Andrew Berry's Philosophy & the Sashi-DePo-Berry Era Revisited

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

https://www.catscratchreader.com/2018/4/10/17219396/good-drafting-is-a-myth-nfl-draft-trade-up-bad

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

The original article 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-team-can-beat-the-draft/ 

 

[Rod Johnson]

9 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

 

I’ve linked this article a dozen times at least.

I've read it.  The citation he was to your point in this https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56913718&itype=CMSID

Which hardly has much data backing it up at all.  The only metric I see them cite is number of games started.  That would put Jabrill Peppers on higher footing than Deshaun Watson, which is ludicrous.  Saying good talent evaluation doesn't exist is almost like saying talent doesn't exist, or is otherwise unobservable.  Just dumb.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

6 minutes ago, Rod Johnson said:

I've read it.  The citation he was to your point in this https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56913718&itype=CMSID

Which hardly has much data backing it up at all.  The only metric I see them cite is number of games started.  That would put Jabrill Peppers on higher footing than Deshaun Watson, which is ludicrous.  Saying good talent evaluation doesn't exist is almost like saying talent doesn't exist, or is otherwise unobservable.  Just dumb.

No, I’m NOT saying talent evaluation doesn’t exist, but once you get to a point where you know what you’re looking at, the difference is minimal.

Edited January 14, 2020 by LETSGOBROWNIES
Oops

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

From the mouth of the best FO in the league (arguably) Eric DeCosta:

”We look at the draft as, in some respects, a luck-driven process. The more picks you have, the more chances you have to get a good player. When we look at teams that draft well, it’s not necessarily that they’re drafting better than anybody else. It seems to be that they have more picks. There’s definitely a correlation between the amount of picks and drafting good players.”

[candyman93]

As crazy as it sounds, Sashi did his job. He got us pillar players to build around. Dorsey did the next layer by adding a good supporting cast to those pillars (Kareem, OBJ, Jarvis, Denzel, Greedy). When it comes to the draft, we don’t need as much as people think. 
 

When you look at Kansas City, can you name a starter in their secondary? Can you name a 49ers starting LB? Can you name a WR for Green Bay outside of Davante Adams? How about a starting d-linemen for Tennessee outside of Casey? (Draft nerds will know simmons, but my point remains)

Edited January 14, 2020 by candyman93

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

2 minutes ago, candyman93 said:

As crazy as it sounds, Sashi did his job. He got us pillar players to build around. Dorsey did the next layer by adding a good supporting cast to those pillars (Kareem, OBJ, Jarvis, Denzel, Greedy). When it comes to the draft, we don’t need as much as people think. 
 

Both were at least consistent in their approach.

2 minutes ago, candyman93 said:

When you look at Kansas City, can you name a starter in their secondary?

Honey badger

2 minutes ago, candyman93 said:

Can you name a 49ers starting LB?

Kwon 

2 minutes ago, candyman93 said:

 

Can you name a WR for Green Bay outside of Davante Adams?

Absolutely not.

2 minutes ago, candyman93 said:

How about a starting d-linemen for Tennessee outside of Casey? (Draft nerds will know simmons, but my point remains)

Honestly forgot about Simmons...

[Mind Character]

1 hour ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

From the mouth of the best FO in the league (arguably) Eric DeCosta:

”We look at the draft as, in some respects, a luck-driven process. The more picks you have, the more chances you have to get a good player. When we look at teams that draft well, it’s not necessarily that they’re drafting better than anybody else. It seems to be that they have more picks. There’s definitely a correlation between the amount of picks and drafting good players.”

DeCosta speaks much truth. You're right.

Drafting is gambling. Gambling of assessments of football and intangible/psychological/emotional skills of human beings.

Sashi, DePo, and Berry were geniuses to accumulate more picks to gamble and recognize that mis-evaluation is a guaranteed part of gambling on players that they themselves would not be able to overcome.

Having more gambles is correlated with more successful gamble outcomes. But understanding the payoffs and risks of gambles as well as the actually terms/aspects of the gamble is a skill of evaluation and assessment of its own. If a person doesn't realize or is unable to outline the odds, the payoffs, the risks, and how the game is played, then that's not a quality gamble evaluator.

Of course there's a lot of luck in the process but you cannot discount mis-evaluation of football skill and mis-evaluation of psychological, emotional, and mental skills.

