Ok, unchecked hive mind lovefest orgies only from now on! No other opinions welcome!

Pompous Exhibit A

---

Also, it's probably not a coincidence that the head coach pushing back the hardest against the analytics, Ron Rivera, is also the one who appears to want the RB with serious modern NFL scheme fit worries the most.

A lot of the panthers reddit likes fournette but theres a good bit of people saying all the same things about shotgun running and poor vision


anything jag related whether here or there and...not so much.

---

I've said it several times before, football right now is in its analytical infancy like baseball was with Bill James and then the moneyball era so many years ago. And the pushback is similar too.

 

People couldn't wrap their minds around the fact that you could add these crazy things like walk rates, extra base hits, and park factors to improve the archaic batting average stat into OBP and now wOBA and wRC+. Now broadcasts are mentioning hit probabilities based on exit velocities and launch angles within seconds of a batted ball. 

 

Eventually football will get there too it's inevitable, and everyone will be better off for it. 

 

<div>Graham Barfield‏ @GrahamBarfield  Apr 3

Every year around Opening Day I’m reminded how far NFL analytics — both predictive and descriptive — lags behind MLB.

<div>Graham Barfield‏ @GrahamBarfield  Apr 3

Some NFL teams have made small steps implementing analytics on an organizational level. Still, football is light-years behind baseball.

<div>Graham Barfield‏ @GrahamBarfield  Apr 3

MLB teams/analysts have exit velocity, launch angle, hard hit%, etc. readily available. NFL is still resistant to RFID player tracking.

<div>Graham Barfield‏ @GrahamBarfield  Apr 3

This article about NFL analytics —and some of the quotes in it — still blows my mind:


</div>
</div>
</div>
https://theringer.com/nfl-information-wa...b6eee2d39f

</div>

 

MLB is just a different game altogether.  I think the NFL is much different and analytics should factor in much less than in MLB.

---

<FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=3><B><FONT face=Verdana color=#ff6600 size=4></FONT></B></FONT>

MLB is just a different game altogether.  I think the NFL is much different and analytics should factor in much less than in MLB.

What about the NBA, analytically driven teams like the Warriors and Rockets are leading the explosion there too. There is a massive amount of room for them to help everywhere in all sports, NFL included.

 

Hell not just sports. Business analytics, information analytics, technology analytics...it's exploding everywhere. Except message boards I suppose. 

---

A lot of the panthers reddit likes fournette but theres a good bit of people saying all the same things about shotgun running and poor vision


anything jag related whether here or there and...not so much.

Every segment of fanbases/experts have their concerns about multiple aspects of Fournette's game. The people saying this message board is the only place you find critiques about LF like this have made for themselves a very secure echo chamber. 

---

What about the NBA, analytically driven teams like the Warriors and Rockets are leading the explosion there too. There is a massive amount of room for them to help everywhere in all sports, NFL included.

 

Hell not just sports. Business analytics, information analytics, technology analytics...it's exploding everywhere. Except message boards I suppose. 

 

I think the more moving parts, the harder is to have analytics be useful.

 

MLB is basically a one-on-one game most of the time, so analytics can be useful.

 

Basketball is 5 on 5.

 

Football is 11 on 11, so it's just a much more complex game to "analyze" because there are too many factors to control.  

---

<FONT face="Comic Sans MS" size=3><B><FONT face=Verdana color=#ff6600 size=4></FONT></B></FONT>

I think the more moving parts, the harder is to have analytics be useful.

 

MLB is basically a one-on-one game most of the time, so analytics can be useful.

 

Basketball is 5 on 5.

 

Football is 11 on 11, so it's just a much more complex game to "analyze" because there are too many factors to control.  

Yeah, I didn't say it was better than them, but it's still a whole lot better than nothing, and we're just scratching the surface. Like the very small leaks we got from Next Gen Stats about the RFID shoulder pad chips being used to analyze how close the WR and DB were when the ball was released and also when the ball was touched by the WR or DB. That'll be incredibly useful as it is expanded and more open to the public. 

---

Football is just so different than other sports. You can throw every analytic out there but whiff on pick after pick. Think about how many players over the years we got lost in the weeds over some BS statistic and we didn't trust what we saw. What metrics were used to pass on Tom Brady 198 times?

 

The Seahawks who are more analytic obsessed than anyone, they are pretty much the gold standard, haven't even enjoyed that much success on first round picks--- James Carpenter, Bruce Irvin, Russell Okung, Ifedi? meh. 

 

You ever read the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell? A lot of that book deals with snap judgments and first impressions. One example in the book was this statue at the Getty Museum in LA. All of their testing and research told them this was a real statue, the best of its kind, they paid a ton of money for it too. Then they unveiled the statue to room full of experts and instantly they all knew it was a fake, not based on tests, but based on the eye test, based on a lifetime of looking at this stuff. 

 

Baseball and Basketball are largely just numbers games, at least in the regular season. Football is a different animal, so much of it comes down to who wants it more? Does your superstar quarterback sacrifice his body for the touchdown or the fumble, does he cower? Does that 4th round QB you took turn into a superstar behind careful management and coaching or does your first round pick end in flames after he's sacked 100 times in 2 years? There's just so much that goes into it that is not quantifiable and winning and losing comes down to inches. 

