Quote:
Originally Posted by Elrazor
There is decent evidence to support this. A few American studies have looked at free agency and performance and found a decline in performance after a being awarded a huge contract.
the book the drunkard's walk deals with this a bit in the opening chapters
yes there are always outside factors, but random variance is usually the greater explanation
it's a reasonable assumption most of the best players were sunrunning variance and correspondingly, the disappointing players were getting hit by a mac truck of variance
age definitely a factor as well but typically speaking it's far likelier that guys like Ozil were performing well above their EV and now seem to be major disapointments because their production is now normalized - quite often they are given a big contract in the midst of their great play and then the contract is viewed as the reason for lowered performance
same how if Chelsea loaned or sold Kepa this offseason and he returned to being pretty good again the narrative would be focused on him needing a change of scenery etc etc when the far likelier explanation is he had a really bad/unlucky year