Advanced Football Analytics

  Brian Burke returns to recap his busy summer offseason. After a brief lesson on the rules of Gaelic Football, Dave and Brian discuss what we can learn about NFL win shares from Jimmy Graham’s contract, some new updates to the site (WOPR, and Win Probability Model) and the 2014 season predictions Brian made for ESPN the magazine. Dave also issues a call for podcast contributors, looking for anyone interested in contributing their technical expertise to the show.

John Urschel, professional football player and mathematician, joins the show. John was selected in the 5th round by the Baltimore Ravens in this year's NFL draft. Last season, John was a Penn State football co-captain and as a student-athlete he achieved a 4.0 GPA while majoring in math. For his efforts, he won the Campbell Trophy, awarded to the top scholar athlete in Division one football. He recently proved the Urschel-Zikatanov Generalized Bisection Theorem and published his findings in the Journal of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.

  Brian Burke returns to the show to recap the 2014 NFL draft. He describes the Bayesian Draft Analysis tool he created and discusses the value of trades made by teams during the draft. Brian and Dave then discuss their favorite new addition to the league, John Urschel and make a pitch to get him to contribute to the site. Brian also previews his new project, WOPR, and explains how it'll help generate data for some previously unanswerable questions.

Cade Massey, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, joins the show to discuss his research on the NFL draft. Professor Massey is the co-author of "The Loser's Curse: Decision Making & Market Efficiency in the National Football League Draft", a paper analyzing the market for draft pick trades He and his co-author, Richard Thaler (insert NYT link) discovered that teams picking at the top of the draft actually sacrifice a great deal of what he calls "surplus value" by not trading down for additional selections.  Dave and Cade look at the reasons why teams employ less than optimal strategies, including risk aversion, adherence to norms established by "The Chart" and other psychological factors. Professor Massey defends his paper against some of the common criticisms, and discusses why he believes the draft is such a compelling spectator event.

Jeffrey Ohlmann, Associate Professor at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business, joins Dave this week to talk about the NFL draft, the sports analytics class he teaches, and his upcoming presentation at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference. 

The “Best of 2013” episode contains highlights from this season’s most compelling Advanced NFL Stats Podcast interviews. On the show, Virgil Carter tells some terrific stories about playing quarterback for Bill Walsh, David Romer explains the feedback Bill Belichick gave him on his paper and Jeff Sagarin and Wayne Winston debate the best ways to analyze play by play data. Brian Burke concludes the show with thoughts on his four part series on momentum.

Brian Burke returns to the show for the final podcast of the season. He and Dave kick off the episode with a NFL rules brainstorming session. They discuss some of Brian's (and readers') ideas for creative rule changes the league could implement to make the game more interesting and fun. Brian then dives into an explanation of his latest article on the value of a time out. He describes his process for analyzing the win probability ramifications of "burning" time outs, and why sometimes it's better for a team to make any choice rather than use a valuable resource debating the optimum choice.  Dave and Brian then spend some time looking at Brian's win prediction model for the Superbowl, and why it looks to be a very close match-up. To wrap up the episode they use the Franchise Season Plot tool to take a look back at the 2013 season.

Kevin Quealy, graphics editor at the New York Times, comes on the show to discuss data visualizations. An expert in using data to tell visual stories, Kevin walks Dave through the process he and the graphics department use to tell news-worthy stories with data and graphics. Kevin describes some of his recent sports work, including a graph of longest QB start streaks, the 4th Down Bot and his NFL draft success chart. He talks about how he and his team begin their work process by looking for interesting stories and data-sets, and how those stories go through a variety of iterations before they are turned into visually striking charts. Kevin explains his criteria for what makes a great visualization and provides some helpful tips for aspiring information designers.

Keith Goldner is back on the podcast to discuss this past weekend's divisional round playoff games. Keith is the chief analyst at Numberfire and also a regular contributor to Advanced NFL Stats. Dave and Keith begin by discussing some of the key decisions from the past weekend's playoff games, including whether Marshawn Lynch should've gone down at the one yard line at the end of the Seattle/New Orleans game, Riverboat Ron's goal line strategies and what to do when a punt is botched and the snap ends up in the end zone.   Keith reviews his lists of the regular season's most efficient quarterbacks and running backs and explains the differences between high efficiency and high success rate player performance. Dave and Keith round out the episode by previewing this weekend's AFC and NFC championship games, and Keith predicts which teams he expects to see playing for a ring in New York this February.

Alok Pattani of ESPN Stats & Info joins Dave to discuss how ESPN uses analytics across multiple platforms. They discuss his team's research on NFL pass protection, EPA vs YPG, and offensive pace. Alok provides his thoughts on this weekend's divisional round games and makes predictions.

Chase Stuart returns to the show just in time to discuss his latest Football Perspective research. Dave and Chase begin by breaking down the historical context of Peyton Manning's single season passing touchdown record. They then cover the Carolina Panthers and break down the changes they’ve made over the past year, the storylines surrounding Cam Newton, and how overall team performance can sometimes obfuscate an individual player's development Next, Chase takes to his soapbox to make the case that the Jets should fire Rex Ryan and explains how retaining him would set a unique historical precedent. Dave and Chase then turn their sights to the Giants, and discuss what to make of Eli Manning’s interception spike. The episode concludes with a look ahead to the week 17 Bears/Packers and Cowboys/Eagles matchups. Chase weighs in on what he’s most excited for in this year’s playoffs, and why playing a Superbowl outdoors might actually be more fair than playing in a dome.

