Ah, an engineer. That explains it.

First, if you have a substantial stats background, you are unique among all of the aerospace and mechanical engineers that I have met. And, I grew up surrounded by them. That's part of the reason I didn't go into the field, but that's irrelevant to this conversation.

If you are truly ''well versed'' in the books I mentioned then you understand, at least, foundationally how flawed most sports analysis are. That was the point, to provide a gateway into another realm of understanding. Did you find Lewis's points about Walsh and the 49er's to be relevant to a conversation regarding the value of a QB?

Second, as I have now stated repeatedly the conclusions that I initially discussed are not my own, and I only said they were compelling, not flawless. I also gave you a source for your own investigation. I don't use that sort of analysis for my employer, but the analysis that we do use virtually ignores the QB and is exceedingly stable and predictive. In a discussion about the perceived versus actual value of a QB, that is important as it tends to illustrate that the QB is not singularly important. If the QB is actually not singularly distinguishable from the performance of the team then he has to be the most over-valued player (as most people see the QB as the singularly most important person on the team).

Third, football is relatively easy to predict insofar as simple win loss outcomes. If it wasn't, Vegas wouldn't need to utilize spreads and all games could be bet on as a pickem. That in itself should indicate that there are some predictive abilities that you are missing.

Regardless, I don't have to take the data provided in these books as true wholesale, as we actually design, create and run our own analysis. Obviously, I can't publish proprietary data to support my position so I am forced to simply shrug my shoulders at your insistence otherwise.

Either way, you are correct. These are not the laws of thermodynamics. The evaluations I work with are far more profitable.