Also, the team that made it famous hasn’t won much have they? Being fiscally responsible is smart; you don’t have to call it Moneyball every time a GM is saving money.

You can make a bit more sense out of the chaos if you take a look at a bigger picture than individual stats and performance.

It also doesn’t mean that you need to replace film study with the Compubot 5000. You can use it to supplement your film study and perhaps to point you in the direction of taking a look at some film you otherwise might have ignored.

I laugh at the NFL often for being stuck in the stone age for analysis and married to conventional wisdom even more than baseball was at it’s worst.

Remember they said short QBs wouldn’t work in the NFL? LOL. Pete Carroll found Russell Wilson sitting there waiting to be picked.

College football is an even richer environment for using money ball analysis than HS baseball or even college baseball. College football is merely one level below the NFL, just like Triple A is for MLB.

Ted Thompson seems to add 12-15 new rookies each year, incredibly to a Super Bowl caliber team…..the Packers are always one of the younger teams in the league….Thompson basically has a “farm team” built into his roster every year and seems to find at least one new starter or two from the FA ranks, often above average too.

Younger players = better players Thompson knows this.

Polian IS conventional wisdom.

gg

One of the beautiful things about Bill James style of baseball analysis is that it relies solely on empirical data and removes the judgment errors that come from eyeball evaluation process, and there’s no way to do that in football.

Moneyball is finding advantage through undervalue.

It’s pure BS that it doesn’t work in football: slot receiver was under valued a few years ago and now a big part of teams, same with TEs now. Just because people don’t call it by name doesn’t mean people are not doing it.
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I have to agree with this.

It used to be a big deal to have a “shutdown corner” so you can cut the field in half. This was fine when everyone ran 2WR almost all the time. Now it’s almost more of a game of how good are your nickle and dime guys versus the opponents 3rd/4th receiving options.

Now I kind of doubt it will be as effective as baseball. There’s no minor leagues, so for reserves all you can look at is college, and whatever limited action they have in games.

Additionally, the fact that there is a cap has already forced some of this to happen naturally. There are some teams that will not pay a RB period. They’ll draft and take whatever they can get for less than a million for 3 to 4 years.

In football it’s much easier to have good stats as a receiver if you have a good passing QB, easier to be a good running back if you have a very good offensive line etc.

I’m fine with advanced metrics, but they will be much harder to apply to football than baseball.

Perfect example of this is Wes Welker (and slot recievers). When the pats traded to get him from the Dolphins it was because he was looked at as an expendable player, too small, etc to be a classic WR. However the Pats expanded the role of the slot player and Welker very quickly became one of the most elite pass catchers in the game. All at a bargain price because the patriots identified his skill set before it was exposed and signed him to a long term deal.

It’s the same principal that was making 2nd round picks more “valuable” than first round picks (after the top 5) because of the guarenteed money that was given to 1st rounders. The teams got better bang for their buck at pick 33 than at pick 16-32.

Moneyball is essentially identifying skillsets that you can get on the cheap, before they become trendy and thus expensive.

There are plenty of places to use analytics in football and to claim otherwise is just silly. Does that mean abandon scouts? Of course not. That’s like throwing out all your hammers because you bought screwdrivers. You need all your tools to build a house.

It is simply a guiding principle that says one should attempt to quantify player value in terms of production and determine value based upon results, not perception and that the amount paid to a player should be solely based on what he brings to your team, not what other teams are bidding or what would please your fan base.

I think it is more important in a salary cap league because it helps you determine when to give a big contract to a player or replace him with someone who approximates his production at a lower price.

“Moneyball” proponents I have read have criticized the contracts given to Kevin Kolb, Matt Flynn, Mario Williams, Chris Johnson, and DeAngelo Williams on the day they were signed, NOT in hindsight.

Who turned out to be right and who turned out to be wrong?

Individual NFL teams have a lot to gain from getting smarter in how to draft players. Think about the Ryan Leafs of the world compared to Alfred Morris or Geno Atkins.