The man on the couch reigns supreme. If any sport is "solved" by the nerds, the League will have to change the rules, because we demand supremacy of our various uninformed opinions.
This is the essence of sporting viewing and passion. We reserve the right to be loud wrong because it's at least our thing. We tend to not appreciate nerdy interlopers being loud wrong. When they push for rules changes to try and make sports worse to benefit their engineer brained point of view, we have a problem
“We can understand that, even if the yardage is equal, a running back who gets consistent gains outperforms a “boom-and-bust” runner who often gets tackled for a loss.
The nerds grinded and made these discoveries while many professionals were relying on surface-level information.”
I’m old enough to remember this being a talking point in the Emmitt v. Barry debate in the early 90’s. I can assure you that consistency versus boom or bust has been a debate in football for a long, long time, see the general debate about the forward pass versus 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
Anyway, Basketball has a pretty solid foundation to build analytical strategy from “3 is more than 2”; likewise with baseball and “how many *bases* is a player getting per at bat.” Football does not have this as far as player performance goes…
Im finding these articles a little frustrating because if there really was this disregard for analytics, we wouldn’t have the evolution of teams being much more aggressive of going for it on fourth down, the aggressive deployment of cap experts by many teams, sophisticated models of roster management and maximization of rookie contracts and tags ( unlike the NBA, NFL front offices typically don’t sign B players at the tail end of their primes to A+contracts), teams generally don’t draft like the late Al Davis Raiders based purely on size speed and vibes, etc… so in places where there is more reliable data the data is used which wouldn’t be the case if there was the kind of antagonism to analytics, you seem to suggest.
The arrogance comes from not understanding what the data can and can’t tell you. The point about the failure rate of QBs doesn’t do what you think it does. If I tell you how hard it is to beat the market over a x year period, It’s not a sign that finance is not really trying to separate signal from noise.
I would say a lot of advanced statistical stuff has been accepted in football, including going for it more on fourth down and the importance of explosiveness over efficiency.
I also think the stats geeks usually come at it with their own blindspots, particularly when it comes to the actual importance of the physical aspect of the game.
Football is more personnel dependent than basketball, probably because there is more variance in the size and strength of the players at every level, maybe more so between the NFL and NBA.
Very often the main reason a strategy works in football is because of the personnel. The spread came along and nerds determined it was just superior football because that fit their biases, but no it was just something that worked because defenses had overcorrected to stop the run with big DL, LBs and SSs and 8 in the box. Once defenses adjusted to the spread by getting smaller and faster, it stopped being as effective because there was no physical advantage anymore. Now they have to contend with being run over by offenses putting more big people on the field.
The 2-deep and 3-safety defensive trends are also indicative of many coaches accepting data analysis that shows you cannot give up big plays even if it means allowing the offense some rushing success.
If you know your statistical representation is poorer in one sport versus another. Why the hell would you be putting equal weight on the stats?
Baseball and football are not the same sport.
Baseball and basketball are not the same sport, see the way the game changes during the playoffs that simple spreadsheets would not tell you. Baseball has nothing like that
We're back to. The warriors figured out 3 equals more than 2. When really what they figured out was being a primary shooting star is viable because you can't hurt them anymore. Dell Curry could shoot too. Just no one would have let him take over a game before they got really physical
Theres 2 interesting elements to the Purdy contract that are/were left out of discourse:
1) As mentioned in linked Hutchinson article, realistically contract was 3 years / $110-$143
2) the real cap quirk was that a big chunk of bonuses were shifted to last year of rookie contract. So $1.1 base + $40 million bonus. Which accounts for the relatively low % of cap for a QB contract once the new base years kicked in
Not simple, but also not sure why national reporting couldnt be more clear on it. Because its probably a great contract (for both Purdy and team). Wonder how many other contracts are not discussed that way
The difference between sports and other avenues of life is that, in general, the stats are purely a means to an end. You set a target that says "interceptions bad" and if players adjust maybe they throw very few interceptions but also they will go on to score not enough points and lose a lot of games and the player who did not adjust to "interceptions bad" will get all the success and glory. In education a focus on test scores can degrade other outcomes because you end up being rewarded FOR the test scores. No QB is ever going to be rewarded for their amazing stats on a 6-11 team. The reason a Purdy is so weird is that the stats AND the results are great and yet for some reason he's talked about as just some guy.
I'm not being glib when I say that this is my response: https://imgflip.com/i/awu6zv
A LOT of this conversation comes down to the distance between longform behavior and social media behavior
Great point.