---

Calling Deshawn Watson a future bust since 3/19/17. If I eat crow, I will keep this in here and proclaim JackCity a genius. 

Numbers tend to work when you have a bigger sample size (162 games in MLB and 82 in NFL). 16 games a season is a very small sample size given all the moving parts (11v11, scheme, the guy next to you doing his job,etc). Not saying analytics doesn't have a part but much less than other sports.

---

Numbers tend to work when you have a bigger sample size (162 games in MLB and 82 in NFL). 16 games a season is a very small sample size given all the moving parts (11v11, scheme, the guy next to you doing his job,etc). Not saying analytics doesn't have a part but much less than other sports.

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. 

---

Ok, unchecked hive mind lovefest orgies only from now on! No other opinions welcome!

Dude! You're spewing hive mind [BLEEP] as well just from another source. At least you finally quoted graham. You're out here acting like you came up with all these statistics. I'm over it.

---

Dude! You're spewing hive mind [BAD WORD REMOVED] as well just from another source. At least you finally quoted graham. You're out here acting like you came up with all these statistics. I'm over it.

Sweet, first time I've got someone to admit there is a large contingent of people outside this board that has concerns about LF (or you're using hive mind improperly). 

 

And I've linked to the YC articles (both of LFs, Mixon's, Cook's, and McCaffrey's) plenty, just not this time. I posted it real quick cause there were half a dozen other people quoting me with stuff at the same time. I didn't realize this was a formal place where I needed to add MLA citation to everything every time and also cover every facet of the debate every time or else. 

---

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.

---

Yeah for sure football is still in its infancy we'll see where it goes. But like Shad said, “The train is leaving the station. Run, get on it.”

---

Sweet, first time I've got someone to admit there is a large contingent of people outside this board that has concerns about LF (or you're using hive mind improperly).


And I've linked to the YC articles (both of LFs, Mixon's, Cook's, and McCaffrey's) plenty, just not this time. I posted it real quick cause there were half a dozen other people quoting me with stuff at the same time. I didn't realize this was a formal place where I needed to add MLA citation to everything every time and also cover every facet of the debate every time or else.

I'm well aware of how polarizing Leonard's draft value is right now, some guys think he's a Top 10 pick and others think he doesn't belong in the first round. I get it you're excited about analytics, it's pretty cool, but please tone down the elitism.

---

Every segment of fanbases/experts have their concerns about multiple aspects of Fournette's game. The people saying this message board is the only place you find critiques about LF like this have made for themselves a very secure echo chamber. 

 

I have to admit that I first became aware of some aspects of Fournette's game I found lacking by just analyzing some cut-ups. It really stood out to me.

I posted about it here and 3 or 4 others said they were thinking the same things already.  I then read similar concerns expressed by 2 analysts at prominent websites and heard another NFL guy say the same thing on the radio. 

 

The notion of Fournette "needing a runway" is not isolated to a half dozen posters on this message board. It's readily apparent and widely discussed. 

 

It's also not a huge knock on the guy since he's such a legit threat when you do give him a few steps.  And the knock on him also doesn't mean he'll never beat contact at the L.O.S.  -- it's just that he struggled with early contact near the line in a high percentage of his attempts versus better defenses in college. 

He also hit some home runs in those games. 

 

Bottom line:  

The criticism is legitimate, but it doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be an elite back in the NFL.  It simply should be a real consideration in the short term for teams with less than stellar run blocking lines. 

---

 

Bottom line:  

The criticism is legitimate, but it doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be an elite back in the NFL.  It simply should be a real consideration in the short term for teams with less than stellar run blocking lines. 

Nobody leveled those criticisms at Yeldon or Ivory, and the team still couldn't run the ball.

 

Whether this particular criticism of Fournette is warranted or not, the offensive line here needs to be fixed.

---

 

Worst to 1st.  Curse Reversed!

 

It's also not a huge knock on the guy since he's such a legit threat when you do give him a few steps.  And the knock on him also doesn't mean he'll never beat contact at the L.O.S.  -- it's just that he struggled with early contact near the line in a high percentage of his attempts versus better defenses in college. 

He also hit some home runs in those games. 

 

Bottom line:  

The criticism is legitimate, but it doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be an elite back in the NFL.  It simply should be a real consideration in the short term for teams with less than stellar run blocking lines. 

Do you have any statistics to show this is unique to Fournette?

---

I honestly don't think the Jags should draft a RB this year. There's no reason to. Every year there are good RBs who come out. Let's load up the Dline and Oline this year. Maybe Thomas or Allen in the 1st and a guard in the 2nd. Then next year, cut bait with Ivory and Yeldon. Draft a young fresh RB next year and watch him work.

---

Nobody leveled those criticisms at Yeldon or Ivory, and the team still couldn't run the ball.

 

Whether this particular criticism of Fournette is warranted or not, the offensive line here needs to be fixed.

Absolutely.

---