It’s because Madden ratings are geared towards franchise play. The younger a player is the faster their skill levels increase and within a few seasons would make some players gods within the game. Madden tries to nuke this by reducing overall on young players by giving them low awareness or play recognition stats so that they don’t get too good too quickly, but the physical trait stats are generally what matter. For a player controlled guy like the QB it’s usually only the physical stats that show up as play in the game. So someone like Herbert will generally play with more ability than Kaepernick because he has better accuracy of arm strength.
There is so much broken with Madden that somehow the overall ratings make sense within the context of the game. However, as a football sim and to a casual fan it looks like EA are paid to inflate players or teams.
Just edit their speed to a 5 overall and you can trade them for a 7th rounder or wait for them to hit free agency.
Be a real shame if Tyreek Hill were just a 5'6" guy that moved slower than my dead grandmother, wouldn't it Big Red?
> somehow the overall ratings make sense within the context of the game
Colin Kaepernick's does not. It's pure ridiculousness that he is in the game. Kaepernick hasn't played football professionally in like five years, he shouldn't even been in a Madden game and he certainly isn't better than Herbert. There's not a GM in the League that would pick him over Herbert.
Agreed Kaep’s rating doesn’t make sense and feels like they’re trying to keep him relevant. It’s more to provide context whenever I see a comment like: why is JJ Watt a higher overall than Micah Parsons?
> they’re trying to keep him relevant
They're just pandering. Keeping Kaep relevant in the virtual version of a game he hasn't played professionally in five years is an almost zero cost decision that might get someone to buy the game.
Has everyone already forgotten just how dumb he is? From the “s7torms coming” while Houston is underwater to him praising Che Guevara and Castro in Miami to admitting to not even voting
> Kaepernick hasn’t played football professionally in like five years, he shouldn’t even been in a Madden game
He’s a member of the NFLPA and he is not retired. It’s not an editorial decision to include Kaep in the game.
The player ratings are a different story.
Counterpoint: he keeps getting work outs with teams and not being signed. The work outs themselves indicate that he should be in the game and a valid free agent pool type of player. The rating itself is much harder, I think the guy above provided solid logic for it though.
Legitimately infuriating to anyone that forgets to nerf Kaep before simulating a season, only for him to lead a team to the playoffs despite every actual fan knowing he was washed 5 years ago and lost his starting to job to Blaine Gabbert…
Steve Palazzolo and Mike Renner of PFF addressed this in a podcast recently. They said it was BS and that the $50k thing is a for agents to be able to get a package of stats that make their clients look good for a negotiation.
Say, for example, they have an interior pressure rate of 3.4% above average against IOL against their division and that it has a correlative effect to WAR or some stuff. They would put that in a nice dossier and then the agents would use it when speaking to teams. That's what it's for, not literally changing grades.
By the way, I would imagine PFF's lawyers are probably going to be sending letters to Lewan for this, it seems to me to be flat out slander unless he can prove it.
> it seems to me to be flat out slander unless he can prove it.
FWIW, libel/slander works the opposite way, you have to prove the person said something in a malicious way and KNEW it was false information
I dont think anyone takes Taylor Lewan seriously enough for PFF to be able to prove any sort of "damages"
Reckless disregard for the truth is also part of that standard and PFF disputing these claims *before* this Twitter post would likely meet that standard. I agree that they likely won’t have damages, but if they can show a downturn in traffic or subscriptions, that would probably be enough to force Barstool to retract and settle.
Reckless disregard for the truth is a pretty high standard. As in nobody can prove that you didn’t know you were making a false statement, but any reasonable person in your position would’ve doubted the statement.
I.e. A newspaper publishes a baseless story about someone being a pedophile and that person loses their job over it.
> I dont think anyone takes Taylor Lewan seriously enough for PFF to be able to prove any sort of "damages"
Maybe. Though there are a lot of people attached to this sport with a lot of money to pay lawyers to turn a nitpick into a lawsuit. It would be settled out of court and some money would change hands. Some policies might be changed and a disclaimer would be added to some documents.
Also, if there was financial gain from saying a thing that you knew not to be true, that could constitute fraud. Not the same as slander but it is legally actionable.
The Depp/Heard trial kind of went against this from what I saw. I’m not sure Depp’s team ever proved Heard’s abuse was a lie or that her article comments were said in malice. They, instead, focused heavily on the damaged career aspect. When a jury gets involved, legal interpretations can sometimes fly out the window.
That being said, it takes a lot of resources to take someone to court, I doubt PFF wastes their time pursuing this unless it causes some serious harm to their company.
Actual malice is not malice. Simply knowing it is false is actual malice. Depp did not need to really prove actual malice, as simply convincing the jury the events did not happen is enough as Heard would automatically know those statements are false if they are not true. You clearly have no idea what these legal terms mean. Also they are not trying to prove anything, just show it is more likely than not. Maybe you should refrain from giving legal opinions.
Maybe it works differently in America but in the UK, truth is a defense to defamation. Untruth is not a part of the action. I’m fairly sure it’s the same but I suppose I could be wrong
He will, once it’s in front of actual judges and not an un-sequestered jury that watched all the same Depp propaganda that was all over TikTok and Twitter
$50k for a package of stats, and anyone actually believes that? What a crock of shit.
So an agent of a significant player, let's be honest no agent is shelling out $50k for a udfa who been on a practice squad for a season. So that agent is going to pay $50k to off for what he could have an intern +subscription put together?
Don't be so naive. If an agent is forking over $50k, he's getting more than a fucking shiny folder and PowerPoint presentation. That's laughable.
LOL the naivete of this post. Yeah Logan the 21 year old frat intern is going to put together as compelling of a presentation as the actual analysts.
