re: A look back at the 49ers trade of Alex smith

A better response...

When attempting to make a subjective comparison (QB to QB) over data (stats) and then indexing the results (ranking), some funky outliers always occur due to the subjective nature of selecting and weighing variables. The goal is not to get a 100% accurate model, as that is likely not cost effective or in some cases possible. You could easily have a 100% accurately ranked analysis that only used total passing yards. While this would be accurate in a sense, it would not be a complete representation of the QB performance. Instead, you desire to build a model to better compare and analysis the factors that determine QB performance. However, this will also increase the number of variables and the subjectivity of the analysis. As with any model of this nature, a certain tolerable error rate is accepted as a sacrifice.