WAR's the right construct

by beattherush, Chicago, Monday, July 27, 2026, 10:09 (1 day, 11 hours, 38 min. ago) @ ReginaldVelJohnson

I was trying to think about it in terms of EV per play, but WAR's more intuitive. That article asserts that players farther from the ball tend to exert higher leverage on the game.

That makes intuitive sense. Passes are higher variance than runs, so players that can make passing play work, or not, are going to have higher impact. And they tend to be more in 1:1 situations where a difference in ability can make a big difference in individual plays.

Means an improvement in WR (our weakest position last year, so the most room for improvement, and in a high-leverage area) could more than make up for a decline in RB. RB player vs. player there is a lot of room for decline, sure, but it's probably not as impactful since there's a lot more that has to go wrong/right for a run to score points, across many linemen and RB/LB. And our floor on RB performance is still probably relatively high, just not the superlative that Love and Price provided.