Interesting read - NFL slow to embrace analytics for draft

[Plankton]

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/pack...fl-decision-making-b99711074z1-376816711.html

Imagine someone walking into the offices of Bill Belichick or Ted Thompson or Kevin Colbert and telling them that all things being equal, their chances of outperforming the other 31 teams in the 2016 NFL draft were slim to none.

"The way you're evaluating talent doesn't work," they would hear.

Now imagine the guy entering the domains of three of the most successful personnel men in the NFL today is carrying reams of printed graphs, flowcharts and bar graphs thick enough to put any team's playbook to shame.

(Think of the scene in the movie "Moneyball" in which actor Jonah Hill sits down with a roomful of trusted baseball scouts and acts as if everything they've been doing for the past 30 years is irrelevant.)

Chances are he'd be thrown out on his pocket pouch.

It might not be happening like that in the offices of the New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers or Pittsburgh Steelers quite yet, but the kind of analytics that has taken over baseball is definitely knocking on the door in the NFL.

And it may just be a matter of time before it busts through.

 

[MichaelWinicki]

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/pack...fl-decision-making-b99711074z1-376816711.html

Imagine someone walking into the offices of Bill Belichick or Ted Thompson or Kevin Colbert and telling them that all things being equal, their chances of outperforming the other 31 teams in the 2016 NFL draft were slim to none.

"The way you're evaluating talent doesn't work," they would hear.

Now imagine the guy entering the domains of three of the most successful personnel men in the NFL today is carrying reams of printed graphs, flowcharts and bar graphs thick enough to put any team's playbook to shame.

(Think of the scene in the movie "Moneyball" in which actor Jonah Hill sits down with a roomful of trusted baseball scouts and acts as if everything they've been doing for the past 30 years is irrelevant.)

Chances are he'd be thrown out on his pocket pouch.

It might not be happening like that in the offices of the New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers or Pittsburgh Steelers quite yet, but the kind of analytics that has taken over baseball is definitely knocking on the door in the NFL.

And it may just be a matter of time before it busts through.

Analytics?

There are many here who think it's all about their perception of what they "see".

Which of course is wrought with errors.

 

[AdamJT13]

It's probably not a coincidence that the one team to embrace analytics traded down out of the No. 2 pick when everyone else thought they should stay there and pick either Goff or Wentz.

 

[Nightman]

It's probably not a coincidence that the one team to embrace analytics traded down out of the No. 2 pick when everyone else thought they should stay there and pick either Goff or Wentz.

Didn't they just hire Paul "Jonah Hill" Depodesta?

 

[Nightman]

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/pack...fl-decision-making-b99711074z1-376816711.html

Imagine someone walking into the offices of Bill Belichick or Ted Thompson or Kevin Colbert and telling them that all things being equal, their chances of outperforming the other 31 teams in the 2016 NFL draft were slim to none.

"The way you're evaluating talent doesn't work," they would hear.

Now imagine the guy entering the domains of three of the most successful personnel men in the NFL today is carrying reams of printed graphs, flowcharts and bar graphs thick enough to put any team's playbook to shame.

(Think of the scene in the movie "Moneyball" in which actor Jonah Hill sits down with a roomful of trusted baseball scouts and acts as if everything they've been doing for the past 30 years is irrelevant.)

Chances are he'd be thrown out on his pocket pouch.

It might not be happening like that in the offices of the New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers or Pittsburgh Steelers quite yet, but the kind of analytics that has taken over baseball is definitely knocking on the door in the NFL.

And it may just be a matter of time before it busts through.

The main takeaway is that draft is so much of a crapshoot that the best method is to accumulate picks and never trade up. That way you will have more successes just by sheer volume.

 

[casmith07]

It's probably not a coincidence that the one team to embrace analytics traded down out of the No. 2 pick when everyone else thought they should stay there and pick either Goff or Wentz.

If it works for Cleveland, people will be doing the copycat thing in a year or two.

 

[Common Sense]

If it works for Cleveland, people will be doing the copycat thing in a year or two.

If there's a group of people I trust to screw up the use of analytics the most, it's a room full of football guys from Cleveland. Hopefully DePodesta has brought in enough guys he trusts to make it work.

 

[Plankton]

The funny thing is that the NFL has been quite progressive in using analytics for down/distance play calling and situational use of personnel. The one negative I would find with going full on with analytics for the draft is that it allows off the field issues, motivation, leadership and general character to be ignored, and often times those are the differences between a steal and a bust. Football may be the most intangible driven in terms of personnel.

 

[Common Sense]

Things will really get interesting once the use of football analytics have been refined to include AI / machine learning. In theory, you could have a program analyze game tape and do real-time analyses of of things like game speed, reaction time, etc., down to the millisecond. The computer could see every position battle happening on a play instantly and grade every player accordingly. Or a program that could take all of your scouting data and instantly create an accurate draft board that could refine itself year after year based on feedback from coaches and the front office (i.e., scheme changes, or "stop weighing these types of players so highly," etc.). That stuff is at least a decade away from being viable in an NFL setting, but it's fun to think about.

