Considering that the D passer rating is only a small part of what a team does, it contributes significantly to wins and losses.
The Passer Rating Differential has an astounding correlation to Winning considering that it doesn't include rushing or ST. It is a great way to rank teams.
Originally Posted by: Dexter_Sinister
Passer Rating Differential will give you an idea of which teams are toward the top of the league and which are toward the bottom, just because it includes offensive scoring/defensive preventing scoring (passing TDs) and offense giving the ball away/defense taking the ball away (INTs) in it's computations.
I don't think it's an astounding correlation, more like a DUH correlation. Hey, an even more astounding correlation: the team that scores more wins! Well, DUH...
Duh-ness aside, I think Passer Rating Differential has a few issues:
- doesn't take into consideration the quality of the opposing offense & defense. For example, if you're playing in the AFC North, going up against Pit, Bal, Cle, etc your offensive passer rating is going to be lower just due to the quality of the defenses you're playing. Same holds true for DPR if you were going up against teams like the Packers, Patriots, Colts (with Manning), etc. Playing Denver twice would do wonders for your DPR.
- teams can start the season sucking at passer rating differential (NYG, 2007) but improve in time for the playoffs and sweep through. I think if some kind of weighting were applied where more recent games counted more than earlier games it would provide a more useful comparison.
I think a more useful stat would weight more recent games more than earlier games and look at how well your defense held the opposing QB compared to his average performance, and how well your QB did against the opposing defense compared to their average performance. For example, throwing 300 yds against Pittsburgh would be among the elite games against the Steelers (defense gave up 172 yds ave per game) while only an average performance against, say, the Packers (defense gave up 300 yds ave per game).