Forum Overview :: NFL2K5 :: Read this book

[quote name="jeep"]As such famed locals as Zseni and Ryvar can (and will) tell you, being a polymath/autodidact/memefactory is nice if you feel like coasting through school, but it's pretty boring once that bit is over, even if you're sorta crazy. One of the things I took an interest in way back was statistics, there was just something about the math that seemed right at the time, even if it's one of the more dangerous weapons man has invented. It's a strange attraction: I don't like marketing or economics and I don't gamble, so what's the use? I liked stats anyway, though. So I'm a longtime subscriber to this Baseball Prospectus / SABR stuff, from long before I found myself working here at Team Fields Medal. I like the annual Baseball Prospectus a lot, it's fun to read them mercilessly taunting Royce Clayton while watching him deliver his team another loss with his low power/no contact batting strategy. I was not a football fan my whole life like with baseball, that's pretty common here in New England, but I learned it in Florida, Gators fans being similar to Red Sox fans in a lot of ways, though the female ones are generally hotter. I don't read box scores for either sport, though I do know what they all mean. Generally. Ok RBI still confuses me...credit for the guy in front of you being on base? Makes no sense. I came back from the south with a new appreciation for the sport just in time to enjoy Bill Parcells brutalizing the local beat reporters, which was as entertaining as any sporting event. Anyway it's tougher in football to do that kind of analysis, but not impossible. So <a href="http://www.footballoutsiders.com/">Football Outsiders</a>, the site that picked up Gregg Easterbrook's column when ESPN's no longer had room for him under the jew-baiting column length cap, decided to merge with BP to try to make the same kind of book for God's Army's favorite sport after NASCAR, I was intrigued. I can tell you who the quarterbacks are for most teams, maybe their Pro Bowl players, and I know which penalties go with what during the game, but I actually read you-all for football projections because I can't make them myself. Anyway as a result of the partnership, they published the first <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761140190/">Football Prospectus</a> this year: just as cruel and unusual as BP, but with weirder numbers. They replace all the NFL's stats with ones that take the opposing team, the player's team, and the current play situation (yards from the end zone, down and distance, pass/run, etc) into consideration. They correct for park factors to some degree (an average kicker in Denver isn't a starter anywhere else) though that doesn't matter as much in football. These books aren't the same as others, what's inside is generally a set of methodical numbers which are compared in short essays to common wisdom, rather than a simple repetition of what you probably heard already. This is the first edition, so some of the numbers are, in my opinion, shaky (the baseball guys can predict offensive production with about 90% efficiency, these guys will be lucky to get 65%, but it's still a method-generated number instead of a gut feeling so they're accountable and it will improve year to year.) However, the book is really pretty funny, not completely impenetrable (I generally read the columns for each team and player, then use the tables as a reference later on), and if the Baseball version is any judge, a deadly part of your arsenal in a fantasy draft (my no gambling rule includes fantasy sports, but not 'doling out advice to those playing fantasy sports'). Crazy example: who knew the Chargers would put up sick offensive numbers last year? These guys. They couldn't believe it either, but their projected numbers didn't lie. I read their website off and on since Easterbrook. I looked at similar stuff for hockey and basketball, which I don't like, and it was slim pickings (plus the basketball guy's a dick) anyway. A lot of people started thinking differently about sports since Moneyball came out, even though good football teams have almost always had metric analysis and baseball's had it on and off forever (there were no RBI in old 1800s baseball, mostly people counted "total bases / 4" as 'runs' or 'runs created'. Something about publishing this stuff, listening to people bemoan the death of their favorite magicks and then watching the team in question pummel their division annually is a nice if cold comfort in this political era, so I figured maybe you'd like it, too, even if less of it is a surprise to you than me. Also: wicked cheap. /jeep/[/quote]