Rival Analyst Makes Shocking Claim About Rams' Stafford

There are several ways to evaluate football and football players. Film is the common and correct way. Statistical analysis provides great insight into the game.

There's also stat hunting. That one statistical difference proves a point, the one value to show who is greater, who is better, so on and so forth.

Whether it's QBR, RAS (relative athletic score), and in this case, EPA. What is EPA? It is defined as a metric that measures how much a team's expected points change on a given play, indicating how well a team performs relative to expectations based on the game situation

The 33rd Team's Robert Simpson gives us this as an example.

"Say the Chiefs start with the ball first-and-10 from their 25-yard line, where its expected points would be about 1.06." Wrote Simpson. If Patrick Mahomes throws a 15-yard completion, making it first-and-10 on the KC 40-yard line, where the expected points is now 1.88, the EPA of that play would be 1.88 – 1.06 or 0.82. In other words, that completion increased the Chiefs’ expected points on that drive by just over three-fourths of a point."

"If Mahomes was sacked for a 10-yard loss instead of the completion, making it second-and-20 from their own 15, the new expected points would be about -0.54 and the EPA for that play would be -0.54 – 1.06 or -1.6. This means the sack decreased the amount of points the Chiefs were expected to score on that drive by 1.6 points."

With all due respect, that sounds like a whole lot of nothing. Here is how you measure offensive success in the NFL. Did you score? Yes? Great. No? Not great.

However, David Lombardi of the SF Standard has a different take, and he claims EPA shows that 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy is in fact, better than Matthew Stafford.