Austin Corbett didn't fail as a Left Tackle because of bad luck; he failed because of mis-evaluation. Johnny Manziel didn't fail because of bad luck, but instead because of a mis-evaluation of his intra and inter- personal skills and maturity. Ereck Flowers didn't fail because of bad luck, but because of a mis-evaluation of his skills and skills development potential.

There are instances where the Evaluation of skills and the accepting the gamble is right and reasonable but the outcome of the gamble is a negative outcome. To me the various gambles on Njoku, Peppers, and Kizer all made sense based on the assessment of the skills assessment gamble. But did the Njoku and Peppers gambles make sense compared to the Tre'Davious White and Ryan Ramcyzk gambles? Who knows.. what is known is that the rationale for the second draft of theirs made far more sense than that of their first draft with Corey Coleman and Ogbah.

There are front offices that are better at identifying the mental, emotional, and psychological make-up of players that give them the best chance at success. The same can be said about properly identifying football traits and skills evaluation. 

We have to be careful not to see the forest for the trees when looking at draft pick success rate data. When you look at it from a birds-eye view historically it's accurate to say that "human beings are flawed evaluators; NFL personnel execs are human beings; therefore NFL personnel execs are flawed evaluators." That means they'll mis-evaluate things at a various times.

Some mis-evaluations are more egregious than others.

Just because mis-evaluation is a guaranteed part of drafting players it doesn't mean that player success at a given pick is due to chance. That's because a statistically significant predictor of player-success rate is mis-evaluation of football or inter/intrapersonal skills.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Mind Character

[candyman93]

Mind feel free to disagree with my rational. We were a 6 win team. Here’s how we can squeeze out 3-4 more additional wins next year:

 

1. Stefanski and his staff be better than Freddy and his staff = +1 win

2. Baker not be dog **** like this year = +1 win

3. Offensive line not be terrible = +1 win

4. Team not quit like they did week 17 = +1 win

 

As of right now, we have complete control of 3/4 things. The only thing we don’t have control over right now is the offensive line. We need additional talent.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

5 minutes ago, Mind Character said:

Drafting is gambling. Gambling of assessments of football and intangible/psychological/emotional skills of human beings.

Having more gambles is correlated with more successful gamble outcomes. But understanding the payoffs and risks of gambles as well as the actually terms/aspects of the gamble is a skill of evaluation and assessment of its own. If a person doesn't realize or is unable to outline the odds, the payoffs, the risks, and how the game is played, then that's not a quality gamble evaluator.

Agreed, but much like poker, once you’re an “expert” at knowing the odds, a large part of it is how the cards fall.

Quote

Of course there's a lot of luck in the process but you cannot discount mis-evaluation of football skill and mis-evaluation of psychological, emotional, and mental skills.

Austin Corbett didn't fail as a Left Tackle because of bad luck; he failed because of mis-evaluation. Johnny Manziel didn't fail because of bad luck, but instead because of a mis-evaluation of his intra and inter- personal skills and maturity. Ereck Flowers didn't fail because of bad luck, but because of a mis-evaluation of his skills and skills development potential.

Yes! But if you’re “an expert with an eye for talent” how do you miss this?  Either you see talent better than others or you don’t.  You’re not an “expert” at anything if you only manage to be right half the time....

Quote

There are front offices that are better at identifying the mental, emotional, and psychological make-up of players that give them the best chance at success. The same can be said about properly identifying football traits and skills evaluation. 

For sure, and they’re using PHD’s to evaluate that too, not just some old scout’s gut feeling. 

Quote

We have to be careful not to see the forest for the trees when looking at draft pick success rate data. When you look at it from a birds-eye view historically it's accurate to say that "human beings are flawed evaluators; NFL personnel execs are human beings; therefore NFL personnel execs are flawed evaluators." That means they'll mis-evaluate things at a various times.

Some mis-evaluations are more egregious than others.

Just because mis-evaluation is a guaranteed part of drafting players it doesn't mean that player success at a given pick is due to chance. That's because statistically significant predictor of player-success rate is mis-evaluation of football or inter/intrapersonal skills.

I’m just saying that a guy like Berry (or any other guy who’s paid his dues as a scout, personnel director, etc) can likely identify traits that equate to success in the league. FFS this board has a better track record than the actual Browns staff over the last 2 decades.

