Herschel Walker, Tim Tebow and Context
Historical Records
During games, announcers are always looking to fill some of the dead time. One of the ways they do that is to point out when players are approaching certain records, either for their team, school, conference, division or league. While it’s exciting to chase a record, all performances are were not created equal. By this I mean one of the constant misuses of stats is to present a record as a simple total of something the player did. Points scored, yards rushed, field goals made, etc…. Unfortunately, this leads to a skewed point of view for the record and what it means. Let’s take a look at one example from the current college football season.
SEC Rushing TDs
By far the biggest record that’s going to fall this year is the SEC record for most career rushing TDs. Last night, Tim Tebow had 1 rushing TD, tying him with Herschel Walker for the SEC career record at 49. With at least 6 games to go, Tim Tebow will likely surpass Walker and put himself atop the record books by several TDs. Of course, it cannot be understated how unusual it is for Tebow to even be on the list of leaders, let alone at the top, because he’s a QB, not a RB. It’s truly a signifiant achievement for any player, let alone a non-RB. However, there are several problems with this record.
What’s A Career?
The biggest issue in comparing the two players above is that Walker played 3 years and Tim Tebow played 4 years. In fact, with the addition of an SEC championship game and a 12th regular season game, the difference in playing time becomes even more stark. Assuming another SEC championship appearance by Florida in 2009, Tim Tebow will end up playing 53 games (incl. bowl games ) compared to Walkers 36 games ( incl. bowl games ).
Tim Tebow did not play in 2 games his freshman year and did not play in a SEC championship game his sophomore year.
This is a huge advantage for Tim Tebow with regards to any record that measures a simple aggregate. By focusing on records and stats without some sort of normalizing factor or average, like games played, you end up with skewed statistics that don’t really mean a whole lot.
Stats
We’ll present Tim Tebows stats as projected through 14 games in the 2009 season, using his 2009 season averages so far. Even if they don’t make the 2009 SEC championship game, the stats will not change that much. As for Walker, his totals don’t include bowls, which we’ll tackle below.
So let’s take a look at both players career stats for a second:
| Stat | Tim Tebow | Herschel Walker |
|---|---|---|
| Attempts | 757 | 994 |
| Yards | 3124 | 5259 |
| Yds/Att | 4.13 | 5.29 |
| TD | 57 | 49 |
Again, even though Tim Tebow is listed as a QB, Florida clearly used him as a RB for a significant percentage of his career. However, this is what Walkers stats have looked like if he played his Sr. year (using his career averages for another 11 games):
| Stat | Tim Tebow | Herschel Walker | Herschel Walker (4 yrs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attempts | 757 | 994 | 1325 |
| Yards | 3124 | 5259 | 7012 |
| Yds/Att | 4.13 | 5.29 | 5.29 |
| TD | 57 | 49 | 65 |
If Waker had played his Sr year, the record would likely still be his at the end of this year, though not untouchable by Tebow.
However, this ignores one more disparity between the two players: Tebow played 13 regular season games for 2 years, 12 for 1 and 11 for the other. Compared to Tebows 49 regular season games, Walkers stats over 33 regular season games look even more dominating. Walker averaged almost a touchdown and a half (1.48) per game, compared to Tebows 1.08 per game average. Given that, if Walker played 49 regular season games, his record would be an astounding 72.5 TDs
But, Uh, What About The Bowls?
Some readers will notice that I kept mentioning regular season games above. That’s because until recently, bowl game statistics were not counted towards records. Both Tebow and Walker played in 3 bowl games. The difference is that Walkers 5 TDs are not part of his TD record, but Tim Tebows 3 TDs are. If we add Walkers 5 to the 49 game total above and then add another 1.5 TDs (Sr. season bowl game), he’s be sitting atop the record books with a amazing 79 TDs, 22 ahead of Tebows projected total at the end of his Sr. season.
Over the goal line
I should also mention the number of times Tim Tebow got the call in short yardage situations as opposed to a more traditional running back. A more complete ( and perhaps useful ) analysis would be to look at the TDs by yardage for each player. I have a hunch that Tebows would be much lower than Walkers. However, I can’t find any sort of drive by drive stats for Walker to back that up.
Conclusion
None of the above is meant to disparage Florida or Tim Tebow fans. Clearly, he’s one of the greatest players ever and a talent unlike anything football has seen since the days of the single wing back. I simply wanted to present an example of how people can be misled with statistics when they’re not given any sort of context. From the above, it’s clear that Tim Tebow is no Herschel Walker when it comes to running the football. However, the fact that he’s in the discussion is impressive enough.
College football is certainly not the only sport where this type of record keeping rears its head. The MLB, NFL and Mens College Basketball all have had issues with keeping records consistent across generations. This is mostly because they love to sell a record as a single, dominating number as opposed to anything involving fractions or decimals. It’s unfortunate because I think it would be easier to gauge performance if we relied on stats that took into account games played, minutes played or similar factors.