This week Harold Sackrowitz, professor of Statistics at Rutgers University and author of "Refining the After-Touchdown Decision" joins Dave to discuss two point conversions. Harold first became interested in football analytics in the mid-90's when he and his son penned a paper on ball control, and whether the strategy of paying "keep away" from talented opposing offenses is an effective strategy (spoiler alert: it's not). His research found that an inferior team sacrificing offensive efficiency would require an unrealistically large reduction in the number of possessions to make a "ball-control" offensive strategy effective. In the second half of the interview, Dave and Professor Sackrowitz talk about his paper on two point conversions. Harold was initially intrigued by repeated mentions of "the 2 point chart" on television broadcasts, and after digging up "the chart" he found it to be lacking in context. He devised a dynamic programming model to incorporate score differential, the number of possessions remai

Brian Burke is back on the show to break down his latest work. He explains the details of the updated win probability formula and the story behind the brand new New York Times 4th Down Bot. Dave and Brian also discuss his latest post analyzing "streakiness" and how it can measure momentum. They then dive into the wildly entertaining week 14 slate of games, beginning with a look at Keith Goldner's intentional touchdown post and a review of the best (Matt Prater) and worst (Philadelphia/Detroit) of the week 14 kicking game. Brian lays out the interesting math behind the Alabama/Auburn missed field goal return, and how the analysis behind it presents some tricky challenges. The show ends with a look at late season winter weather, and how it may affect teams as they prepare to battle for the chance to play outdoors in this year's New York Superbowl.

Dave interviews Pete Palmer, one of the original great minds in sabermetrics. Pete co-authored the Hidden Game of Baseball, and later, the Hidden Game of Football. Pete describes how he discovered a scorekeeping error that incorrectly listed Ty Cobb's 1910 batting average as too high, thereby literally rewriting the baseball record books. He then discusses what it was like to edit baseball and football encyclopedias, how he made the move into football analytics and his current role as a member of the New England Patriots stat team. Pete outlines the major findings he and his co-authors reveal in The Hidden Game of Football, including early versions of expected points and win percentages.  The show concludes with a discussion of questions he's interested in analyzing in today's NFL.

David Romer, professor of economics at UC Berkeley, is on the podcast this week to discuss why coaches should be more aggressive on fourth down. David is the author of "Do Firms Maximize? Evidence From Professional Football". In this interview, he explains his novel approach to analyzing fourth down decision-making. He outlines reasons why coaches are incentivized to make sub-optimal choices and how they can improve their team’s chances of winning by following his advice.

Brian Burke is back to discuss momentum, clock management and topics from his weekly roundups. In his recent post on momentum, Brian used three different methods to investigate whether momentum is a measurable phenomenon in NFL games. Dave and Brian discuss why momentum is such a popular concept and hypothesize why coaches and analysts seem to rely so heavily on the idea. They also discuss Brian’s article on clock management, and why it’s unlikely that truly non-zero sum scenarios exist in a football game. They finish up the show with a "rapid fire roundup" of some interesting articles and analysis from around the web.

Dave talks with Jeff Sagarin and Wayne Winston about their four decades of work in the field of sports statistics. Wayne and Jeff met while studying at MIT and have been friends ever since. In the early 80's, they had their first collaboration on a football play-calling project for Indiana University's head football coach, Sam Wyche. Since then, Jeff has been publishing his team ratings in USA Today while Wayne published his book, "Mathletics", and currently teaches at Indiana's Kelly School of Business.

Joining the show this week is Virgil Carter, the man many consider to be the founding father of advanced football statistics. Dave, Brian and Virgil look back at the Virgil's playing days when he was suiting up at quarterback for the Bears while studying for his MBA at Northwestern during the off-season. It was there at Northwestern that he published his first paper, Operations Research on Football. That paper introduced the idea of expected point value based on game situation, an idea that is still at the core of advanced football analysis. Virgil also talks about what it was like to play under head coach Paul Brown, and why if it weren't for him,  Bill Walsh might have never needed to create his "west coast" style passing offense.

Ben Alamar, author of Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers and Other Decision Makers is on the show this week to discuss his new book. Ben is a professor of sports management at Menlo College, and works as a consultant to a variety of NBA and NFL teams. The episode begins with Ben describing his background in economics and why he saw a need to found the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, the only peer-reviewed journal solely for papers on sports economics. They then discuss his work with Michael Lewis for the book Moneyball, and how he approached the question of analyzing the success of offensive linemen. Ben then discusses his new book, and breaks down some of the experiences he’s had working to build the analytics programs of professional sports organizations. Finally, the episode ends with his thoughts on the recent NFL season by continuing the now weekly tradition of praising Peyton Manning for his otherworldly statistical year.

Brian Burke is back for another episode of the Advanced NFL Stats podcast. This week, Dave dives into Brian’s most recent articles. First up is a study analyzing when defenses should decline penalties after a loss. This piece uses expected points to determine the break even yardage required for a defensive coach to opt for a loss of down over a loss of yardage. The second part of the episode is dedicated to the Baltimore Ravens and their mediocre rushing attack. Inspired by his favorite team’s recent offensive woes, Brian looked at which teams might be better off if they abandoned the run completely as part of their offensive game plan. The show concludes with a discussion based on a comment from the Brian’s previous podcast appearance. Dave asks Brian to justify his claim that most NFL coaches are relatively interchangeable, and that at the highest (NFL) level, there is little discernible difference different head coaches.