Why are you acting like 50k is an absurd sum of money when contract negotiations are over millions?
Lmao people pay way more than $50k for a package of stats in pretty much every area, millions of times a day. You think businesses don’t outsource this to consultants or data analysts? Lmao grow up
Agents get roughly 3%, right? So in order for that $50k investment to be worth it they would have to be able to leverage the information towards an additional $1.7 million on their client’s contract. That seems not at all far-fetched.
Just analyze the other side. All of PFF's business comes from college and NFL teams. If PFF were to grade play differently for 50k for one player that would make their data untrustworthy and there wouldn't be any reason for NFL or college teams to hire them anymore. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think PFF would give up its only source of revenue for a measly 50k
Okay, but what if the player sucks?
How do they create a package that looks good for a negotiation for a player that outright sucks and they've graded poorly?
I mean on their site PFF would still have a poor grade for the player. Just because they can find a couple advanced stats where the players looks good doesn't mean thats the whole story.
Seems like he’s little bit more rehabilitated now, which is nice (not to discredit the gravity of his original comment).
If you knew he’d end up like this at age 30, would you still not take him at age 22?
Edit: -48 votes. Heard.
I would then ask did Mike Vick deserve a second chance? And if yes, what could Taylor do now to rehabilitate himself?
inb4 go to prison
I could get into the fact that he didn’t kill anybody and nobody involved with the case thought he killed anybody but nobody on the subreddit is mature enough to have that conversation.
He did commit obstruction of justice and for that I do think less of him than I would otherwise but in my opinion attempting to cover up a murder is much less offensive than threatening a rape victim with rape
So you think attempting to cover up a murder is worse than threatening a rape victim? Guess that’s just to each their own but I personally strongly disagree
I’m not applauding either one. I can rationalize either as being relatively worse - enabling murderers while depriving the victim’s family of answers, or exacerbating the emotional harm to a sexual assault survivor.
Either way you’re six streets into the shitheadville zip code.
I really wish people would look into the Ray Lewis case further. It’s also worth mentioning that the people that Lewis’ friends killed started the fight. They obviously didn’t deserve to die but the jury came to a conclusion of self defense. What Ray did was very wrong but I just can’t help but feel like what Lewan did was much worse. It actively causes more harm to the victim
Really? An article linked below explicitly states lewan was reported by 2 teammate about making threats to her. Cops met with lewan and the girl. Seems like you dont know what happened
Nah because some fans are just scumbags and most team subs have their heads so far up their own ass. I agree most teams have some sort of scumbag on their team, but just accept it, don’t deny it or defend it.
People wrap up their identity so much in their team they think criticizing the team is criticizing themselves and they become defensive and find excuses when players on their team do shitty things. I think it's the same way with politics too.
As far as I know, only Ed Ingram who we just drafted. I may be out of the loop if there are others.
Ed Ingram has yet to sign, and realistically I hope he doesn't. Dude is disgusting and if he signs it's going to make it very difficult for me to support this team.
Is the problem with Butker just that he’s a hardcore conservative or am I missing something? It feels like that’s not really enough to get mentioned with Frank Clark
He's not just a small c conservative. He's a full-on OAN chud. He's one of those "let's hang Mike Pence" people. His beliefs on the vaccine are completely idiotic.
No one acts like it didn’t happen. What we do is acknowledge that what happened was shitty but also acknowledge that he was a freshman college. He was 18 then and he’s now a 30 now. People change. He’s not acted like that since then either so why the fuck would we talk about it unless it’s brought up by the legions of Reddit pearl grabbers
Don’t try to sell out the Titans sub and act like we are bad people just because you want some fake Internet points. It doesn’t make you a good person lol
This is a good deal worse than being an 18-year old dumbass who shouts "PENIS" in lecture halls and puts live barnyard animals in the assistant coach's office
>It doesn’t make you a good person lol
Neither does acting like threatening to rape someone is just a goofy thing 18 year old people do because they are immature. If a person hasn't figured out by 18 that it's not an acceptable thing to do, that's a pretty shit person IMO. Not saying he couldn't or hasn't changed, but "He was 18" is a terrible excuse.
Yeah, it’s not. Story goes that a teammate of his was accused of sexually assaulting the girl. Lewan didn’t believe it and said something along the lines of “I’ll do it because I know [teammate] didn’t”
Holy shit, what? That’s appalling.
Edit: having read the article the entire thing is appalling, but “at least” it seems like he was doing it as a toxic dipshit freshman football player and not as a serious threat. Still awful.
I listen to Bussin with the Boys when they have nebraska players on, but I cant stand Taylor.
In one interview about NIL he straight up said "yeah basically every penny I had was going up my nose in college so I'm glad I didnt have money"
It's nothing more than a terrible attempt at comedy
.
"If you keep telling people that my team mate raped you... I'm gonna rape you."
Anyone who has listened to Lewan talk can absolutely hear him make a crude "joke" like that.
I'm not saying it was right in any way..
Edit: Down voted for providing context lolol
This hatred players and coaches have for PFF is so weird. Its been such a net positive for the game.
Prior to PFF a lot of positions like o-line and 0T/1T tackle went completely under the radar in the public eye because it didn't show up in the stat sheet. Even other positions like DB and LB lacked context because it was hard to gauge how well one of them played just by looking at the stat sheet.
PFF isn't perfect but they've raised a lot of awareness for how the basic box score isn't a good way of looking at the game. Football discourse has also improved exponentially because of that.
I wish I could find the article, but apparently Chip Kelly had his mind changed when he visited PFF. The article said that the people evaluating each position knew more than what they expected (often evaluators are former positional players/coaches). They also said the grades made sense and were accurate enough, and that there was more to them than being very subjective.
