The Raiders were heavy underdogs going into Sunday’s game, and one of the biggest reasons the Chiefs were 9-point favorites was the disparity at quarterback between the teams.
Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback in the NFL and Aidan O’Connell was a fourth-round pick in his fifth NFL start against the defending Super Bowl champions.
“Aidan O’Connell has got to be better in this game,” JT The Brick said last week on his Raider Nation Radio program. “We’re not going to win in spite of Aidan O’Connell.
As it turned out, the Raiders lost despite arguably the best performance of O’Connell’s NFL career.
In fact, O’Connell had a higher ESPN QBR than all but one starting quarterback in the NFL in week 12 (not including Monday night’s game that hasn’t been played yet)…
So what exactly is ESPN’s QBR metric?
It’s complicated, but it’s basically an advanced metric that considers several elements outside of what we see in traditional box scores…
“Unlike other measures of quarterback performance, ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating (Total QBR) incorporates all of a quarterback’s contributions to winning, including how he impacts the game on passes, rushes, turnovers and penalties. Also, since QBR is built from the play level, it accounts for a team’s level of success or failure on every play to provide the proper context and then allocates credit to the quarterback and his teammate to produce a clearer measure of quarterback efficiency.”
A full explanation of ESPN’s QBR metric can be found here.
twitter: @raidersbeat
Raiders will win Super Bowl 58 ! AOC is improving every game! That’s huge! Raiders went toe to toe with the champs! We looked like a playoff team! We will win out & go 10-7 Raiders #1 in NFL!