Samer wrote: "Just because PPG's been around the longest, though, doesn't make it _de facto_ the best system available. I'm not saying that PATH is inherently better than PPG; just that it has a different set of advantages and drawbacks." I don't think anyone would argue that PPG is a better stat than PATH merely because it's been around longer. In my mind, PPG does a better job reflecting what actually happened over the course of a tournament. It's of limited value making comparisons between players on different teams, but it can help show how much each individual player contributed to his/her team's success. We need to keep in mind the strengths and weaknesses of PPG, and to avoid paying too much attention to it, but I think that PPG should remain the standard measure of individual performance in QB. I'm also slightly wary of any statistic that seeks to measure what a player would have scored if he or she had had no team-mates--this is, of course, a team activity. PPG is imperfect in comparisons of players on different teams, but it can be interesting and useful as a way of looking at the contributions of players on the same team. I don't think PATH is as useful in that respect. (And, given my qualms with the way it's calculated, I'm not convinced that PATH is all that effective in comparing players across teams, which is the area in which PPG is most deficient.) Again, this doesn't mean that PATH is an inherently bad idea. It's kind of interesting as a rough approximation of how people would do if the shadow effect weren't around, even if I do have some doubts about how it's calculated. But I think we need to keep its many disadvantages in mind and to avoid attaching too much significance to it. --edc
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