Archive for the ‘NFL’ category
The 49ers Top 5 Strange Personalities In History: Characters Welcome
March 10th, 2010How To Solve a Problem Like L.T? Send Him To the Minnesota Vikings
March 10th, 2010Now that I have that catchy tune firmly placed in your head, let me turn your focus now to the Minnesota Vikings, or more importantly, LaDainian Tomlinson.
Fresh off a mediocre 2009 season, Tomlinson finds himself in a world of doubt at the moment, as the interest has been huge, but not so much so that we can pinpoint exactly where his new home will be in 2010.
Fortunately, I have the answer. Or so I hope. It's the Minnesota Vikings, and what an answer it is.
First off, let me just say this plain and simple statement. LaDainian Tomlinson and Adrian Peterson in the same backfield. Drooling yet? I sure hope so. Aside from that small but huge factor, the signing of LaDainian Tomlinson to the Minnesota Vikings would not only benefit L.T immensely, but it would also secure the running game for the Vikings, which has been shaky as of late.
It doesn't come as a surprise to me that the Vikings are in the speculative group of the teams willing to sign LaDainian Tomlinson. It feels like almost a year ago that Adrian Peterson was fumbling his way to another choked playoff campaign, but in reality it was only little over a month ago.
Fortunately for the Vikings, their savior has come, and it is at the more convenient time possible. LaDainian Tomlinson has landed firmly in the free agency pile and is just waiting to be snapped up by a willing bidder.
The price won't come cheap for the Vikings, L.T is seeking out a hefty sum of money well over $3 million, and some folks may say he is not deserving enough to earn that type of salary. Opinions aside, the Vikings have cash stored, and if willing, L.T is there for the taking.
Game wise, LaDainian may not have too much of an impact in the early stages with the Vikings, but he is the type of guy who is willing to come in on the goal line and get the touchdown, something that Minnesota lacked last year. More importantly, L.T doesn't just pack speed, he packs strength.
Holes in the defense are normally taken advantage of, and unlike the unpredictable Adrian Peterson of this day and age, he rarely loses the handle.
But where does Tomlinson fit into a team that already has a solid running back and possibly a solid quarterback to guide their offense?
Well truth be told, he doesn't. But it's not like L.T fit into San Diego too well either during Darren Sproles' time, so sharing is something that Tomlinson has grown accompanied to.
The most important factor that Tomlinson could bring to the Minnesota Vikings' side, though, is reliability. Rarely injured and always willing to fill in no matter what the situation, Tomlinson may be the guy who prevents that last minute interception that ultimately costs the Minnesota Vikings their shot at the big time.
With the interest small at the moment, the Vikings and Raiders are the top two contenders in the hunt for the former San Diego Charger running back. Al Davis is likely to take his time, so don't be surprised to see LaDainian take an overnight deal a week or two before the Draft and head to Minnesota.
Hopefully, it will pay off for the Vikings, and more importantly, the weight of the Vikings offense may be taken off Adrian Peterson, even if it is only slightly.
Dorkapalooza: Bill Simmons, Bill Belichik, Moneyball, and 4th and 2
March 10th, 2010Better known as Dorkapalooza .
The conference was held on March 6, headlined by luminaries like Rockets GM (and ‘00 Sloan School grad) Daryl Morey, author Michael Lewis , Colts GM Bill Polian, Mavs owner Mark Cuban, and ESPN Bah-stahhnophile Bill Simmons.
It attracted over 1,000 fans, job seekers, knowledge enthusiasts, sexless dorks, and rationals. Dan Shanoff offers a capable recap .
I thought this piece of advice from Shanoff was particularly meaningful:
Here’s how I see it: If you really want to be a team front-office executive, you are better off spending your summer internship not fetching coffee for a team or leading stats-oriented Web site. Start your own (blog) and own the hell out of some segment of analysis. Post daily, post brilliantly, gently pass your stuff around to folks in media who would appreciate it. If it’s good—and if you’re not good, you might as well not even try—the teams will notice. There is no barrier (at least no publishing barrier) to becoming your own expert and putting your talent on display. THAT is the fast track.
