The value of a touchdown

The value of a touchdown is a phrase used in formulas like this one

PASSER RANKING = (yards + 10*TDs – 45*Ints)/attempts

where the first thing that comes to mind is that the TD is worth 10 yards and the interception is worth 45 yards. But is it? A TD after all, is worth about 7 points, and in The Hidden Game of Football formulation, a turnover is worth 4 points. Therefore, a TD is worth considerably more than a turnover, but the formula values the TD less. How is that?

Well, let me reassure you that in the new passer rating of the Hidden Game of Football, the value of a touchdown is a constant, equal to 6.8 points or 85 yards. The interception of 4 points is usually valued at 45 yards instead of 50, because most interceptions don’t make it back to the line of scrimmage.

The field itself is zero valued at the 25 yard line. That means once you get to the one yard line, you have one yard to go of field and the TD is worth an additional 10 yards of value. That’s where the 10 comes from. It’s not the value of the touchdown, but the additional value of the touchdown not measured on the field itself.

But what does this additional term actually mean?

Figure 1. The basic linear scoring model of THGF. TD = 6, linear slope = 0.08 points/yard. The probability of a score goes to 1.0 as the goal line is approached.

Figure 2. The model of THGF's new passer rating. The difference between y value at 100 yards and TD equals 0.8 points or 10 yards. Maximum probability of a score approaches 75/85.

If you check out the figures above, Figure 1 is introduced in The Hidden Game  of Football on page 102, and features in just about all the descriptions of worth up until page 186, where we run into this text. The authors appear to be carving out a new formula from the refactored NFL formula they introduce in their book.

Awarding a 80 yard bonus for a touchdown pass makes no sense either. It’s like treating every TD pass as though it were a 80-yard bomb. Yet, the majority of touchdown passes are from inside the 25 yard line.

It’s not the bonus we’re objecting to-after all, the whole point of throwing a pass is to get the ball into the end zone-but the size of the bonus is way out of kilter. We advocate a 10 yard bonus for each touchdown pass. It’s still higher than the yardage on a lot of TD passes, but it allows for the fact that yardage is a lot harder to get once a team gets inside the opponent’s 25.

and without quite saying so, the authors introduce the model in Figure 2. To note, the value of the touchdown and the yardage value merge in Figure 1, but remain apart in Figure 2. This value, which I’ve called a barrier potential previously, is the product of a chance to score that’s less than a 1.0 probability as you reach the goal line.  If your chances maximize at merely 80%, you’ll end up with a model with a barrier potential.

If I have an objection to the quoted argument, it’s that it encourages the whole notion of double counting the touchdown “yardage”. The appropriate way to figure out the slope of any linear scoring model is by counting all scoring at a particular yard line, or within a particular part of the field (red zone scoring, for example, which could  be normalized to the 10 yard line). These are scoring models, after all, not touchdown models.

Where did 6.8 come from, instead of 7?

Whereas before I was thinking  it was 6 points for the TD and 0.8 points for the extra point, I’m now thinking it came from the same notions that drove the score value of 6.4 for Romer and 6.3 for Burke. It’s 7 points less the value of the runback. I’ve used 6.4 points to derive scoring models for PFR’s aya and the NFL passer rating, but on retrospect, those aren’t appropriate uses. These models tend to zero in value around 25 yards, whereas the Romer model has much higher initial slopes and reaches positive values faster than these linear models.

This value can be calculated, but the formula that results can’t be calculated directly. It can be solved iteratively, though, with a pretty short piece of code

Figure 3. Perl code to solve for slope, effective TD value and y value at 100 yards in linear scoring models.

Figure 4. Solving for barriers of 10 and 20 yards.

And the solution is close enough to 6.8 that it’s easy enough to ignore the difference. Plugging 7 points for the touchdown, 20 and 29.1 yards respectively for the barrier potential yields almost no changes in the touchdown value for  the PFR aya model and the NFL passer rating formula, and we end up with these scoring model plots.

Figure 5. PFR aya amended model. TD = 7 points, slope = 0.075 points/yard, y at 100 = 5.5 points.

Figure 6. Amended NFL prf scoring model. TD = 7.05 points, slope = 0.07 points/yard, y at 100 = 5.0 points.

 

Malcolm Gladwell’s “What the Dog Saw” and the fresh point of view

I’ve just started reading this book

and if only for the introduction, people  need to take a look at this book. This quote is pretty important to folks who want to understand how football analytics actually works, as opposed to what people tell you..

The other trick in finding ideas is figuring out the difference between power and knowledge. Of all the people whom you’ll meet in this  volume, very few of them are powerful or even famous. When I said I’m most  interested in minor geniuses, that’s what I mean.   You don’t start at the top if you want the story. You start in the middle, because the people in  the middle who do the actual work in the world….People at the top are self-conscious about what they say (and rightfully so) because they have position and  privilege to protect – and self-consciousness is the enemy of “interestingness”.