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You’re missing an important stat (td’s / attempt)
Walker 49 / 994 = .049
Tebow (projected) 57 / 757 = .075
Also, Tebow has shared the rock & TD’s with many other players – Hershel didn’t.
TDs / attempt is another good stat. However, Tewbows number was called a lot in short yardage situations, despite sharing the rock. That’s why I mentioned that the short yardage stats would be pretty telling. I have a feeling Tebow got a lot of gimme tds, which would explain his high TD / attempt ratio.
The sharing the rock is important. Tebow can throw the ball away or to another player. This allows him to avoid losses and keeps the defense guessing. As a defender I must wait to see and then react. This gives tebow a clear advantage. Walker on the other hand didn’t have such an advantage. Everyone in the state of GA knew he was going to get the ball and he still could not be stopped. If you could add tebows check downs and throw aways to his attempts then you would see that what walker did is much superior. One more way to know is look at the highlights of walker and tebow. Walker could take it to the house from any spot on the field. Tebow is a very unusual player. A TV person said it best he may be the only player in history that could playaction to himself. That alone would freeze the defense. If we are using what ifs then ask this question, take away the pass threat of tebow and put him at tailback,let everyone one on the defense know he is going to run the ball. Then see what his yardage would be? The same could be said for walker give him the modern spread, line him up in the shotgun with the pass or run option and see what his yardage would be. I am from GA and had the pleasure of see walker run track in HS. So I will say I am a little biased, but walker and tebow are both great but walker is in a class of running backs like no other. FL will have the same problem as GA, everyplayer that come the fan will be looking for the next tebow. GA has been looking for years. These two have set the bar so high that we may not see another set of players like them.
Keep it up I like the discussion
Thanks Mike. I tend to agree with what you said. I’m not from GA or FL ( not even from the south ) so this isn’t mean to rail for or against one player. Both players are freakishly athletic. The point of the article ( indeed of the blog too ) is to point out that sometimes a “season” isn’t a “season”.
Oh did you notice while you were busy comparing him to one of the best all-time running backs ever in football…he just tied super bowl mvp Eli Manning for touchdown passes in a career as well …and he isn’t finished..lol How many touchdown passes did Herschel throw?? How many running TDs. did Manning have.. The point is…Tebow is just a scoring freak and although you can compare parts of his game to many others, no one compares to him as a whole, period. Let’s sit back and see if he can win his 3rd national title in his 4 years. He is on course. And even if he never plays a down in the NFL because of his “uniqueness”, his college career is without a doubt among the top few finest ever.
Commenting on just your statistical analysis. It is always interesting to “project” what players “would’ have done to what someone actually DID. I didn’t see anywhere in your projections Herschel being injured and not scoring another TD in his career in his imaginary forth year. Just ask Bradford, Best, and numerous others how easy it is to not fulfill what others “project” a player to do. I think the only fair comparison of any athletic endeavor is what happens on the field and not in the fantasy of the statistician. If you want to partake in that, start a “what if” record book…I am sure the records there would be utterly fantastic. What if for example, you did a statistical analysis of the size and speed of the defensive players each actually played against? The offensive lines they ran behind? This is a team sport remember… Can you project Herschel scoring against the “average” 2009 athlete? Tebow against the “average” 1983 athlete? You certainly must do that to “normalize” your statistics. How about in the end, we just list their accomplishments as they occur and not worry about who is “better” among greats? Or for that matter what a “season” is…
Lavril,
Tebow is a great player, no one is questioning that. But you cannot discount the sheer number of games he’s played in relation to HW. Projecting stats is fun, but in the end, meaningless. However, their averages are not a fantasy.
Also, that’s not what normalization would be. In this case, normalizing would include some sort of error removal. Since this isn’t a random sampling of data, normalizing it wouldn’t work.
Also, besides that stats, you cannot discount the fact that Tebow had to do more than just run. When Walker go the ball he could just focus on running, when Tebow gets the ball he has to read coverages, check down recievers and then make a decision all within seconds…Walker just has to choose the right gap and let his athletic ability take over. Walker was an amazing RB. But what Tebow was able to do as a QB will change college football forever. Defintely put Tebow amongst the greats of all time, along with Walker. But you cant compare apples to oranges…way to many free variables…
Mike O, did Walker ever have to worry about getting sacked ?
Sure he probably took a few hits behind the line of scrimmage but Tebow, when dropping back to pass, could lose as many as 10 yards or more.
You can’t use games played as the comparison you have to use attempts as it’s the only thing even closely relative despite it’s differences.
Guys, again, this wasn’t meant to be a “who’s better Tebow or Walker?” post. It’s just done to point out that a “season” and a “season” are relative terms and not absolute.
What’s not takin into account is how much credit Tebow got for the work that the rest of his team (receivers and rb’s) did. Getting the ball down to the 1 and Tebow rushing it in. Of his 56 rushing TD’s 17 are 1 yrd runs…17! And 16 are within 2-3 yrds… 16! That’s 59% (33) of his rushing TD’s. Talk about blouted rushing stats.