There is some precedent here. 1970s Sabremetrics pioneer Bill James was hired as a special consultant to at least one major league team on the strength of a hand-stapled newsletter (after years of being ignored and aggressively mocked). In that sense, being a protester to the orthodoxy wasn’t much different from Thomas Paine two hundred years previous or Martin Luther another two hundred before that–you were essentially a pamphleteer of grievance. The internet has changed everything.
The Blogger-to-Front-Office hire is coming.
Hardwood Paroxysm tells us that Moneyball analytical methods are already cracking the NBA establishment:
Trade and free agency decisions are increasingly being made with more statistical information, and Oliver broke down how widespread this is all becoming and stated that he knows of eight teams that have actually integrated advanced analytics into their decision-making (Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, Orlando, and Portland).
Like MLB, the NBA and NFL will see an increased use of unconventional analytics. Anecdotal and experiential data—traditional scouting, the accumulated wisdom of former players and coaches—will be complemented, if not supplanted, by methods more friendly to falsification, verification, and the extraction of value. As methodological sophistication increases, we can all anticipate Goldman Sachs bundling Kevin Durant futures expressed in plus-minus, tying them to the Greek economy, sprinkled with a Laotian kip counterweight hedge.
A sure thing!
The challenge that the NBA and NFL face is that they are games featuring mutually dependent interplay and teammate-contingent results—unlike baseball, which is essentially a team game played in individual parallel and thus lends itself to easy analysis. Breaking down the importance of the RB vs. the OL vs. the scheme isn’t easy to do.
Unless you’ve followed Mike Shanahan’s career, that is.
My own guess is that the New New Thing in basketball will be the ability to marry meaningful plus-minus metrics with advanced performance statistics (say shooting percentage sorted by distance from basket, time on shot clock, good shot/bad shot, defended/undefended) and actual game film such that it becomes a teaching tool and is capable of behavioral impact, not just as an ex post facto evaluation tool.
It’s one thing to tell a player that a 2-point shot from just inside the 3 point line is the worst shot in basketball or that the 3 pointer from the corner is one of the best; it’s quite another to be able to integrate it as a real-time teaching tool.
Imagine game film where the player watches himself run through the offense, a small read-out above his on-screen head calculates the adjusted value of each potential shot depending on his spot on the floor.
Or defensively, seeing the same metrics as the offensive player gets an clear-out iso at the top of the 3 point line with 12 seconds on the shot clock. As a GM, you’re now informing action rather than just reacting to a season’s body of work.
Jeff Ma recounts a part of the conference that I found most interesting as it speaks to what is most difficult to do in decision-making—the ability to pull the trigger on what your convictions and analysis tell you to do when all others are losing their heads:
Particularly interesting and relevant personally was a discussion between Pollian, Kraft, and Simmons regarding Belichick’s infamous 4th and 2 decision. Pollian and Kraft both supported Belichick’s decision while Simmons’ remains staunchly against the decision. Simmons’ main argument centers on the Patriots’ poor use of time outs and play calling preceding the 4th and 2 and less on the decision itself, but he remains adamant that it was the wrong decision.
Simmons’ failure here is the inability to marry analysis with rationality, though he fancies himself a rational. Which is pretty much his calling card as it relates to Boston sports teams.
This is primarily a failure of will, the refusal to see what is right in front of you , the graveyard of Wall Street analysts, Enron execs, utopian politicians, and the captains of wrecked ships. It’s the most insidious sort of peer pressure. If you want to understand why Warren Buffett is a billionaire, you need look no further than this aspect of his character.
During this discussion, Polian made the point that using statistics to make this type of decision is irrelevant since there are so many factors that can’t be taken into account by the statistics. Polian is actually citing something called “reduction bias” where in order to solve a complex problem, one reduces the number of variables to make the situation easier to solve. But what Polian fails to acknowledge is the importance of using numbers to help you make these types of decisions. Of course numbers are not going to definitively tell you what is right to do here, but in this case the numbers supported that there was an option besides punting the ball—an observation that most in football would not accept as feasible.
