Joe Montana is the 5th-Best Niner Ever?

Subjectivity would require a lot more thought than that.

You bring up a very valid point. But what were the expectations for a 3 year old franchise back then?

can you explain the AV stat in a nutshell? Because I dont really understand what exactly it is.

have AVs because AV divvies out points based on offensive and defensive performance only. i provided links to doug’s articles on PFR showing the methods for AV, but i’ll try to expand somewhat from what’s above in my own post.

here’s an example of what the process of coming up with AV for a specific player in a specific season looks like; let’s say for a WR on the 2009 49ers (i’m putting it in block quotes just to highlight it…not quoting anyone here, except my current typing self i suppose):

the niners offense scored 1.55 pts per drive in 2009, compared to the league average of 1.78; which means that the niners pts per drive was 87% of the league average. multiply that by 100 and that means 87 AV points will be spread out among the 2009 niners’ offensive players.

based on the specifics of the AV method, these 87 points are divvied up as follows for various types of players on the 49ers OFF in 2009:

blockers = 40
runners = 10
passers = 10
pass-catchers = 27

blockers can only be OLs, FBs, or TEs. otherwise, any skill position player can receive his fair share of these pts. that’s why the pts are assigned to “runners” instead of RBs; a QB, WR, or TE can run the ball too, so they should get credit for any yards as a runner if they do run it.

from here, it’s just a matter of doling out the pts to individual players, which is generally based on each player’s % of the team’s offensive stats (e.g., a passer who threw for 60% of the team’s total yds gets 60% of the “passers pts”), but also on a few season-specific benchmarks that add tiny bonuses or penalties depending on whether or not the player meets the benchmark (except there are no bonuses or penalties for pass-catchers).

so, for the 2009 49er WR, let’s say michael crabtree, his AV is calculated as follows :

NOT an OL, FB, or TE = 0 blocking pts
0 rushing yds = 0 rushing pts
0 passing yds = 0 passing pts
625 receiving yds = 20.5% of 49ers’ total receiving yds, so 20.5% of OFF’s 27 total pass-catching pts = 5.5 pts
AV = Total of blocking, rushing, passing, pass-catching pts = 5.5

hope that gives you a better idea of what’s going on. in evaluating the method behind AV, i’d call it loosely scientific. PFR used a variety of historical trends in its development, but there’s also a lot of subjective “let’s give an X-point bonus for pro-bowl appearances” kind of stuff. but that kind of goes for much of their work, from what i’ve seen. they use more mathematics than statistics if you know what i mean. not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just not as scientifically rigorous as i’d like, and nowhere near the amount of scientific rigor used by FO. that’s why you don’t hardly ever see me cite PFR’s stuff. again, that’s not a knock. it just is what it is, and reflects 2 web outfits catering to different audiences. PFR’s core audience is a more general football audience that dabbles in wanting to go “inside the numbers”, whereas FO’s core audience is football-loving stat geeks.

Basically, it says “this offense / defense was this good compared to the league average for that season.” That establishes a baseline that you can use roughly across eras. And then it says, “And this player contributed this much to that offense.” Which places individual players on that baseline, so you can compare them roughly across eras.

I assume Wersching didn’t make the list because kickers don’t hold much influence on how successful the team is, at least compared to these other positions. I mean, would you rather have Brady or Vinatieri in their prime? Even if Vinatieri scores more points in his career than Brady, you’d be crazy to pick him. And I think AV is saying that same thing with STATS. Albeit, flawed stats.

Championships are a team accomplishment.

I refuse to hold that against anybody that they don’t have enough rings compared to the next person. All that means is that Trent Dilfer > Dan Marino, and when searching the worst seasons in NFL history, Dilfer has a couple of them….easily.

And the beginning of Young’s career was bad. Those years in TB sucked, but once he got on a roll, he was the most efficient QB in NFL history.

I told you it was coming. You were basically begging for it with the headline “Montana 5th-Best Niner Ever”.

the repetition is awesome

Ur doing it wrong.

The point isn’t that these stats prove anything. Danny states that clearly. These stats give a very general idea of who is in the top group. How to actually arrange them is the whole point of the discussion.