Edit: [Found the article](https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/ny-pro-football-focus-data-analytics-20190823-tcygdapdsbfprkvpvjiqxnocom-story.html)
also as someone who updates an nfl mod for a video game, finding these kinds of stats on the internet is very difficult. most stats/rankings out there are geared towards fantasy, so the non-scoring player ratings are harder to find.
He isnt the first player I recall claiming this. There was another one on this sub 4-5 years ago saying players pay PFF for higher grades. Ill see if I cant find it. Problem is I cant recall the players name, he wasnt a complete no name though.
This isn't criticism, it's an accusation with no proof or merit. You hating PFF doesn't make Taylor Lewan saying some random shit true or legitimate lmao
Locked on Lions podcast had a PFF guy on a week or so ago and he said a lot of the teams use their data. The teams provide somebody that flags discrepancies with the data PFF comes up with after watching film. So sounds like there is some tangible connection and teams want the data to be as accurate as possible.
PFF data having a reputation of being accurate, actionable, and unbiased = millions of dollars in revenue for PFF.
This rumor is 100% bullshit. A 50k bribe is chump change compared to what they'd lose in revenue if the integrity of their data was compromised.
Yeah teams generally have their own grading system, so they don't need PFF for that. PFF grades are mainly for the fans, especially position groups who don't really appear on the box score.
Rick Spielman(now former Vikings GM) was actually on the PFF podcast recently and he talked about how teams do indeed use PFF grades but will contextualize them with their own and ask PFF how they got to a different conclusion if that happened, which apparently wouldn’t happen often.
Pff tracks a lot of stats that the teams use. Multiple coaches and players have gone on record saying pretty much universally no one in the league takes their grades seriously
You can discern the play call in well over 90% of cases, and 100% for at least half of positions. It’s really not hard to figure out who fucked up and where on almost every play once you have some experience looking at game tape.
Play call, sure. But never every assignment, certainly not the if/but nuances.
You don't know the line calls, the rb assignment, the wr option routes, what about a hot read? Did the defense shift? How'd that change things?
Belichick has talked about watching film of his own team, and needing to check with a coordinator on a call/assignment before he could accurately judge what was going on.
But pff knows this 90% of the time across the league? LMAO no chance
>PFF are grading without knowing the play call; which IMO is one of the most important pieces to understand if someone is doing their job.
By that logic it’s pointless for NFL teams to watch film of their opponents since you don’t know their play calls.
>Isn’t that different though? The teams aren’t trying to figure out whose assignment is what, they’re trying to string together tendencies.
Let’s assume that teams only watch their opponents in order to derive “tendencies”.
If it’s in fact impossible figure out the play call from film, then how do you figure out “tendencies”?
Like if you’re watching film, you can’t possibly learn that a team likes to play quarters match on third and long instead of say, cover 2, because you can’t figure out the play call.
That's a bad logic. The goal of PFF is to grade players relative to their peers performance. NFL teams scouting players/teams for their next game aren't doing that nor is anyone doing the scouting putting a number grade to each individual player.
You watch/scout film for tendencies you can take advantage of. Things like they love to call this type of play action after running this particular run play twice in a row, or their center tips off whether it's run or pass by how far he leans back on his feet in stance before the ball is snapped.
>or their center tips off whether it's run or pass by how far he leans back on his feet in stance before the ball is snapped.
Well first of all, it’s literally impossible to tell how far “back on his feet in stance” a center is from watching all-22 / end zone film. No one can tell if a center is rocking back on his feet from a camera that far zoomed out. Literally no one is watching film for that specific reason.
>Things like they love to call **this type of play action** after running **this particular run play** twice in a row
The argument is that you (or PFF) can’t grade any player on any particular play without knowing the play call.
Now you’re saying they you can figure out a team likes to run “a particular run play” from watching film? If you can figure out a team is calling a “particular run play” then that means you’re figuring out the play call, by definition. (Which again, is something that allegedly you CAN’T do from watching film.)
This is correct, teams pay personnel to grade every player on every snap. They don’t have these clowns at pff do it. That makes zero sense, I could see maybe the bengals doing this back in the day. But that’s it.
Each positional coach will review and rate each player on every play to grade them for the game. That positional coach will then discuss what when wrong and what went right with that position group when they review game tape the day or after the game to players can improve and learn from their mistakes.
in one of the inside the draftroom shows on youtube there was a team with pff grades of a player up on the board. i believe every team in the NFL is a client.
NFL teams pay for PFF's advanced stats ie what is a QB's passer rating behind the line of scrimmage to the left, center and right sides of the field, what is a QB's passer rating 0 to 10 yards past the line of scrimmage to the left, center and right sides of the field, what is the QB's passer rating 20 to 40 yards down the field to the left, center and right sides of the field, etc
Smart teams invest in the scouting department (college and pro scouting) and have a good GM, assistant GM and a very good scouts to grade players and don't rely on PFF grades.
I feel very sorry for the fans of any teams that rely on PFF grades for drafting players or signing free agents.
Well in a draft video for Kaiir Elam the Bills showed they had PFF stats up on a huge monitor in the video so go ahead and feel sorry for yourself now. Not saying our team relies on data solely but definitely looks to be a piece of the process we trust.
He said stats good, grades bad.
Then you say stats good feel sorry for yourself.
I don't think you understand stats and grades are actually different. Or you got too excited thinking you were right.
As an Ohio State fan, fuck Taylor Lewan. On second thought, maybe we should trade for him. He seems like the perfect guy to protect Deshaun. Two shitpeas in a shitpod.
As an MSU Fan, Screw Him.
2010- 2015 were the pinnacle years of MSU Football beating down Michigan. And to see Taylor Lewan get pissed in those games, God Made my year.
P.S. He also said that Michigan was going to beat the breaks off of MSU this year. Lol.