The more I read smaller blogs, the more I understand and the better I understand what I’m doing. To note, the Hidden Game of Football is also a worthwhile read, as those guys put a lot of effort into their work, into making it understandable, and a deeper read usually pays off in deeper understanding of concepts.

In Gladwell’s  book, there is a discussion of Nassim Taleb, currently a darling because of his contrarian views about randomness and its place in economics. But more immediately useful as a metaphor is Malcolm’s discussion of ketchup. He makes a strong case that the old ketchup formula endures because it’s hard to improve on.  It has just about  the right amounts of everything in the flavor spectrum to make it work for most people. I’m thinking the old NFL passer rating formula is much like that, though the form of  the equation is a little difficult for most people to absorb. I’ll be touching on ways to look at the passer rating in a much simplified form shortly.

Another story is in order here, the story of the sulfa drugs. To begin, recall that the late 19th century spawned a revolution in organic chemistry, which first manifested in new, colorful dyes. And not just clothing dyes, but also the art of tissue staining. The master of tissue staining back in the day was one Paul Ehrlich, who from his understanding of staining specific tissues, came up with  the notion of the “magic bullet”. In other words, find a stain that binds specifically to pathogens, attach a poison to the stain, and thereby selectively kill bacteria and other pathogens. His drug Salvarsan was the first modern antibacterial and his work set the stage for more sophisticated drugs.

Bayer found  the first of the new drugs, protonsil, by examining coal-tar dyes. However it only worked in live animals. A French team later found that in the body, the drug was cleaved into two parts, a medically inactive dye, and a medically active and colorless drug  that later became known as sulfanilamide. The dye portion of the magic bullet was unnecessary. Color wasn’t necessary to make the drug “stick”.

When dealing with formulas, you need to figure out ways to cut  the dye out of the equation, reduce formulas to their essence. Mark Bittman does that with recipes, and his Minimalist column in the Times is a delight to read. And  in football, needless complication just gets in the way. Figure it out, and then ruthlessly simplify it. And I suspect that’s the best path to  understanding why certain old formulas still have functional relevance in modern times.

Update: added link to new article. Fixed mixing of phrases silver bullet and magic bullet

 

The 43 Flex, from Tom Landry to Rob Ryan

The Dallas Morning News has a cute article, about how the first defensive call by Rob Ryan on the first defensive play of the first preseason game of Dallas in 2011 was the 43 Flex. I recall watching that play and thinking “psycho front”. And yes, Ryan has 4 players along the line of scrimmage and 3 players at linebacker depth, but what we’re going to do in this article is talk about about Tom Landry’s first two defenses, the 43 inside and 43 outside, and how they then morphed into the flex, to better use the talents of their All-Pro defensive tackle, Bob Lilly.

Dallas-Miami, SB VI, 4-3 inside line setup.

43 inside/outside. Inside, DTs rush "A" gap. Outside, "B" gap.

If you have the set “Vince Lombardi on Football“, then you have perhaps the best resource I can locate on the 4-3 inside and the 4-3 outside. Pages 174 through 185 cover these two defenses. The physical setup of the defensive line is the same in both cases. In the 4-3 inside, the defensive tackles rush into the “A” gaps and the middle linebacker is responsible for both “B” gaps. In the 4-3 outside, the defensive tackles rush into the “B” gaps and the middle linebacker is responsible for both “A” gaps. The front, from the offenses left to right, is a “5-2-2-5” alignment, with the tackles head up on the offensive guards, and the ends on the outside shoulders of the tackles. The middle linebacker is 1.5 yards deep, the strong side linebacker is nose onto the tight end if the tight end is separated, suggesting strong side sweep.

Vince Lombardi on the 4-3 inside

Vince Lombardi on the 4-3 outside

The ideas for the Flex came about after Bob Lilly’s move from left defensive end to right tackle. Dick Nolan describes it as one half of  the line playing a 43 inside, one half playing a 43 outside. To note, the  tackles in the inside/outside are flexed. In Tom Landry’s Flex, however, it depended on which side of the offense was “strong”, or likely to be  the side players would run to. Bob, in Peter Golenbock’s book, describes it as follows:

If I were on the weak side, I’d be head-up with the guard, right on the line of scrimmage, whereas the tackle on the other side would be three feet back. George Andrie would be right over the tackle and instead of being on his outside shoulder, he’d be head-up, three feet back. He would be keying my guard. I also keyed my guard.

Dallas flexed. DLT on the LOS because offense is strong left.

43 flex. Left to right, front is "4-2-2-5".

