Midweek Musings: A Change Had To Be Made
As everyone knows by, the Denver Broncos have benched Trevor Siemian and will start Brock Osweiler this week against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Bronco fans are all too familiar with Osweiler, who played in eight games (seven starts) for the Broncos back in 2015. He was serviceable in those starts, throwing 10 touchdowns and six interceptions on 170-of-275 passing. He was also playing behind a less-than-ideal offensive line, in which guard Evan Mathis played reasonably well but most everyone else was mediocre at best.
While some fans had hopes that Osweiler could be the starter in 2016, he spurned a sizeable offer from the Broncos, reportedly as high as $15M APY over three years, to sign with the Houston Texans on a four-year, $72M deal. As everyone knows, Osweiler was awful, throwing 15 touchdowns with 16 interceptions on 301-of-510 passing. He was rated one of the worst QBs in Football Outsiders DYAR for 2016, with only Jared Goff rated worse than him.
Continue reading Midweek Musings: A Change Had To Be Made
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Bias in NFL Referees
While football fans have always been quick to see errors by the officiating crews, recently there has been a much more serious tone. Fans in Denver are upset about Bill Vinovich’s officiating in Bronco games, and Eagles fans are incensed with Pete Morelli. Eagles fans point to the horrible penalty disparity, while Broncos fans point to an anomalous win/loss ratio. The fan bases feel betrayed by the officials.
The concerns have generated some responses from higher up. Mike Florio addressed conspiracy theories by superciliously dismissing them, the NFLRA issued a statement to refute them, and Nick wrote an excellent post summarizing the main arguments. Unfortunately the arguments tend to be either appeals to authority or arguments from incredulity, both of which are the same as the uncritical denunciation of the officials. As a scientist, I wanted to get past the emotional and look at the actual data to see if there were discernable trends that would point to some sort of bias.