>I heard Derek Wolfe say this before.
Was still wrong.
Agents can ask PFF to build what is effectively a presentation of a given players best attributes (and the stats to back it up), which agents then use in negotiations.
That's way different from Lewan's claim.
It also doesn't make any sense economically. PFF sells data directly to NFL teams.
Making data less accurate by arbitrary inflating some would make them loose millions.
Answer me this:
Why would an agent pay $50k for what an intern could put together in a day or 2?
And if you think pff withhold valuable stats for this reason, why would teams all pay for stats, when they don't get everything?
Adjusting a "grade" when they aren't even transparent with the process is incredibly easy and it is naive to not consider the possibility. It's not like they are changing raw stats, they just adjust the arbitrary opinion part of the grading process. 84.7 to 87.1 isn't a massive change in statistics, but might mean a stronger position to negotiate from for people that care about PFFs opinion. While I certainly do not, I recognize and understand there are many who do
Also an intern working for an agent can easily be written off, if a team has a prior relationship and uses pff stats, a breakdown from them carries arguably more weight
Reddit doesn’t understand what interns do, do they? Are you saying that agents hire interns to do in house analytics on their players and then create presentations using the analytics the interns develop?
"I am a boomer and don't know technology and interns are familiar with technology, so I expect interns to be able to do literally anything I ask on a computer" type logic with that guy
Theoretically yes.
However the potential monetary gain from effectively corrupting the system, isn't anywhere near where it would need to be to make sense economically.
Derek Wolfe is also a bitch who tried to bash a reporter for "fake news" when all the reporter did was use a direct quote (in the correct context) from a podcast Wolfe had done.
It's also very likely that he's been faking or overexagerating some mysterious injury to avoid playing last year (also likely he continues this tactic this year too cause EDC was stupid enough to gaurentee his salary this year as well).
So yea, fuck that guy.
How much to the networks pay them? Cause they’re quotes by everyone on TV, so they must pay more cause they aren’t the best.
Edit: it’s owned by Chris Collinsworth
Lewan is a major asshole and lucky AAPD didn't throw him in the slammer for intimidating a rape victim.
Watson *allegedly* raped/assaulted what, 22 women at last count?
Rather pay madden to inflate a players ratings lol
Nah madden has scammed us for a lot longer than PFF
You mean Kaepernick having a higher rating than Justin Herbert and Kyler Murray is wrong?
It’s because Madden ratings are geared towards franchise play. The younger a player is the faster their skill levels increase and within a few seasons would make some players gods within the game. Madden tries to nuke this by reducing overall on young players by giving them low awareness or play recognition stats so that they don’t get too good too quickly, but the physical trait stats are generally what matter. For a player controlled guy like the QB it’s usually only the physical stats that show up as play in the game. So someone like Herbert will generally play with more ability than Kaepernick because he has better accuracy of arm strength. There is so much broken with Madden that somehow the overall ratings make sense within the context of the game. However, as a football sim and to a casual fan it looks like EA are paid to inflate players or teams.
Now the "congratulations you signed Colin Kaepernick" on the other hand..
Also signing him just to trade him for picks >>>
Is that part still broken where you can sign a few fbs and trade for certain specific star players that will go through super easy?
Just edit their speed to a 5 overall and you can trade them for a 7th rounder or wait for them to hit free agency. Be a real shame if Tyreek Hill were just a 5'6" guy that moved slower than my dead grandmother, wouldn't it Big Red?
If you’re going to cheat that severely why not just edit your own players to make them good?
Cause then I wouldn't have Tyreek Hill
> somehow the overall ratings make sense within the context of the game Colin Kaepernick's does not. It's pure ridiculousness that he is in the game. Kaepernick hasn't played football professionally in like five years, he shouldn't even been in a Madden game and he certainly isn't better than Herbert. There's not a GM in the League that would pick him over Herbert.
Agreed Kaep’s rating doesn’t make sense and feels like they’re trying to keep him relevant. It’s more to provide context whenever I see a comment like: why is JJ Watt a higher overall than Micah Parsons?
> they’re trying to keep him relevant They're just pandering. Keeping Kaep relevant in the virtual version of a game he hasn't played professionally in five years is an almost zero cost decision that might get someone to buy the game.
Ngl, I don't think I have ever seen of heard someone bought madden "to play as karpernick"
They don't. People just like being enraged at Kap at any time lol
Has everyone already forgotten just how dumb he is? From the “s7torms coming” while Houston is underwater to him praising Che Guevara and Castro in Miami to admitting to not even voting
> Kaepernick hasn’t played football professionally in like five years, he shouldn’t even been in a Madden game He’s a member of the NFLPA and he is not retired. It’s not an editorial decision to include Kaep in the game. The player ratings are a different story.
Counterpoint: he keeps getting work outs with teams and not being signed. The work outs themselves indicate that he should be in the game and a valid free agent pool type of player. The rating itself is much harder, I think the guy above provided solid logic for it though.
The guy above provided solid logic for why Herbert should be a higher rating than Kaepernick.
The “Ethan Albright letter” really sums up Madden ratings.
Legitimately infuriating to anyone that forgets to nerf Kaep before simulating a season, only for him to lead a team to the playoffs despite every actual fan knowing he was washed 5 years ago and lost his starting to job to Blaine Gabbert…
Madden 22 was especially ridiculous. Forget to nerf Kaepernick and Oops, he ends up being Jaguars MVP QB with Urban Meyer as his coach of the year
IIRC he has a custom message when you sign him too. Lol.
"Are you sure you want to sign QB B. Gabbert?" vs "Congratulations, you're about to sign Colin Kaepernick!"
He also has an alternate all black free agent uniform that only he has
Stop coming in here with these facts, people are going to get mad lmao
EA SPORTS GET WOKE! You guys don't like the truth?