The man on the couch reigns supreme. If any sport is "solved" by the nerds, the League will have to change the rules, because we demand supremacy of our various uninformed opinions.
This is the essence of sporting viewing and passion. We reserve the right to be loud wrong because it's at least our thing. We tend to not appreciate nerdy interlopers being loud wrong. When they push for rules changes to try and make sports worse to benefit their engineer brained point of view, we have a problem
“We can understand that, even if the yardage is equal, a running back who gets consistent gains outperforms a “boom-and-bust” runner who often gets tackled for a loss.
The nerds grinded and made these discoveries while many professionals were relying on surface-level information.”
I’m old enough to remember this being a talking point in the Emmitt v. Barry debate in the early 90’s. I can assure you that consistency versus boom or bust has been a debate in football for a long, long time, see the general debate about the forward pass versus 3 yards and a cloud of dust.
Anyway, Basketball has a pretty solid foundation to build analytical strategy from “3 is more than 2”; likewise with baseball and “how many *bases* is a player getting per at bat.” Football does not have this as far as player performance goes…
Im finding these articles a little frustrating because if there really was this disregard for analytics, we wouldn’t have the evolution of teams being much more aggressive of going for it on fourth down, the aggressive deployment of cap experts by many teams, sophisticated models of roster management and maximization of rookie contracts and tags ( unlike the NBA, NFL front offices typically don’t sign B players at the tail end of their primes to A+contracts), teams generally don’t draft like the late Al Davis Raiders based purely on size speed and vibes, etc… so in places where there is more reliable data the data is used which wouldn’t be the case if there was the kind of antagonism to analytics, you seem to suggest.
The arrogance comes from not understanding what the data can and can’t tell you. The point about the failure rate of QBs doesn’t do what you think it does. If I tell you how hard it is to beat the market over a x year period, It’s not a sign that finance is not really trying to separate signal from noise.
I would say a lot of advanced statistical stuff has been accepted in football, including going for it more on fourth down and the importance of explosiveness over efficiency.
I also think the stats geeks usually come at it with their own blindspots, particularly when it comes to the actual importance of the physical aspect of the game.
Football is more personnel dependent than basketball, probably because there is more variance in the size and strength of the players at every level, maybe more so between the NFL and NBA.
Very often the main reason a strategy works in football is because of the personnel. The spread came along and nerds determined it was just superior football because that fit their biases, but no it was just something that worked because defenses had overcorrected to stop the run with big DL, LBs and SSs and 8 in the box. Once defenses adjusted to the spread by getting smaller and faster, it stopped being as effective because there was no physical advantage anymore. Now they have to contend with being run over by offenses putting more big people on the field.
The 2-deep and 3-safety defensive trends are also indicative of many coaches accepting data analysis that shows you cannot give up big plays even if it means allowing the offense some rushing success.
If you know your statistical representation is poorer in one sport versus another. Why the hell would you be putting equal weight on the stats?
Baseball and football are not the same sport.
Baseball and basketball are not the same sport, see the way the game changes during the playoffs that simple spreadsheets would not tell you. Baseball has nothing like that
We're back to. The warriors figured out 3 equals more than 2. When really what they figured out was being a primary shooting star is viable because you can't hurt them anymore. Dell Curry could shoot too. Just no one would have let him take over a game before they got really physical
The innovation was not where you think it was
Theres 2 interesting elements to the Purdy contract that are/were left out of discourse:
1) As mentioned in linked Hutchinson article, realistically contract was 3 years / $110-$143
2) the real cap quirk was that a big chunk of bonuses were shifted to last year of rookie contract. So $1.1 base + $40 million bonus. Which accounts for the relatively low % of cap for a QB contract once the new base years kicked in
Not simple, but also not sure why national reporting couldnt be more clear on it. Because its probably a great contract (for both Purdy and team). Wonder how many other contracts are not discussed that way
Dude in the thumbnail looks like he got a sudden case of the Schatz.
"akshually" diminishes your writing. every sentence reads the same without it, just less obnoxious.
The difference between sports and other avenues of life is that, in general, the stats are purely a means to an end. You set a target that says "interceptions bad" and if players adjust maybe they throw very few interceptions but also they will go on to score not enough points and lose a lot of games and the player who did not adjust to "interceptions bad" will get all the success and glory. In education a focus on test scores can degrade other outcomes because you end up being rewarded FOR the test scores. No QB is ever going to be rewarded for their amazing stats on a 6-11 team. The reason a Purdy is so weird is that the stats AND the results are great and yet for some reason he's talked about as just some guy.