I just don’t buy the idea there are some guys who have some learned perception as to who will be great and who won’t.... but who also whiff on half their picks.  It’s nonsensical.  

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

Just now, candyman93 said:

Mind feel free to disagree with my rational. We were a 6 win team. Here’s how we can squeeze out 3-4 more additional wins next year:

 

1. Stefanski and his staff be better than Freddy and his staff = +1 win

2. Baker not be dog **** like this year = +1 win

3. Offensive line not be terrible = +1 win

4. Team not quit like they did week 17 = +1 win

 

As of right now, we have complete control of 3/4 things. The only thing we don’t have control over right now is the offensive line. We need additional talent.

Number one can also help numbers 2, 3, and 4 quite a bit.

[Mind Character]

2 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

Agreed, but much like poker, once you’re an “expert” at knowing the odds, a large part of it is how the cards fall.

Yes! But if you’re “an expert with an eye for talent” how do you miss this?  Either you see talent better than others or you don’t.  You’re not an “expert” at anything if you only manage to be right half the time....

For sure, and they’re using PHD’s to evaluate that too, not just some old scout’s gut feeling. 

I’m just saying that a guy like Berry (or any other guy who’s paid his dues as a scout, personnel director, etc) can likely identify traits that equate to success in the league. FFS this board has a better track record than the actual Browns staff over the last 2 decades.

I just don’t buy the idea there are some guys who have some learned perception as to who will be great and who won’t.... but who also whiff on half their picks.  It’s nonsensical.  

I agree with a lot of your points.

And I don't see Berry and co. as having some core inability relative to the "football guys" stereotype.

That doesn't mean though that differences between talent evaluators doesn't matter and we could just throw all the names of talent evaluators in a hat and pull one out and experience the same success as if we diligently decided between hiring some over others. Roster-building has a lot more to it than just drafting players we'd agree.

But expertise based perception is a real force in life.

I think we'd agree that not all experts in other aspects in life are not created equal.

I get your point for sure, but I'd disagree that "you're not an expert at anything if you only manage to be right half the time" as the difference between experts often can be small but have a big differential impact on an outcome.

The difference between an expert batter in the major leagues hitting .300 for their career versus an expert batter hitting .215 for their career seems like a negligible difference but can be a substantively different quality of ability.

Like batting averages, the differences in hit rates amongst talent evaluators and roster builders may seem neglible but there's ar real quality difference.

Ultimately, I think Andrew Berry is a good GM candidate because he knows what he doesn't know and knows that he's subject to mis-evaluation. As such, he'll accrue draft capital to mitigate the impact of mis-evaluation. Now, roster building via free agency, UDFA, waivers, formulating trades, deciding who to cut, the skill of managing players, etc all of that are aspects of GMs that are important as well that we often overlook in the draft-centric mindset.

I don't know if Berry is as good as others along those dimensions as we saw some really bad results that way, but under a different rules of engagement (the goal is to win), it will be interesting to see how he can perform over time.

 

 

 

[Mind Character]

22 minutes ago, candyman93 said:

Mind feel free to disagree with my rational. We were a 6 win team. Here’s how we can squeeze out 3-4 more additional wins next year:

 

1. Stefanski and his staff be better than Freddy and his staff = +1 win

2. Baker not be dog **** like this year = +1 win

3. Offensive line not be terrible = +1 win

4. Team not quit like they did week 17 = +1 win

 

As of right now, we have complete control of 3/4 things. The only thing we don’t have control over right now is the offensive line. We need additional talent.

I agree.

To me, a major contributor toward losing was self-inflicted wounds preventing rhythm and momentum on both sides of the ball.

If Stefanski can get the team to play a more disciplined brand of football from the outset, that'll be worth at least 3 wins in and of itself because it provides more opportunities for winning plays to manifest.

The big question for me and all of is, what the hell exactly is Baker Mayfield?

This year's answer to that question above anything else is likely going to be the driver behind if we're a 7 win team or not.

[Kiwibrown]

We should judge next year, not how we start it but how we finish it. 

There will be teething problems possibly wirh the oline and defense, baker, and maybe the recievers, if we can get rolling by week 6-7 even if we have a losing record next year ull take it.

We have a 3 year window from here. 

Edited January 14, 2020 by Kiwibrown

[DawgX]

Watching the DePodesta presser, I feel bad for him for having to answer the moronic media's questions - it's amazing how little they grasp the idea of analytics.