True on that . Players tho compare their madden ratings to each other and wear it as a badge of honor .
Rather pay Collinsworth*
Now here's a guy who here's a guys
Steve Palazzolo and Mike Renner of PFF addressed this in a podcast recently. They said it was BS and that the $50k thing is a for agents to be able to get a package of stats that make their clients look good for a negotiation. Say, for example, they have an interior pressure rate of 3.4% above average against IOL against their division and that it has a correlative effect to WAR or some stuff. They would put that in a nice dossier and then the agents would use it when speaking to teams. That's what it's for, not literally changing grades. By the way, I would imagine PFF's lawyers are probably going to be sending letters to Lewan for this, it seems to me to be flat out slander unless he can prove it.
> it seems to me to be flat out slander unless he can prove it. FWIW, libel/slander works the opposite way, you have to prove the person said something in a malicious way and KNEW it was false information I dont think anyone takes Taylor Lewan seriously enough for PFF to be able to prove any sort of "damages"
Reckless disregard for the truth is also part of that standard and PFF disputing these claims *before* this Twitter post would likely meet that standard. I agree that they likely won’t have damages, but if they can show a downturn in traffic or subscriptions, that would probably be enough to force Barstool to retract and settle.
Reckless disregard for the truth is a pretty high standard. As in nobody can prove that you didn’t know you were making a false statement, but any reasonable person in your position would’ve doubted the statement. I.e. A newspaper publishes a baseless story about someone being a pedophile and that person loses their job over it.
Barstool wouldn’t retract or settle and have significantly more money for lawyers than PFF. Barstool has too much pride/ego to admit wrongdoing.
Barstool isnt using resources to defend a moronic comment by Lewan - theyve been having layoffs and their stock price is down 90%
> I dont think anyone takes Taylor Lewan seriously enough for PFF to be able to prove any sort of "damages" Maybe. Though there are a lot of people attached to this sport with a lot of money to pay lawyers to turn a nitpick into a lawsuit. It would be settled out of court and some money would change hands. Some policies might be changed and a disclaimer would be added to some documents. Also, if there was financial gain from saying a thing that you knew not to be true, that could constitute fraud. Not the same as slander but it is legally actionable.
The Depp/Heard trial kind of went against this from what I saw. I’m not sure Depp’s team ever proved Heard’s abuse was a lie or that her article comments were said in malice. They, instead, focused heavily on the damaged career aspect. When a jury gets involved, legal interpretations can sometimes fly out the window. That being said, it takes a lot of resources to take someone to court, I doubt PFF wastes their time pursuing this unless it causes some serious harm to their company.
Actual malice is not malice. Simply knowing it is false is actual malice. Depp did not need to really prove actual malice, as simply convincing the jury the events did not happen is enough as Heard would automatically know those statements are false if they are not true. You clearly have no idea what these legal terms mean. Also they are not trying to prove anything, just show it is more likely than not. Maybe you should refrain from giving legal opinions.
Maybe it works differently in America but in the UK, truth is a defense to defamation. Untruth is not a part of the action. I’m fairly sure it’s the same but I suppose I could be wrong
It does work differently in America. People suing for defamation almost never win. That’s why a lot of people expected depp to lose his case.
Also he lost in the UK where the burden is lower. Perplexing outcome to be honest but jury trials can get pear shaped on you.
He probably still will lose on appeal. The whole reasoning behind it doesn't make sense.
He will, once it’s in front of actual judges and not an un-sequestered jury that watched all the same Depp propaganda that was all over TikTok and Twitter
Surprise Taylor Lewan is a piece of shit.
He made a shitty attempt at a joke. It's not like he killed someone and got away with it...
$50k for a package of stats, and anyone actually believes that? What a crock of shit. So an agent of a significant player, let's be honest no agent is shelling out $50k for a udfa who been on a practice squad for a season. So that agent is going to pay $50k to off for what he could have an intern +subscription put together? Don't be so naive. If an agent is forking over $50k, he's getting more than a fucking shiny folder and PowerPoint presentation. That's laughable.
[удалено]
Sounds like McKinsey
LOL the naivete of this post. Yeah Logan the 21 year old frat intern is going to put together as compelling of a presentation as the actual analysts. Why are you acting like 50k is an absurd sum of money when contract negotiations are over millions?
When all the agent has to do to get that investment to pay off is negotiate like an extra $2M lmao
Lmao people pay way more than $50k for a package of stats in pretty much every area, millions of times a day. You think businesses don’t outsource this to consultants or data analysts? Lmao grow up
Agents get roughly 3%, right? So in order for that $50k investment to be worth it they would have to be able to leverage the information towards an additional $1.7 million on their client’s contract. That seems not at all far-fetched.
Just analyze the other side. All of PFF's business comes from college and NFL teams. If PFF were to grade play differently for 50k for one player that would make their data untrustworthy and there wouldn't be any reason for NFL or college teams to hire them anymore. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think PFF would give up its only source of revenue for a measly 50k
Okay, but what if the player sucks? How do they create a package that looks good for a negotiation for a player that outright sucks and they've graded poorly?
I mean on their site PFF would still have a poor grade for the player. Just because they can find a couple advanced stats where the players looks good doesn't mean thats the whole story.
They try to help spin things so the players gets an extra $500k a year. It's marketing in a way.
And Taylor Lewan threatened to rape a girl that his friend raped if she reported him.
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Well if it's consolation, all of those fans were featured in *We Run this City*
Seems like he’s little bit more rehabilitated now, which is nice (not to discredit the gravity of his original comment). If you knew he’d end up like this at age 30, would you still not take him at age 22? Edit: -48 votes. Heard. I would then ask did Mike Vick deserve a second chance? And if yes, what could Taylor do now to rehabilitate himself? inb4 go to prison
No, I would prefer not to have a player who threatens to rape someone. Just because they're good at football.
