buybuydandavis
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This is an awful quote. What he says here is the exact opposite finding from the analytics community.
In fact this is something I looked into when studying Zeke's pedestrian efficiency numbers last year (As a reminder we greatly overpaid Zeke after greatly over drafting him). But I digress....I posted this in August of last year...
What this shows is that play action passing is the most effective passes a QB can throw. And it hardly matters if you run the ball a lot. Or if you run the ball a little bit. And it does not matter if you run the ball well. Or if you run the ball poorly.
The point? If McCarthy is getting this basic thing wrong what confidence do we have that he actually learned anything in the last year, analytics or otherwise? And just like the Garrett era we can expect to give away the small edges that smart coaches understand and benefit from.
And that's a shame.
You have to work harder to have a convincing case that McCarthy is wrong.
A problem with one side correlational analysis in sports analytics is that it doesn't factor in how the other team adjusts to you, *which is the whole point* with play action.
You say "And it does not matter if you run the ball well. Or if you run the ball poorly". Let's test that out with a thought experiment.
Do you really think that our play action passing game would be just as effective if Zeke and Pollard are out and Chunn is our lead ball carrier?
Play calling is a causal intervention in the game, calling for a causal interventional analysis. That's what I would expect out of a professional sports analytics group.