Simon Gagne's Groin Injury: Reason to Worry?

http://www.nfl.com/stats/categorystats?season=2008&seasonType=REG&d-447263-o=2&tabSeq=0&statisticCategory=PASSING&d-447263-p=1&d-447263-s=PASSING_ATTEMPTS&d-447263-n=1

And wrong again. 20 qbs had over 60% passing. Pass completion % listed in descending order of PA:

1 – 65%
2 – 62.3%
3 – 67.1%
4 – 60.4% (Anomaly because this is McNabb and Reid is a play-calling moron)
5 – 66.8%
6 – 63.6%
7 – 62.6%
8 – 65.7%
9 – 63.4%
10 – 62.3%

With the exception of McNabb, the top 10 in pass attempts were all in the top 14 of completion percentage.

Now stop posting your statistically incorrect gibberish.

It’s not a big deal to confuse things the way you are confusing them, so lemme explain it as simply as i can:

there’s a concept called reversion to the mean. What that means is, given enough iterations (i.e., pass attempts, faceoffs, shots, plate appearances, games, etc), players / teams will revert to their own individual mean — i.e., their stats will reflect their true capabilities. It is not true that the more PAs you have, the lower your BA — witness Ted Williams. He had plenty of PAs, and his BA was indeed reverting to his mean — ~.400. In hockey, the more FO attempts you have, the more likely you are to win the percentage of FOs that best reflects your true abilities. All Carter/Richards’ #s say is that their true ability to win a faceoff lies at winning a little less than 1 out of every 2 faceoffs. Other players are better (this is statistically proven) at faceoffs, and can win well over 1 out of every 2 faceoffs, regardless of the number of faceoffs they have.

Oftentimes, reversion to the mean is seen in sports lingo as “hot streaks” and “cold streaks,” which don’t mean anything other than a player is having a run of luck that allows him to perform at the highest he’s capable of within a probabilistic range over a certain number of iterations. For example, Albert Pujols, if he performs at the highest 10% of his probabilistic range, could hit .400 for the year. Shorter-span, over 10 at bats, the highest 10% of his probabilistic range might be hitting the ball 9 out of 10 times or 10 out of 10 times. This is statistically guaranteed to happen at some point — not necessarily to Pujols, but to someone (hitting streaks etc, or in hockey, goal scoring streaks). The players are referred to as “seeing the ball well” or “getting lucky puck bounces” etc., which might or might not be true — it doesn’t matter. Their performance is statistically predicted to have to happen. It balances out, because at some point they have a string of bad luck (etc)., or are playing players in their own good luck streak — “cold streaks” are also statistically guaranteed to happen. The net effect is the player’s normal performance, and if given enough FOs or shots or at-bats etc, the player’s stats will consistently reflect his truest abilities.

The sum of the story is that Carter & Richards are basically very poor at FOs, especially for guys who have so many. Given that many FOs, they should be able to improve and win against the less experienced guys they are going up against. There is no real reason for them to suck at FOs, and the fact that they do statistically and definitively hurts our team in the form of us having fewer goals scored and our opponents having more goals scored.

Hope this helps clear some confusion.