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AlNFL19

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What are your opinions on statistics in the NFL in general? Do you like them and think they provide a lot of useful information? Do you think they're stupid? Are you somewhere in between? What's your view on regular old NFL statistics versus stuff like Football Outsiders?

I'm a big fan of statistics because I think they can paint a great picture with the proper context, and they are obviously objective. I think statistics getting a bad rep is a little unfair. However, obviously, you can't say everything with them, but I disagree with the people who think that "you have to watch the film and statistics are useless." The way I see it, the bottom line is they're results. If you can acknowledge the context behind those results, I think statistics can be very interesting and useful in the NFL.

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The only stats Im concern about is points differential and turnover differential.

Last season the top 10 teams in the points differential category made the playoffs. The top 7 teams in the turnover differential category made the playoffs. So that means if a team is strong in those two categories there is a strong chance that team is in the playoffs when the regular season ends. 

Edited by stl4life07
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can anyone comment on this one.

team A facing Team B in the playoffs.

they are in the same division.

Team A beat Team B twice in the regular season.

you know the analyst comment "hard to beat a team 3 times"

but whats the actual playoff record in this scenario?

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The issue with analytics in football is you have to treat every snap as an event, and statistics depend on outcomes being a repeatable, reliable measurement.  The problem is no two snaps are going to result in comparable outcomes.  There's too much variability for all 22 players on the field in any given snap, and the margins on how they effect a given play are so narrow (literally a game of inches, good luck accounting for that) you wind up with meaningless results.  But that won't stop services like PFF and Football Outsiders duping customers into thinking they're providing actual analysis.

 

And these are just some of the pure measurement problems with analytics in football.  There's an entirely other can of worms when you get into assumption of what a successful snap looks like for any given player.  The guys grading snaps for services like PFF have no idea how players are being coached and what their jobs actually are on any given snap.  They can't determine what a win/loss is for a play without knowing the play call and what that player is tasked with doing on that play, only the coaches and players of the team know that.

 

Edited by TheFinisher
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Stats are great.  They're a great tool in seeing what's going on with certain players, and often a great shortcut in explaining what one player (or team) does well and what they struggle with.

Relying on them in foolish, especially for super variable and capricious stats like sacks, or when a stat goes against the eyeball test.

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4 hours ago, TheFinisher said:

The issue with analytics in football is you have to treat every snap as an event, and statistics depend on outcomes being a repeatable, reliable measurement.  The problem is no two snaps are going to result in comparable outcomes.  There's too much variability for all 22 players on the field in any given snap, and the margins on how they effect a given play are so narrow (literally a game of inches, good luck accounting for that) you wind up with meaningless results.  But that won't stop services like PFF and Football Outsiders duping customers into thinking they're providing actual analysis.

 

And these are just some of the pure measurement problems with analytics in football.  There's an entirely other can of worms when you get into assumption of what a successful snap looks like for any given player.  The guys grading snaps for services like PFF have no idea how players are being coached and what their jobs actually are on any given snap.  They can't determine what a win/loss is for a play without knowing the play call and what that player is tasked with doing on that play, only the coaches and players of the team know that.

 

I agree with the sentiment that you need to know more than PFF knows to do what they do. I think PFF does a great job tracking real objective statistics like cornerback passer rating allowed, but their big player ratings are garbage. 

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14 hours ago, Malfatron said:

can anyone comment on this one.

team A facing Team B in the playoffs.

they are in the same division.

Team A beat Team B twice in the regular season.

you know the analyst comment "hard to beat a team 3 times"

but whats the actual playoff record in this scenario?

From 1990-2009 teams that swept the regular season series went 11-5 in playoff matchups.

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It's hard to do in football because the sample sizes are compatible so small in comparison to every other sport really and no other team sport is an interdependent on each other as football. Outside of the absolute best and the absolute worst players it's hard to really gather trustworthy statistical information. Football is still in a place where people see things and then try to base stats around that rather than using statistical data to create a better understanding of the game.

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I think analytics are useful.  

I think a lot of the crapping on analytics is done by professionals who have a personal investment in having analytics viewed as irrelevant and a lot of fans parrot that.

Obviously there’s a human element that has to be accounted for and analytics aren’t all encompassing, but that’s the same in every sport.

Just like in baseball and basketball, analytics will only play a larger role moving forward and become more and more useful at identifying market inefficiencies.

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1 minute ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

I think analytics are useful.  

I think a lot of the crapping on analytics is done by professionals who have a personal investment in having analytics viewed as irrelevant and a lot of fans parrot that.

Obviously there’s a human element that has to be accounted for and analytics aren’t all encompassing, but that’s the same in every sport.

Just like in baseball and basketball, analytics will only play a larger role moving forward and become more and more useful at identifying market inefficiencies.

These topics make me laugh without fail every single time.

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I think statistics are very relevant but definitely not the end all be all. There are many scenarios where a person played better than what the statistics would/could provide and vice versa. 

The difficult part about stats is that there is a lot of metrics out there that are not at all covered by any known statistics or aren't in depth enough to paint a true picture. 

 

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On 7/27/2019 at 6:21 AM, TheFinisher said:

The issue with analytics in football is you have to treat every snap as an event, and statistics depend on outcomes being a repeatable, reliable measurement.  The problem is no two snaps are going to result in comparable outcomes.  There's too much variability for all 22 players on the field in any given snap, and the margins on how they effect a given play are so narrow (literally a game of inches, good luck accounting for that) you wind up with meaningless results

This. This, this, this... my GOODNESS, this.

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1 minute ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

These topics make me laugh without fail every single time.

I get frustrated by the simple takes tbh.

It was awful when Sashi was blessing us and people couldn’t understand basic analytical concepts despite plenty of actual data being presented to them.  

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1 minute ago, ET80 said:

This. This, this, this... my GOODNESS, this.

Except not really. It entirely depends on what you are measuring, and we're adults so we can choose to measure things that are both predictive and reproduceable.

For example, you could measure a LBs tackles or start doing a PFF style play grading to figure out how well they can play the run. Or, you could stick a GPS in their pad and measure their reaction times starting at the snap, their max speed, etc. etc. Then you do that for a few years, find that there's a strong correlation (since linebackers that have great get-off and top end speed are going to be good against the run #factsonly), then use the stuff that's easy to measure reliably to make decisions.

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