3 Comments
Aug 27Liked by Neil Paine

Thanks for highlighting this issue - which is indicative of poor thinking and sadly at epidemic levels today in sports media. I refer to this faulty logic as the cherry-picking fallacy or the fallacy of the unwarranted extrapolation. Here, someone will find a single outlier case and pretend it is predictive of future use cases simply because it happened once, while simultaneously ignoring the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Look, aberrations happen. As my college statistics professor said years ago "the laws of statistics do not merely allow for outliers, they compel them." The tails on those bell curves are real. They are not, however, particularly predictive or useful in decision-making. Yet, we hear it all the time in sports media, where mere mention of an outlier use case somehow magically makes irrelevant all the contrary data or evidence.

This fallacious thinking is easy to identify. It is usually preceded by the phrase "well, what about ________?". For example, arguing the truth that smaller quarterback height negatively correlates to NFL success is met with "well what about Drew Brees? Don't tell him that!"

The list is endless. Logically opining that the financial benefits of a rookie QB NFL contract almost demand that teams start them year one is often countered with "well what about Jordan Love holding a clipboard for three years? Worked out pretty well for the Packers, eh?" Even suggesting that passing accuracy is an important skill to quarterbacking will often elicit "unless your name is Josh Allen...right?"

Again, aberrations happen, but so what? You don't build your life or organizations around outliers. Poker players don't chase unicorns, they understand the power of knowing the odds and acting accordingly - even when their decisions don't always work out.

Poker player Annie Duke has referred to this sort of bad thinking as "resulting" where you view decisions solely based on whether they just happened to work out and not the quality of the judgment exercised when they were made. Terry Fontenot's decision to Draft Michael Pennix was a poor one, even if it happens to work out later.

One tiresome and overused source for the cherry-picking fallacy is Tom Brady. Every specious comment around Draft position, to arm strength, to poor running ability, to poor fitness at the Combine, has used Brady as justification for bad takes. Tom Brady is what is known in Latin as sui generis - unique, one of a kind, special. He, like Mahomes in other ways, is not likely to be repeated or seen again soon. Yet both are continually brought up as common examples to justify bad thinking on a particular topic.

Brady's final season unleashed one final torrent of awful cherry-picked takes on how quarterbacks can now suddenly "play well into their 40s." Yes, Tom Brady played until he was 45, but that doesn't mean that single outlier case changed the aging curve for the position. As noted, Aaron Rodgers might work out this year. His previous high level of performance could allow him to remain relatively effective even if he regresses somewhat from age. Still, he will have regressed.

I will close with one caution. Science does march forward. Looking at Achilles tendon injuries from 20 or more years ago is not likely relevant to what a player faces today with recent medical advances, much like looking at old data around Tommy John surgeries. I would suspect that looking at the larger data pool of non-quarterback NFL players with Achilles injuries will show that they fully recover at a much higher rate today than even 10 years ago. Very different procedures and expected outcomes.

Thanks as always.

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author

That's a great point about the improved efficacy of modern medical science against this type of injury. Even Testaverde may not be the most applicable comparison, despite the close narrative parallels as Jet QBs. But that's also why I think overall age is the biggest red flag anyway. It's not the make, as they say, it's the mileage.

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Oct 15Liked by Neil Paine

This article not getting nearly enough attention particularly given it was posted in the midst of all the "Jets in the Super Bowl" mindless ridiculousness. Nailed it.

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