I've found our God

[flere-imsaho]

Link to Dr. Z's column this week (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/dr_z/06/22/rating.systems/index.html)

No, not Dr. Z. Just read the column. Unbelievable.

[Franklinnoble]

Quiksand?

[SackAttack]

So why hasn't this guy contracted some outside help to get the Jacksonville games covered? Somebody who lives in an area where they can get 'em on TV, tape 'em, and mail 'em to him?

[Hammer755]

Sounds like Bill James in his early days, especially the last blurb. I was re-reading Moneyball the other night, and one part talks about how James is thinking about baseball pretty much all the time.

[flere-imsaho]

Quiksand?

That was my thought too.

[Ksyrup]

Sounds like Bill James in his early days, especially the last blurb. I was re-reading Moneyball the other night, and one part talks about how James is thinking about baseball pretty much all the time.
I've been wondering why it has taken so long for someone to decide they should be the Bill James of football.

[John Galt]

I've been wondering why it has taken so long for someone to decide they should be the Bill James of football.

Sometimes, the decision isn't enough. You actually have to say something smart. :p

[Hammer755]

I've been wondering why it has taken so long for someone to decide they should be the Bill James of football.
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned here or not, but there are a few groups making a similar push with basketball -

http://www.basketballonpaper.com/
http://www.uncg.edu/bae/people/rosenbaum/nba.html
http://www.alleyoop.com/

[fantastic flying froggies]

Imagine what Jim could do with this goldmine of information...

[Huckleberry]

I would say it's because baseball is the easiest game to so analyze.

Baseball is the only popular team sport in America that is played in series. Very few things occur in parallel in baseball. Baserunning and fielders moving into position. That's pretty much it. The pitcher pitches. The batter swings or doesn't, makes contact or doesn't. The fielder fields. The fielder throws. The fielder catches. Play over. Each step along the way can be independently analyzed.

Football is a game where each team has 11 players doing their job simultaneously in an attempt to have a successful play. That's 22 players performing their vital functions in parallel, each influencing the ability to succeed of the other 21 players, either obviously and directly or indirectly (a secondary clamping down on the receivers indirectly but severely affects the OL's ability to succeed).

It is is simply much more difficult to analyze based on statistics. It looks like this guy's effort involves analyzing each player's individual performance in a frequently one-on-one context. That's the only way to start. It will still leave giant holes, for example, if Lelie got a step behind his man on a sideline route but was supposed to break it off at 15 yards into a square in. It may appear he succeeded and the QB missed him when in fact he screwed up.

[Ksyrup]

Sometimes, the decision isn't enough. You actually have to say something smart. :p
Well yeah, but with no competition, you'd essentially be writing your own rules until someone with some real talent came along. But by then, you'd presumably have made a ton of money and could gracefully exit the scene.

[Pyser]

i would love to read what he says about will allen, who i maintain is the worst starting cb in the nfl right now.

[kurtism]

Aaron Schatz and crew over at hxxp://footballoutsiders.com is already reaching for the title of football's Bill James, and in fact, Baseball Prospectus has already aligned with the Outsiders, and will be publishing Pro Football Prospectus this fall. It's a good site, with good analysis, and it is well-written.

[Crapshoot]

Huckleberry covered it fairly well - but I'll go on nonetheless - baseball is a series of discrete events, where it is far easier to measure and isolate individiual events- football is a continous stream of 11 individuals - where you can measure impact play-by-play, but not at the individual level - you would truthfully need a series of differential equations to do it properly, and find the correct ones.

[Crapshoot]

Dola,
Dr Z is my favorite SI columnist- by far. He's not full of shit, aka Peter King - and he's honest about his mistakes and what not.

[Franklinnoble]

Dola,
Dr Z is my favorite SI columnist- by far. He's not full of shit, aka Peter King - and he's honest about his mistakes and what not.
Bah. They're both Redskins haters.

[Surtt]

Dola,
Dr Z is my favorite SI columnist- by far. He's not full of shit, aka Peter King - and he's honest about his mistakes and what not.

I think he is just as full of it, as any one else. But, he isn't afraid to have opinions. Which is seams to be getting very rare for sports writers. Most writers are writing powder puff stories, so not to piss off any contacts.

[mckerney]

Imagine what Jim could do with this goldmine of information...

Jim has a pretty decent collection of stats of his own.

http://www.solecismic.com/targetdata.php

[Tigercat]

I think he is just as full of it, as any one else. But, he isn't afraid to have opinions. Which is seams to be getting very rare for sports writers. Most writers are writing powder puff stories, so not to piss off any contacts.

I agree that is his best quality, furthermore he isn't afraid to stick his neck out and have opinions seperate from the common brain that 90% of the NFL talking heads share(Which may or may not be housed in Peter Kings head).

My biggest problem with NFL coverage is that unlike other leagues, the have nots always have a good chance to make noise in the NFL, but the NFL experts never look at the progress or regression of teams that aren't in major markets or teams that don't stay in their collective consciousness. For a league with so much parity and so much parity potential, this often only gives us half the NFL coverage we could be getting. The good thing about Dr. Z is that he watches as many games as possible with a fairly open mind about the abilities of the teams and the individual players. He is wrong a lot, but he gives the kind of NFL coverage I wish all NFL heads gave.

[judicial clerk]

The Hidden Game of Football sits over on my bookshelf, taunting me and calling me stoopid bwcause I just couldn't get all the way through it.

[CraigSca]

I was just going to mention the Hidden Game of Football myself. It's an excellent read. One of the really interesting things they did was put together play-by-play data from every game situation and the odds of winning the game based on the situation (i.e. ball position, current score, time left in the game). From that data, they could empirically see the value of any occurrence in the game. One that was very interesting is the adage - when you get close to the goal line and you're stopped, you have to at least get a FG to prove to your team you can score as well as keep morale high. Well, they argued that was garbage. If you have an average defense, it's better to go for it on 4th and goal from the 2 rather than kick a 19 yard FG.

I can just imagine the sports radio/newspapers the next day if a coach tried that and failed. Almost on par with a manager who's one run down and doesn't sacrifice the leadoff batter to get him into scoring position in the bottom of the 9th (though it really hurts the team in the long run). :D

[judicial clerk]

To add to CraigSca's post and, If I remember correctly, the Hidden Game of Football said that, on average, if the ball is inside the offensive team's own 35 yard line, then the defensive team is the team that is most likely to score next in that game.

[albionmoonlight]

In general, I think studies show that offensive playcalling is too conservative most of the time--coaches punt and kick field goals too much on 4th down. Of course, if teams did start going for it more on 4th down, then third down stragety would change, as would the emotional lift/deflation that players get after 4th down stops/conversions. So it would probably get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

But at least some people are thinking along those lines, trying to improve the game.