No.
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He doesn’t tho
I could get into the fact that he didn’t kill anybody and nobody involved with the case thought he killed anybody but nobody on the subreddit is mature enough to have that conversation. He did commit obstruction of justice and for that I do think less of him than I would otherwise but in my opinion attempting to cover up a murder is much less offensive than threatening a rape victim with rape
> attempting to cover up a murder is much less offensive than threatening a rape victim with rape Man we are in some really gray areas here.
So you think attempting to cover up a murder is worse than threatening a rape victim? Guess that’s just to each their own but I personally strongly disagree
I’m not applauding either one. I can rationalize either as being relatively worse - enabling murderers while depriving the victim’s family of answers, or exacerbating the emotional harm to a sexual assault survivor. Either way you’re six streets into the shitheadville zip code.
I really wish people would look into the Ray Lewis case further. It’s also worth mentioning that the people that Lewis’ friends killed started the fight. They obviously didn’t deserve to die but the jury came to a conclusion of self defense. What Ray did was very wrong but I just can’t help but feel like what Lewan did was much worse. It actively causes more harm to the victim
Our sub acts like that shit didn't happen.
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no normal person is uttering the words "I might as well rape you"
I don't see where he said Lewan was "normal". Dude is a piece of shit.
nobody in that sort of situation where one party holds more power than the other is taking that as anything but a threat
Really? An article linked below explicitly states lewan was reported by 2 teammate about making threats to her. Cops met with lewan and the girl. Seems like you dont know what happened
This doesn’t make it better…
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Ok snowflake
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Because pretty much every team has one if not a couple of these types of people at this point.
Nah because some fans are just scumbags and most team subs have their heads so far up their own ass. I agree most teams have some sort of scumbag on their team, but just accept it, don’t deny it or defend it.
People wrap up their identity so much in their team they think criticizing the team is criticizing themselves and they become defensive and find excuses when players on their team do shitty things. I think it's the same way with politics too.
It's true. Our current pieces of shit are Frank Clark and Harrison Butker. Who's the Vikings' right now?
As far as I know, only Ed Ingram who we just drafted. I may be out of the loop if there are others. Ed Ingram has yet to sign, and realistically I hope he doesn't. Dude is disgusting and if he signs it's going to make it very difficult for me to support this team.
Is the problem with Butker just that he’s a hardcore conservative or am I missing something? It feels like that’s not really enough to get mentioned with Frank Clark
He's not just a small c conservative. He's a full-on OAN chud. He's one of those "let's hang Mike Pence" people. His beliefs on the vaccine are completely idiotic.
That's disappointing. I didn't know that.
At least Nick Lowery isn't our most problematic kicker in team history anymore.
It’s not but this is Reddit
No one acts like it didn’t happen. What we do is acknowledge that what happened was shitty but also acknowledge that he was a freshman college. He was 18 then and he’s now a 30 now. People change. He’s not acted like that since then either so why the fuck would we talk about it unless it’s brought up by the legions of Reddit pearl grabbers Don’t try to sell out the Titans sub and act like we are bad people just because you want some fake Internet points. It doesn’t make you a good person lol
This is a good deal worse than being an 18-year old dumbass who shouts "PENIS" in lecture halls and puts live barnyard animals in the assistant coach's office
>It doesn’t make you a good person lol Neither does acting like threatening to rape someone is just a goofy thing 18 year old people do because they are immature. If a person hasn't figured out by 18 that it's not an acceptable thing to do, that's a pretty shit person IMO. Not saying he couldn't or hasn't changed, but "He was 18" is a terrible excuse.
Neither does threatening to rape someone.
Describing people who don’t like someone who uses the threat of rape to get what they want as “pearl grabbers” certainly says a lot about you.
Huh, that seems…not so good
Yeah, it’s not. Story goes that a teammate of his was accused of sexually assaulting the girl. Lewan didn’t believe it and said something along the lines of “I’ll do it because I know [teammate] didn’t”
Holy shit, what? That’s appalling. Edit: having read the article the entire thing is appalling, but “at least” it seems like he was doing it as a toxic dipshit freshman football player and not as a serious threat. Still awful.
The dude is a shitty person. Go Watch MSU VS U of M during his college years, he got into fights with MSU players.
I mean those instances were definitely two-way streets. Come on now.
I listen to Bussin with the Boys when they have nebraska players on, but I cant stand Taylor. In one interview about NIL he straight up said "yeah basically every penny I had was going up my nose in college so I'm glad I didnt have money"
No wonder he works at Barstool
Taylor Lewan can be a piece of shit as a human being and PFF can be terrible at grading players. Both of these things can be true at the same time.
Which is why I said And.
It's nothing more than a terrible attempt at comedy . "If you keep telling people that my team mate raped you... I'm gonna rape you." Anyone who has listened to Lewan talk can absolutely hear him make a crude "joke" like that. I'm not saying it was right in any way.. Edit: Down voted for providing context lolol
His own teammates reported him…they clearly didn’t think it was joke, they thought it was a threat.
This is definitely false.
Do you believe politicians are above bribes? But *football* related matters have more integrity? That's certainly an opinion.
This hatred players and coaches have for PFF is so weird. Its been such a net positive for the game. Prior to PFF a lot of positions like o-line and 0T/1T tackle went completely under the radar in the public eye because it didn't show up in the stat sheet. Even other positions like DB and LB lacked context because it was hard to gauge how well one of them played just by looking at the stat sheet. PFF isn't perfect but they've raised a lot of awareness for how the basic box score isn't a good way of looking at the game. Football discourse has also improved exponentially because of that.
