each player strikes out (SO%), draws a walk (BB%) and batting average of balls put in play (BABIP). These are seen as 'relatively' consistent offensive numbers for players regardless of what level they are playing at. 

Of course for the prospects I only have their minor league numbers and the majors are much more difficult than the minors so I used how recent Pirates top-prospects made the jump. I looked at the differences in SO%, BB%, and BABIP between the minors and majors for Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Neil Walker and Pedro Alvarez. I then found the average difference for all five of these players and applied that to the prospects' numbers to replicate their jumping to the big leagues. 

	SO%		BB%		BABIP		SO% diff.		BB% diff.		BABIP diff.
McCutchen	17.3		12.1		0.373		1.7		2.2		0.026
Minors	15.6		9.9		0.347
Marte	22.9		4.8		0.379		2.9		-0.2		-0.008
Minors	20		5		0.387
Polanco	18.7		8.8		0.314		3.1		-0.7		-0.031
Minors	15.6		9.5		0.346
Walker	17.3		8.1		0.337		1.7		1.7		0.007
Minors	15.6		6.4		0.33
Alvarez	29.1		9.3		0.349		4.4		-3.6		-0.041
Minors	24.6		12.9		0.39

The averages from these numbers were a 2.8% increase in SO%, a .14% decrease in BB% and a .010 decrease in BABIP for the jump from the minors to the majors.

Now for the prospects. 

Bell has a career 14.2 SO%, 9.4 BB% and a .364 BABIP in the minors. Adding in the adjusters I calculated from above that translates to a major league SO% of 17, a BB% of 9.2 and a BABIP of .354. 

Hanson has a 16.8 SO%, 7.7BB% and a .350 BABIP in the minors and I predict a 19.6 SO%, 7.6 BB% and a .340 BABIP in the majors. 

Garcia numbers are 26.6 SO%, 5.4 BB% and a .366 BABIP in the minors and 29.4 SO%, 5.2 BB% and a .357 BABIP for the majors.

Diaz has 15.6 SO%, 8.3BB%, and a .311 BABIP in the minors and an adjusted 18.4 SO%, 8.2 BB% and .302 BABIP for the majors.

I applied these numbers to a baseline of 100 plate appearances and was able to calculate each prospects hits, strike outs and walks per 100 plate appearances. My predictions are as follows;

	Hits/100 PA		SO/100 PA		BB/100 PA		Batting Average		On-base-percentage
Josh Bell	26.3		17		9.2		0.289		0.355
Alen Hanson	24.6		19.6		7.6		0.266		0.322
Willy Garcia	23.3		29.4		5.2		0.245		0.285
Elias Diaz	22		18.4		8.2		0.24		0.302

The numbers I ended with go along with what I expected. Bell has the best batting average and on-base-percentage with Hanson firmly in second place. Garcia is predicted to hit for a better average than Diaz, but Diaz is predicted to get on base more often.

*This was a very simple prediction using rough numbers and a lot of assumption, so these numbers most likely have a large margin of error. However I just did this very quickly and was pleased with the results I got. If you want to look at the Excel document I used with all the number you can follow this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzW1_yH7pmjFczdwcDBQdENGQWs/view?usp=sharing 

All the minor/major league stats I used were from Baseball-Reference.com