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by Bill Dungsroman 07/31/2005, 6:49pm PDT |
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Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
I think the thing with football is that there is an almost stubborn lack of statistics for many of the positions on the field. (And for all I know some organization has been keeping them and these guys have access to them.)
For instance, I can tell you that William Roaf is the dominant left tackle of his era because I watched him play every single game. More, the Saints were so terrible during most of his time that they only thing TO watch on offense was Willie silence the man he was lined up against. When I then see a guy like Peter King state that he's not a sure-fire first ballot hall-of-famer and that "some Hogs need to get in first" -- if this went on in baseball a host of statistics would be used to prove what an asinine thing that is to write with a close of "go back to girl's field hockey." In football what do you have? "I saw the games and go back to covering field hockey?" Not the same thing. Why can't I know how many times someone got a sack off him? How many times he flattened his man? How many hurries he let up, the average yards per carry when running behind him and how defensive players did against him relative to the rest of the left tackles? There aren't that many plays in a football game where this can't be tracked by independent observers.
Yeah, O-linemen live and die as a group, stats-wise. Plus, the way plays develop strongly impact their implied stats. QB holds it too long? Sack surrendered. QB tries to take off running and is tackled for a loss, no matter how small? Sack surrendered. To determine exactly who is at fault isn't easy. Do you dock the center for a nosetackle stuff or sack? What if he was shifting? Jeff Saturday of the Colts is already next to the tackle one second after he snaps. You could review the tape, but it becomes a real judgment call. I mean, you can see it clearly in many instances, like all the times Deuce McAllister or Steven Jackson blew a block on a pass play and Brooks had to scramble or Bulger got flattened. But a corner blitz from the right, is that everyone on the right's fault? I guess a compromise would be, if a defender and offensive player lock up after the snap, the offensive guy gets the win if nothing bad happens, and is charged if the defender pops off him or bowls him over. It's still half-assed, though.
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
Someone being able to predict that the Chargers were going to go 12-4 makes me very curious. We've got no real way to quantify how good each offensive lineman is that will be busting open holes for LT. More, because injuries are much more frequent I think you have to take into consideration how good the top backups are, even if they've never played. How do you do that? Antonio Gates came out of nowhere. In baseball you can take a look at a guy who spent less than a year in the minors and match him up against 12 other guys who have done it because there's been good record keeping for 100 years. If they were able to grab Gates's 24-389-16.2-2 line from 2003 and accurately predict the monster season he turned in last year then my hat is off to them. I just don't see how one does it. Reche Caldwell was in his third season and I do know that first-round WRs tend to get very, very good in their third year if they make it that far and Caldwell was headed for a great season before he got injured. I can buy projectionists determining that Caldwell was going to bust out as there have been four WRs taken in the first round in this era each of the last 10 years, but getting San Diego's performance right with all these factors seems more lucky than anything else to me.
This sounds stupid, but the stats they use predict the outcomes with scary accuracy. I used to place bets with a buddy of mine. He'd call those ridiculous phone tips lines, the ones that use computer programs that crunch all the data possible. They woul drank their games for what the better choices would be. He'd tak ethe best of 4 or 5 and bet them indepently of each other, straight up bets. He'd let me tag along on his betting, because I had a higher alcohol tolerance and always drove us drunken fools around on the weekend. I remember a few of them, one most notably. It was back in the mid-90s, when the Patriots were laughably bad and the Cowboys scary good. They played soemtime in October, and my pal's Compu-Bet-O-Matic phone tip said put the house an the Pats. Fucking what? I aksed him how he felt about it. Well, he said he couldn't pass it up, and mind you he was from Lubbock and his bedroom looked like Jerry Jones threw up in it. I didn't even want to watch the games that Sunday, just because I'd see that score with all the others, telling me what an idiot I was. The Pats didn't just win, they clobbered the Cowboys, who then hardly lost again and went to the playoffs.
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
I would imagine that their stats take into effect coaching. It's got a far greater effect on the game than in baseball. Managers tend to have success based on their lineups in baseball -- Torre got fired several times before he got attached to a team spending more than anyone else. I understand that Bostonians are already turning on Francona, who was a .440 manager before getting control of the team with one of the highest payrolls in league history. Schottenheimer has proven that he is a good enough coach to get your team into the playoffs each year and it probably WAS foolish to expect that he couldn't do it with the best running back in the league given enough time.
At any rate, it definitely sounds like something I'd get a kick out of and I'll be interested to see how they do things. If we are living in a world where proper statistics are taken in football games (and this means that Ray Lewis doesn't get 20 tackles in a home game because he appeared in the frame at the end of the play) then all the better. Thanks for the heads-up.
Coaching, weather, yards gained, yards given, special teams play (huge, actually, and often overlooked. Look at the playoffs, and especially the Superbowl teams, winners and losers. Great special teams units. Ask Dick Vermiel and Belicheck, they know), bench player stats, game time played per player, travel time for away games, dome/outdoor home/away familiarities. And many more! Now, to be fair to Ray-Ray like our judicial system was, just because he jumps up and celebrates slapping Rudy Johnson on his ass as Reed and McAllister already pinned him doesn't mean he's fooling the dude with the stats clicker in his hand. He's going to get lots of tackles anyway, since the defense usually funnels plays to him, and he gets sideline to sideline anyway. |
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