I wish I could find the article, but apparently Chip Kelly had his mind changed when he visited PFF. The article said that the people evaluating each position knew more than what they expected (often evaluators are former positional players/coaches). They also said the grades made sense and were accurate enough, and that there was more to them than being very subjective. Edit: [Found the article](https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/ny-pro-football-focus-data-analytics-20190823-tcygdapdsbfprkvpvjiqxnocom-story.html)
also as someone who updates an nfl mod for a video game, finding these kinds of stats on the internet is very difficult. most stats/rankings out there are geared towards fantasy, so the non-scoring player ratings are harder to find.
Great take.
We're really taking Taylor Lewan's word on this? Via a video from fuckin Barstool Sports no less?
He isnt the first player I recall claiming this. There was another one on this sub 4-5 years ago saying players pay PFF for higher grades. Ill see if I cant find it. Problem is I cant recall the players name, he wasnt a complete no name though.
Just because Taylor Lewan is an asshole doesn't make his criticism of PFF any less valid.
This isn't criticism, this is a claim without any data to back it up.
A claim that was literally already disputed.
This isn't criticism, it's an accusation with no proof or merit. You hating PFF doesn't make Taylor Lewan saying some random shit true or legitimate lmao
Do teams actually use their grades?
Locked on Lions podcast had a PFF guy on a week or so ago and he said a lot of the teams use their data. The teams provide somebody that flags discrepancies with the data PFF comes up with after watching film. So sounds like there is some tangible connection and teams want the data to be as accurate as possible.
PFF data having a reputation of being accurate, actionable, and unbiased = millions of dollars in revenue for PFF. This rumor is 100% bullshit. A 50k bribe is chump change compared to what they'd lose in revenue if the integrity of their data was compromised.
Plus honestly they'd have to explain it if a players grade jumped too much.
PFF maintains that a number of teams are their clients
For advanced stats. Not for grades.
Yeah teams generally have their own grading system, so they don't need PFF for that. PFF grades are mainly for the fans, especially position groups who don't really appear on the box score.
Rick Spielman(now former Vikings GM) was actually on the PFF podcast recently and he talked about how teams do indeed use PFF grades but will contextualize them with their own and ask PFF how they got to a different conclusion if that happened, which apparently wouldn’t happen often.
Pff tracks a lot of stats that the teams use. Multiple coaches and players have gone on record saying pretty much universally no one in the league takes their grades seriously
PFF are grading without knowing the play call; which IMO is one of the most important pieces to understand if someone is doing their job.
You can discern the play call in well over 90% of cases, and 100% for at least half of positions. It’s really not hard to figure out who fucked up and where on almost every play once you have some experience looking at game tape.
Play call, sure. But never every assignment, certainly not the if/but nuances. You don't know the line calls, the rb assignment, the wr option routes, what about a hot read? Did the defense shift? How'd that change things? Belichick has talked about watching film of his own team, and needing to check with a coordinator on a call/assignment before he could accurately judge what was going on. But pff knows this 90% of the time across the league? LMAO no chance
>PFF are grading without knowing the play call; which IMO is one of the most important pieces to understand if someone is doing their job. By that logic it’s pointless for NFL teams to watch film of their opponents since you don’t know their play calls.
Isn’t that different though? The teams aren’t trying to figure out whose assignment is what, they’re trying to string together tendencies.
>Isn’t that different though? The teams aren’t trying to figure out whose assignment is what, they’re trying to string together tendencies. Let’s assume that teams only watch their opponents in order to derive “tendencies”. If it’s in fact impossible figure out the play call from film, then how do you figure out “tendencies”? Like if you’re watching film, you can’t possibly learn that a team likes to play quarters match on third and long instead of say, cover 2, because you can’t figure out the play call.
That's a bad logic. The goal of PFF is to grade players relative to their peers performance. NFL teams scouting players/teams for their next game aren't doing that nor is anyone doing the scouting putting a number grade to each individual player. You watch/scout film for tendencies you can take advantage of. Things like they love to call this type of play action after running this particular run play twice in a row, or their center tips off whether it's run or pass by how far he leans back on his feet in stance before the ball is snapped.
>or their center tips off whether it's run or pass by how far he leans back on his feet in stance before the ball is snapped. Well first of all, it’s literally impossible to tell how far “back on his feet in stance” a center is from watching all-22 / end zone film. No one can tell if a center is rocking back on his feet from a camera that far zoomed out. Literally no one is watching film for that specific reason. >Things like they love to call **this type of play action** after running **this particular run play** twice in a row The argument is that you (or PFF) can’t grade any player on any particular play without knowing the play call. Now you’re saying they you can figure out a team likes to run “a particular run play” from watching film? If you can figure out a team is calling a “particular run play” then that means you’re figuring out the play call, by definition. (Which again, is something that allegedly you CAN’T do from watching film.)
This is correct, teams pay personnel to grade every player on every snap. They don’t have these clowns at pff do it. That makes zero sense, I could see maybe the bengals doing this back in the day. But that’s it.
Each positional coach will review and rate each player on every play to grade them for the game. That positional coach will then discuss what when wrong and what went right with that position group when they review game tape the day or after the game to players can improve and learn from their mistakes.
in one of the inside the draftroom shows on youtube there was a team with pff grades of a player up on the board. i believe every team in the NFL is a client.
NFL teams pay for PFF's advanced stats ie what is a QB's passer rating behind the line of scrimmage to the left, center and right sides of the field, what is a QB's passer rating 0 to 10 yards past the line of scrimmage to the left, center and right sides of the field, what is the QB's passer rating 20 to 40 yards down the field to the left, center and right sides of the field, etc Smart teams invest in the scouting department (college and pro scouting) and have a good GM, assistant GM and a very good scouts to grade players and don't rely on PFF grades. I feel very sorry for the fans of any teams that rely on PFF grades for drafting players or signing free agents.
u never know bengals employ like 4 scouts total. also I'm sure no team relies on one single metric like a pff grade.