 

[Nightman]

Didn't Landry use the "Super Computer" to do his drafting back in the 70's.

Everything old is new again...

 

[Nightman]

The funny thing is that the NFL has been quite progressive in using analytics for down/distance play calling and situational use of personnel. The one negative I would find with going full on with analytics for the draft is that it allows off the field issues, motivation, leadership and general character to be ignored, and often times those are the differences between a steal and a bust. Football may be the most intangible driven in terms of personnel.

I haven't found a great stat to compare players like WAR in baseball or PER in basketball. Pro Football Reference has AV but that is vague.

Not enough coaches have embraced the data or we would see a lot less punting and more on-side kicks.

I cringe every time a team punts from the other teams' field or doesn't on-side kick when they get a 15yd penalty on the KO. They just boot it 10 rows deep.

 

[Plankton]

Didn't Landry use the "Super Computer" to do his drafting back in the 70's.

Everything old is new again...

All the computer did was take all of the information from the scouts, and aggregate the best rating given for character, quickness/body control, mental alertness, competitiveness, and strength/explosion. Two of the the buckets are purely subjective (character, competitiveness), and not prone to be measured objectively.

Analytics is looking to remove those from the equation, and go less from what is observed, and can be tainted by the bias of the scout, and rate players strictly on measureables. I don't think that football can lend itself to that very easily due to the intangible nature of the sport. It can certainly help, but by itself, you will be prone to make errors based on character, work ethic, leadership, judgment, etc.

 

[Plankton]

I haven't found a great stat to compare players like WAR in baseball or PER in basketball. Pro Football Reference has AV but that is vague.

Not enough coaches have embraced the data or we would see a lot less punting and more on-side kicks.

I cringe every time a team punts from the other teams' field or doesn't on-side kick when they get a 15yd penalty on the KO. They just boot it 10 rows deep.

Here's the main issue - in football, teams don't run the same system. Baseball is an individual sport cloaked in the team concept. Basketball is a bit less so, but teams generally run similar concepts offensively and defensively. Football is the most varied of the three in terms of system, and is far more of a team sport than the others. It makes it very difficult to be able to project taking Player X from Team 1 and replace Player Y from Team 2, and be able to say with certainty that it would be a good fit. The systems may be different, and the player may not exhibit the same skill in that one versus where he had thrived previously.

 

[casmith07]

If there's a group of people I trust to screw up the use of analytics the most, it's a room full of football guys from Cleveland. Hopefully DePodesta has brought in enough guys he trusts to make it work.

I want to see the Browns be successful. Hue Jackson is a good coach.

 

[CATCH17]

It's probably not a coincidence that the one team to embrace analytics traded down out of the No. 2 pick when everyone else thought they should stay there and pick either Goff or Wentz.

Imo the NFL is all about the QB and elite pass rushers.


Everything else is just moving pieces. Nuts and bolts.

So I don't understand Cleveland not wanting a QB unless they don't like the guys they have but its a great trade to acquire a lot of nut and bolt pieces.


I'd love to have Ramsey but I also wouldn't mind a trade down that gets me 4 or 5 players in the top 70.

 

[Idgit]

Imo the NFL is all about the QB and elite pass rushers.


Everything else is just moving pieces. Nuts and bolts.

So I don't understand Cleveland not wanting a QB unless they don't like the guys they have but its a great trade to acquire a lot of nut and bolt pieces.


I'd love to have Ramsey but I also wouldn't mind a trade down that gets me 4 or 5 players in the top 70.

They just didn't like Wentz enough to spend so much draft capital on him. It's pretty clear.

It's not all pass rushers and QBs, though. You have to protect and you have to cover and you have to catch. It *is* all about effectiveness in the passing game, though, and CLE has lots of levers to pull when it comes to improving in that regard. I'm not surprised they traded down at all, and they made the right move. Get those top 100 picks and use them.

It's shocking to me that more teams aren't doing it, given the evidence there that it's the safest way to improve your roster.

 

[gmoney112]

I'm a little surprised, just because of the advances in data analysis and the copious amounts of available data to aggregate.

"Analytics" isn't really anything new in the business world or in tech development, so I'm not sure why it hasn't really caught on in the NFL. Yeah, it'd be difficult to weight the variables, but the correlating factors to winning % are pretty common knowledge. You just need the bridge.

 

[DFWJC]

It's probably not a coincidence that the one team to embrace analytics traded down out of the No. 2 pick when everyone else thought they should stay there and pick either Goff or Wentz.

Yeah. I hear they are applying it to some degree. It's not affecting the talent evaluation more than it may effect the cost/benefit side. For now anyway.

Many team already do this, but they're taking the next step, I hear.