Article The NFL’s analytics movement has finally reached the sport’s mainstream (1 Viewer)

[Dan in Lafayette]

If you are interested in analytics, I found this article fairly interesting. There is a couple of mentions of the Saints in it.



By Sam Fortier | Washington Post

Joe Banner wasn’t expecting the phone call, but it didn’t surprise him. The former NFL executive sensed the current NFL head coach on the other end of the line, an old-school guy, needed a confidant outside his organization. The coach had spent his life around the game, knew it as well as anyone, but now it was being transformed by numbers he didn’t understand. So, the coach asked, what should he know about analytics?

Banner, an advocate and early adopter of advanced football statistics, understood why coaches feared them. It felt like a threat to their decision-making power. But he explained to the coach that they were basically advanced versions of the “tendency reports” he had been receiving from assistant coaches, who would scout opponents to determine how they approached every game situation, for years.

“Analytics are sophisticated, accurate and quality information,” Banner said. “There should be no coach afraid of that.”

Full Story - Post

 

[jasonsw]

Analytics has almost killed my love for baseball. Multiple pitching changes in an inning, choppy play and a bunch of numbers that are overkill. No one steals bases anymore, no squeeze bunt plays, sacrifice fly, or stretching a single to a double.

 

[Loose Cannon]

Analytics has almost killed my love for baseball. Multiple pitching changes in an inning, choppy play and a bunch of numbers that are overkill. No one steals bases anymore, no squeeze bunt plays, sacrifice fly, or stretching a single to a double.

Same thing in basketball. The analytics have shown that any shot that's not a dunk or a three pointer is inefficient. It's something that always seemed to make sense to me, I always wondered why teams didn't bomb away since you need to shoot 33% from 3 to be the same as 50% from 2. But it's made the game really formulaic and boring at times.

That's not the fault of the analytics or the teams or the players. It's just natural evolution of teams trying to find an edge. It's going to be interesting to see how these leagues stay ahead of the analytics and evolve their game so that they're both entertaining and true to the heart and soul of the sport.

No idea how - that's not my problem to solve, thankfully (though the solution in basketball is fairly obvious - move the three point line back).

 

[RJ in Lafayette]

Good find, Dan. Thanks. But what is interesting is the Saints, with their propensity for trading up in the draft, totally ignore the approach analytics, which favors trading down and obtaining as many picks as possible.