The Frankish Reich Posted December 1, 2019 Posted December 1, 2019 1 hour ago, CincyBillsFan said: It's not about "math anxiety", it 's about applying statistical & mathematical analysis to a chaotic system. The three biggest issues involving the use of analytics as a tool in football compared to baseball are: * the enormous variability involved in EVERY NFL play. The fact that on any given play there are a minimum of 40 human beings involved (22 players; 5 refs; 10 - 15 coaches) creates a huge # of potential outcomes. * the much smaller sample size in football means that the impact of the variability is magnified. There are over 160 baseball games in a season compared to 16 football games. * the number of subjective measurements involved. When conducting controlled clinical trials or running lab experiments most of the data subjected to statistical analysis is obtained either through objective measurement or at least highly controlled subjective measurement. Given these facts, it's particularly foolish to apply analytics to young players where the sample size is ridiculously small. Now this is an intelligent response. "You are an idiot" kind of isn't, although I know if is something of a catchphrase for some self-proclaimed geniuses.(Your final * point is not so great, since statistical analysis isn't valid only for controlled trials, but I get the larger point about separating the signal from the noise.) Football doesn't lend itself to analytics the way baseball does. In fact, a single season is almost never an adequate sample size. And so saying things about Josh Allen's ability (or lack thereof) to draw defensive PI calls based on 11 games is foolish. (I never said it wasn't.). But Tom Brady? Aaron Rodgers? Drew Brees? And to a lesser extent Russell Wilson, Andy Dalton, Ryan Fitzpatrick? Not foolish at all. The problem with espn's Total QB Rating is that it makes inferences based on woefully inadequate sample sizes. But if we're talking about which QB has had the better career, or which 5-year veteran starter a club wants to sign in free agency, a team would make a horrible mistake to NOT factor in these things.
The Wiz Posted December 1, 2019 Posted December 1, 2019 On 11/29/2019 at 5:54 PM, starrymessenger said: Given his worship of Brady you'd think he might see something in Allen. There was a play yesterday when Allen stood in the pocket with a ridiculous amount of time. He stood there forever motionless like a statue absolutely calm as he waited for something to develop then he uncorked a laser to I don't remember who exactly. It occurred to me that I had seen the same picture before not to so long ago. It was when Brady was still in his prime and had a good offensive line. Funny thing is that a poster on the Pats board had precisely the same reaction. Shannon Sharpe had a great comment on this play. This was one of about three comments made about the bills in the whole video but I laughed. 1
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