Interesting article. A few quotes for the click-averse or those that don't have time to go through the entire column. For the 31 teams that don't employ Ernie Adams, it is possible that their information may be of some use. Just wonder if there is an information overload at some point.
- But
what the public sees on Pro Football Focus’s website is just a tidal pool compared to the ocean of information that NFL teams are paying very good money (PFF won’t disclose how much) to access.
It’s more than a data dump. Pro Football Focus will meet virtually any of its clients’ requests, such as measuring hang time to
two decimal points for punts and kickoffs, and tracking which direction a center turns after the snap as a potential indicator of which offensive guard is the weaker link
- (Detroit Lions' Gunther) Cunningham still records some of the same statistics on his own, including time to throw or defensive targets (mostly out of habit), but he and defensive quality control coach Matt Raich
lean on Pro Football Focus to shave time off their research. Before the Cowboys game, for instance, it took them less than 30 minutes to pull up all the shotgun plays Dallas had used during its previous five games. They were able to discern the personnel groups, in part, by looking at the play diagrams and corresponding video footage.
In his current role, Cunningham prepares scouting reports for the coaching staff. (
A 600-page report on the Seahawks’ offense, unused after the Lions were eliminated, sits on his desk). -
-
[at what point do you have paralysis by analysis?]
- Vikings coach Mike Zimmer has been one of the site’s most vocal critics, calling out PFF in the opening statement of a press conference last summer. “
I guarantee they don’t know who is in our blitz package and what they are supposed to do,” he said. “I would just ask everybody to take that with a grain of salt, including our fans.” Patriots coach
Bill Belichick responded to a question last week about defensive sub-packages with a seeming dig, saying, “I’m sure there’s a bunch of websites that [track] that, Pro Football Extra or whatever they are.”
- Cunningham agrees with some of Zimmer’s criticism. Even after spending five seasons as the Lions’ defensive coordinator, Cunningham found it initially difficult to wrap his head around what everyone is supposed to be doing in Teryl Austin’s new system. So
PFF analysts grading players without knowing the defensive call is one area, he says, “where they are a little bit short.” But Cunningham has also seen the reverse:
coaches grading favorite players more easily, or giving themselves too much credit for placing a player in the correct position when he makes a play.
- He
views PFF analysts as young scouts, and he views their reports like those that come out of the BLESTO and National scouting organizations: more information that can help.
- “Whether a team should go for it on fourth-and-1, there’s been some analysis of that,” Hornsby says. “But the truth of it is, what is the sample size of data for that game being played in Buffalo, at a particular temperature in December, with a right guard who has a dodgy hamstring and the halfback just broke up with his girlfriend the previous day? No amount of statistics can give you that answer.
Only the coach can make that decision.
“But what we can do, we can say to a coach, ‘If you see Calvin Johnson lining up as the inside slot receiver on a play in Week 14, and
in every other circumstance where he has lined up in that position he has run this route—would that be useful to you?’ ”
