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Not true. Stats can tell you all those things. You’re certainly right that it’s harder than it is in baseball. They’re just a lot more work to create because it’s much more labor intensive than in baseball. You need to look at every play and you need to know what you’re looking for. So it’s hard but it can be done. And I think it actually is done.
OTOH, sabermatricians used to make fun of Brian Sabean, Giants GM, because he was old school and “didn’t really use sabermetrics,” which was not quite true. That mockery ended when the Giants won 3 WS in five years. Even Bill James, The Godfather of sabermatricians, would tell you stats are useful but they’re not everything.
No one is collecting these stats and it would be a complete waste of time and much of it would be skewed based on the opinions of the person who reviews the tapes. How do you know if a receiver ran a bad route unless it is your player? How do you know if someone missed a blocking assignment or he just happened to be the closest guy to the play? A lot of that stuff is not
You want to see how much stats are not that great when evaluating players in the NFL? Look at the top five QBs in terms of passing yards this year:
Jameis Winston
Dak Prescott
Jared Goff
Phillip Rivers
Matt Ryan
Winston was also second in passing TDs this season. And Prescott was fourth. Sure you can point to Winston's INTs to weaken my argument, but Prescott only had 11 INTs.
Chris Godwin was third in receiving yards and fourth in receiving TDs. Do you think Godwin is a top five receiver or that it is because Winston passed so goshdarn much this season.
When Chandler Jones was here, he got gaudy sack and pressure numbers. But anyone who watched him play here would tell you a lot of those numbers came when the Pats had the game in hand and teams were pass happy trying to catch up and many times during the game when the Pats needed Jones he was invisible. Not singling out Jones for being overrated, but how does stats show that. It may be able to translate if you break the down stats of plays by how much the Pats are winning, losing by or if they are tied; but there is no guarantee that will show up in those stats. It certainly wouldn't show up in the stats if the Pats needed Jones to step up in a key spot and he didn't.
Again, there are way too many variables in football to use sabermetrics. So far, the Brown are proving me right. For all the hype about their team, they haven't even had a .500 season using it. All the talk about the Browns winning their division and finally going to the playoffs this year, they went 6-1o even though people said they had all this talent. The only reason they didn't end up in fourth place this year in their division is because the Bengals are the worst team in football this year. The Browns had the fourth worst record in the AFC this year. And two of the teams with worst records were being accused of tanking the season.