Quote:Yes sample size is a specific problem, but there is also a lot more to analytics than just the games. Like the Packers that have developed their athletic thresholds for what they want in an olineman athletically. And in the last handful of years they have found Sitton, Lang, Tretter, Bakhtiari, and Linsley all on day 3 of the draft.

 

The Jags did that special on how they run practices using the RFID chips that monitored how far and how fast every player ran and they tailored that to each person with their position and weight to try to determine when someone needed a day off or a limited practice, or maybe was compensating for an injury etc. 

 

There's a ton that can be done in football analytics outside of the 16 game schedule, like those examples of scouting and training. 

 

The difference between baseball, and even basketball, is the next-gen stats could be used for past players. The data we can get for football from GPS units is very new, so we tend to learn as we go. Naturally, with small sample size comes skepticism. 

 

I use GPS in team sport on a daily basis to monitor distance traveled, intensity, and fatigue to prevent injury and enhance on-field performance, but it takes time to understand what the data means for each individual. It takes a year of data on an athlete to understand their data. Eventually teams may be able to predict injuries before they happen, that has been a major development the past couple years.

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