NEWSLETTER
EPR — or Expected Power Rating – is a team strength metric that combines past and present on-field efficiency and predicts how much a given team will score against an average or above-average team in a neutral setting without home-field advantage. In other words, it’s a unique attempt at getting a feel of what a team is really about.
And when it comes to the 2020 Chicago Bears, this about sums it up:
This may be the most damming analysis I’ve ever done. The beauty of Expected Power Rating (EPR) is that we can isolate and then tune various aspects of a team’s performance, and see how their “strength” would differ. Did this for the Bears, and…. yikes. https://t.co/04HhTTSmhK pic.twitter.com/evsgzNRzgl
— Ethan Douglas (@EthanCDouglas) December 11, 2020
Douglas, Adam Jahns, and Ted Nguyen team up for a deep dive into the responsibility of Bears quarterbacks regarding the team’s success. And ultimately, I keep coming back to what Douglas highlighted above. Chicago’s football team could have been reasonably considered a top-4 team in football this season with just *AVERAGE* quarterback play. Oof. That pains me to type it out.
Expected average quarterback play isn’t asking for the world. It isn’t pushing for a breakout star performance. Or elite performance. Baseline level competency from the quarterback position essentially would’ve changed the entire narrative of the 2020 season. Sure, the offensive line doesn’t help matters. Neither does a lack of a rushing attack. And it’s not as if Matt Nagy’s play-calling did anyone any favors. But an upgrade from bottom-of-the-barrel quarterback play to mere average could’ve done wonders for this team.
In the end, I can’t help but read Douglas’ assessment and not think about how this all falls at the feet of GM Ryan Pace. It was painfully obvious that Mitchell Trubisky wasn’t it in December 2019. And in March, we knew the offensive line needed a boost. Neither position was addressed properly last spring, so here we are in winter and discontent with everything. Hence, the buzz in the Bears’ world has much to do with the ideas of organizational structure changes, replacing a general manager, his head coach, and their quarterback.
No, we probably didn’t need advanced analytics for all that — but it really helps drive the point home.