Right. It’s not that the 4th and 2 call was clearly good or bad. It was a near thing, statistically, and contextually within the game. I’ll even call it a coin flip. Yet the post-game reactionaries viewed a close proposition as something more like 95-5 against. Confirming that most of our beliefs are based on superstition, anecdote, and legend rather than hard numbers.
I’m guilty of it, too.
I watched that Patriots-Colts game live and can recall my own instant bias: How can the Patriots not punt this ball? I began to mouth the familiar orthodoxy: It’s 4th and 2, you must kick it and play defense! Then my rational mind kicked in, I started running the numbers, and realized that this was far from madness—in fact it was defensible. Probably advisable. However, the fourth down wasn’t converted, so that it was the wrong call became ironclad fact. Now it was about media and fan perception and the predictable dumb recitation of football tradition and time-honored platitudes.
Also known as ESPN.
I listed to Bill Simmons post-game podcast and Simmons, one of the proponents of the New Analysis, spent an hour excoriating Belichick’s play call, offering that it proved Belichick was being contrarian to reinforce his own personal brand as a risk taker to the detriment of the team, that he was now likely washed up, that it was an act without any rational explanation. Hmm. That Simmons is then a lead panelist at a conference examining a rational approach to sports is proof that when it comes to applied analysis, human psychology is always the final barrier.
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This article originally appeared on: Barking Carnival
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With the 18th Pick in the 2010 Featured Columnist Draft, the Steelers Take…
March 10th, 2010…Mike Iupati, offensive guard, Idaho.
The Steelers have been making some noise in recent days in terms of player signings. After deciding not to go the franchise tag route with DT Casey Hampton (3yrs/$21.3 million), and signing Ryan Clark (4yrs), it’s obvious the Steelers are not looking to get younger in the areas we thought they were.
At least not in the next four years.
They continued their free agent activity this week by signing safety Will Allen away from the Bucs and bringing in offensive tackle Jonathan Scott from the Bills and familiar face Antwaan Randle El at wide receiver/kick returner.
While the Randle El signing is a bit of a head scratcher considering the emergence of rookie Mike Wallace last season, the Allen deal is a viable upgrade at backup safety and for special teams purposes over the aging Tyrone Carter.
With this recent action in mind the Steelers’ draft pick is a bit of an oddity. For starters, the biggest needs the Steelers have are at offensive line and corner. After that, depth on the defensive line, safety, and linebacker positions become the primary focus.
The pick is an oddity because I am not sure the Steelers can fill one of their bigger needs at the 18th pick with a player that warrants the pick. While Bruce Campbell is still on the board here in this mock draft, he most likely will not be in April. Had the Steelers franchised Hampton, the pick would have been a cinch taking Dan Williams out of Tennessee to be groomed as Hampton’s replacement in the coming season.
With significant money tied up in Hampton for the next three seasons and Chris Hoke under contract as a quality backup the Steelers most likely will not draft a defensive lineman in the first round. Chances are they will wait until later in the second or third rounds to address the defensive line. That said, the Steelers either need to move up or down in the draft to address the needs they have in round one.
If they move up it will be to address corner. Joe Haden out of Florida is still the top cover-corner in the draft even though he had an abysmal combine. After Haden there really isn’t another corner on the board that warrants a pick higher than the mid 20’s. If Haden falls past 12 the Steelers may consider making a move to get him, but I wouldn’t count on it considering the cost it would take to do so.
The Steelers may find it to be the best year in recent memory to trade down in the first round, pick up an additional pick in the second or third round in return, and still get their man later in round one. The Steelers need interior linemen more than anything else, and Mike Iupati out of Idaho and Maurkice Pouncey of Florida fit the bill of exactly what they are looking for.