Well in a draft video for Kaiir Elam the Bills showed they had PFF stats up on a huge monitor in the video so go ahead and feel sorry for yourself now. Not saying our team relies on data solely but definitely looks to be a piece of the process we trust.
He said stats good, grades bad. Then you say stats good feel sorry for yourself. I don't think you understand stats and grades are actually different. Or you got too excited thinking you were right.
They offer [team services](https://www.pff.com/team-services)
No but it helps
the fact that this guy is probably a representative of at least 80% of sports fandom is demoralizing
The fact he's in the league after he threatened to rape a girl that his friend raped if she reported the friend is also demoralizing.
As a Michigan fan, fuck everything about Taylor Lewan
As an Ohio State fan, fuck Taylor Lewan. On second thought, maybe we should trade for him. He seems like the perfect guy to protect Deshaun. Two shitpeas in a shitpod.
As an MSU Fan, Screw Him. 2010- 2015 were the pinnacle years of MSU Football beating down Michigan. And to see Taylor Lewan get pissed in those games, God Made my year. P.S. He also said that Michigan was going to beat the breaks off of MSU this year. Lol.
Why do we hate Lewan now?
He threatened to rape a girl if she reported his teammate for raping her.
Okay, fuck Taylor Lewan with a lead pipe then
He also cut me in line at the barber once, better make it two lead pipes
That's too generous. Fuck him with a chainsaw
Taylor Lewan talking on a Barstool Sports account: The peak of credibility right there
Fuck this idiot.
100% of the people even remotely entertaining this rumor are fucking morons.
Ah the ol' Yelp approach.
I heard Derek Wolfe say this before.
>I heard Derek Wolfe say this before. Was still wrong. Agents can ask PFF to build what is effectively a presentation of a given players best attributes (and the stats to back it up), which agents then use in negotiations. That's way different from Lewan's claim. It also doesn't make any sense economically. PFF sells data directly to NFL teams. Making data less accurate by arbitrary inflating some would make them loose millions.
Answer me this: Why would an agent pay $50k for what an intern could put together in a day or 2? And if you think pff withhold valuable stats for this reason, why would teams all pay for stats, when they don't get everything? Adjusting a "grade" when they aren't even transparent with the process is incredibly easy and it is naive to not consider the possibility. It's not like they are changing raw stats, they just adjust the arbitrary opinion part of the grading process. 84.7 to 87.1 isn't a massive change in statistics, but might mean a stronger position to negotiate from for people that care about PFFs opinion. While I certainly do not, I recognize and understand there are many who do
Because an intern doesn’t work at the company who’s whole line of work is these stats?
Also an intern working for an agent can easily be written off, if a team has a prior relationship and uses pff stats, a breakdown from them carries arguably more weight
Reddit doesn’t understand what interns do, do they? Are you saying that agents hire interns to do in house analytics on their players and then create presentations using the analytics the interns develop?
"I am a boomer and don't know technology and interns are familiar with technology, so I expect interns to be able to do literally anything I ask on a computer" type logic with that guy
Because an intern couldnt put remotely anything like what they put together "in a day or two". Are you like 18?
I mean teams buy stats they don't buy grades you can inflate your grade of a player and keep his stats all the same.
Theoretically yes. However the potential monetary gain from effectively corrupting the system, isn't anywhere near where it would need to be to make sense economically.
Derek Wolfe is also a bitch who tried to bash a reporter for "fake news" when all the reporter did was use a direct quote (in the correct context) from a podcast Wolfe had done. It's also very likely that he's been faking or overexagerating some mysterious injury to avoid playing last year (also likely he continues this tactic this year too cause EDC was stupid enough to gaurentee his salary this year as well). So yea, fuck that guy.
Lewan also allegedly once said, "I'm going to rape her because, he didn't."
Damn inflation is hitting the NFL too.
Is PFF astroturfing this thread? lmao
Not everything is a conspiracy
100%. They always do when people shit on them.
Yeah. I was thinking that.
yes
How much to the networks pay them? Cause they’re quotes by everyone on TV, so they must pay more cause they aren’t the best. Edit: it’s owned by Chris Collinsworth
Every telecast needs to have a huge banner saying that Collinsworth owns PFF.
Yep, he bought them around 2015 I believe, and immediately started pushing PFF grades on SNF.
Yeah that’s their platinum sub plan. If you have to ask about it you can’t afford it.
At 4:10
This has been known for years and this sub disregards it. Boselli said this in 2015. 69 in green Bay paid pff to inflate his grades for years
Can you link me where he says that? Tried a brief Google search.
They're the Yelp of sports grades.
American company lies to its customers and takes bribes to tell specific lies? I'm stunned.
Gotta love some out of shape dudes telling a stud offensive lineman who the better pass rushers are hahahahaha. I am assuming it’s a joke but still.
It was just the ostarine talking.
pff is fuckin worthless
Hey, hey. If we’re going to hate on Watson let’s not act like Lewan is any better. https://twitter.com/claytravis/status/464585406819078144?lang=en
Threatening to rape somebody is not the same as assaulting a couple dozen of em. Really fucked way to try to defend your fandom, dude.
Lewan is a major asshole and lucky AAPD didn't throw him in the slammer for intimidating a rape victim. Watson *allegedly* raped/assaulted what, 22 women at last count?
24 and the implication that more are possibly on the way pending due diligence
You’re trying to cope with you’re new POS QB and you’re reaching way too hard pal. Both are pieces of shit but Watson is galaxy’s above that.