Iupati is one of the few interior linemen in this draft that are slated to be first round material. At 6’5", 325, Iupati is a large, physical presence on the interior offensive line. He plays with a nasty nature and has shown outstanding power in both run and pass blocking. With above average balance and body control for a man his size, Iupati is known to be a “heavy-handed blocker”, meaning once he gets his hands on a defender it is very difficult for them to shed him.
If he has any weakness, some scouts say it’s his speed. Athletically Iupati is very gifted, and scouts have even tried him out as an offensive tackle as we all saw at the Senior Bowl. However, his lack of natural speed has made that transition difficult and unlikely.
Because of the Steelers woes in the running game and pass protection up the middle, Iupati will fit nicely and be an instant upgrade over what the team has there now.
Maurkice Pouncey on the other hand is the top rated center in the 2010 draft. He is a huge character guy with athletic ability to match. The Steelers biggest weakness on the offensive line is, without a doubt, center, and Pouncey is the type of player that reminds me a lot of a young Dermonti Dawson.
His incredible mobility for a player his size allows him to pull and move laterally as well as vertically which would make him a major asset in the running game.
His strength physically is matched by his mental prowess, and coaches and scouts alike praise his ability to lead on the field making calls from the line and dealing with advanced defensive line play. He is extremely versatile and has lined up at both center and guard during his career at Florida.
With the cluster of corners available in the second round, and the possibility of Terrence Cody and a few other players hanging around the Steelers will most likely go offensive line in round one. Even more so if they can find a trading partner that will allow them to move down on day one.
If the Steelers move down in round one, don’t be surprised if they are targeting Pouncey, but for the pick and the need at No. 18, I have to go with Mike Iupati out of Idaho.
If he turns out to be what a lot of scouts are saying, he has the potential to be a Steeler steal and possibly the best offensive lineman they have drafted since Allan Faneca.
Could the Cleveland Browns Possibly Know What They’re Doing?
March 10th, 2010While teams around the league generously shelled out large amounts of money on free agents, the Cleveland Browns sat idle and let the market die down.
On Sunday afternoon, they signed free agent linebacker Scott Fujita of the Saints, and offensive lineman Tony Pashos of the 49ers. The following day they struck a deal with President Holmgren's former team the Seattle Seahawks, bringing backup quarterback Seneca Wallace to Cleveland in a trade for a 2011 conditional draft pick.
From the outside, these moves seemed less than impressive, signing three veterans who haven't been regular starters for the majority of their careers. The moves in the end however, may wind up being absolute genius, this is what a real front office does.
For Cleveland fans this is a new concept, and it's understandable that passing on names like Julius Peppers, Dunta Robinson, Aaron Kampman, Antonio Cromartie, and Karlos Dansby would fire up the masses.
Paying top dollar for veteran players though, when Cleveland has 11 picks in the upcoming draft just doesn't make sense. The rebuild won't happen in one year, progress will be made, but this is indeed a five-year plan to greatness.
It's common sense that the more needs Cleveland can fill in free agency, the better shape they'll obviously be in for the draft. Browns' GM Tom Heckert and Holmgren's ultimate goal here is to fill all the holes, so that they can draft the "best player available". So what may seem like uneventful signings in all reality are filling the gaps.
This way, they can stock the team with the 11 best prospects available, instead of filling positionally and reaching in the process.
"The best-case scenario is to get some of your needs done in free agency and then worry about the draft and then take the best available player," Heckert said.
"Because that's the last thing you want to do is force a pick in there just because of a need. That's our goal, to hopefully build this team where you don't have to do that. You can draft the best player that's available and then you don't have to worry about reaching for somebody."
Right from the horse's mouth, so have patience Browns fans, Phil Savage is no longer running the show. Between Holmgren, Heckert, and Eric Mangini, the Browns have 100 years of football experience combined.
Believe it or not they just may know more than we do, for once we may just have to sit back and watch, and let the professionals do the job that Randy Lerner has hired them to do.
In Holmgren We Trust.