As Dick Nolan explains

Let’s say the other team tries the old Lombardi sweep. When that guard pulls and that center tries to choke back to get Lilly, he can’t get to him quick enough because Lilly can just go around him, and the center will fall down on his nose trying to block him. Lilly will be running right behind their guard, and Paul Hornung will be running the ball, and Paul Horning can’t come back, because  if he does, he’ll be running right back into Lilly…

To guard against the counter, the off side defensive end now plays a 4 technique as opposed to a 5. That end is responsible for the weak side gap that the off side defensive tackle has left behind.

When introduced, it caused a lot of confusion,  because Dallas soon came to  be able to play the  43 inside/outside from the Flex set. That was the upside, as no one knew what they were actually playing. The downside is the weak side defensive end’s pass rush was effectively stuffed whenever the Flex was played. By the late 1970s early 1980s, it became almost automatic for teams to pass when they saw the Flex. Consequently,  as Charlie Waters explains in Golenbock’s book, the Flex was played less and less.

In the 1990s, Dallas switched to the Miami 43, versions of which are still played today. A derivative of the Miami 43 is Ron Vanderlinden’s Stack defense, discussed briefly here.

And now we have Rob Ryan’s 43 Flex. No, it doesn’t look a bit like the Tom Landry defense, but does resemble, somewhat, the double eagle flex defenses that were popularized by Dick Tomey and Rich Ellerson. A screen shot and a diagram of Rob’s defense follows.

Rob's 43 flex, first play of preseason. Denver appears to have an 8 man line.

Rob Ryan's 43 Flex

Notes: updated due to typos, and a very nice article on Blogging the Boys that identified each player along this front. Further, the blog Compete in All Things has some Xs and Os on the modern 43 Flex.

 

“Football’s Eagle and Stack Defenses”, by Ron Vanderlinden, a review

Ron Vanderlinden is a defensive coach, who was with the Colorado Buffaloes national championship team, then spent time at Northwestern University, coaching for their 1995 Big 10 Champion, before moving on to coach linebackers for Joe Paterno’s Penn State Nittany Lions. In this book he describes the Eagle and Stack defenses, the Eagle being the 4-3 defensive scheme he learned and developed while at Colorado, the Stack being Ron’s term for a defensive scheme derived from Jimmy Johnson’s Miami 4-3. The defense he describes is thus a melding of  two schemes, one better suited for strong running teams (the Eagle) and another better suited for spread formation passing teams (the Stack). In this, there is an analogy between Tom Landry’s 4-3 inside and 4-3 outside formations, the melding of which led to the 4-3 flex.

In depth detail on a 4-3 defensive scheme, this book is highly recommended.

This book describes in depth a very successful college program and defense, and as befits a book that describes a whole coaching system, it begins with a certain set of drills, pursuit drills in the very first chapter. After describing drills it them proceeds to the player profiles required for the various positions in the Eagle. Once complete he then gets into the Eagle Defense (4 chapters), the Stack (4 chapters), fusions of the two (2 chapters), 3 chapters on positional technique, and then 3 chapters on special situations, such as goal line defense. As such, in the wealth of practical detail, the book resembles a college textbook, and has a level of difficulty akin to a sophomore organic chemistry text, or a junior level biochemistry text.

This is a good coaches book, and for the casual fan, it should be skimmed and used as a reference. There are discussions of schemes I’ve not seen before, such as Cover 7, or Cover 5:

2 safeties close to LOS aid in run defense. 2 deep strong side DBs cover 1/4 of field, while weak side DB covers 1/2. FS has TE (light blue) and post responsibilities.

The Stack defense, though generally an umbrella defense, more easily allowing 4 deep coverage, can easily be converted into a 4-4.

To note, Ron  has his own unique nomenclature for offensive gaps (1 for “A”, 3 for “B” and so on), one that makes the gap assignment align with the defensive technique. His use of 6, 7 and 9 technique I found confusing, but that’s because the standard technique assignments aren’t consistent once you get to tight ends (I would have thought them to be 6, 6i and 7 respectively, but consistency is just a hobgoblin of small minds)..

 

The essential Cowboys bookshelf – “Cowboys Have Always Been My Heroes”, by Peter Golenbock, and more

If you own exactly one book on the Dallas Cowboys, I’d strongly suggest this one be your book.

The essential oral narrative of the Dallas Cowboys.

Peter’s book is an oral narrative, composed of dozen of interviews of the “critical players”, and thus similar to, say, Studs Terkel’s “The Good War“. The book is organized in chronological order, from the foundation of the franchise to the middle 1990s. It’s not really a tell all book, though it interviews people who were very pro franchise and others who didn’t care much for their treatment (the linebacker Rodrigo Barnes, for example). It is rich in detail, exhaustive, but an easier read than its 838 pages would suggest. For the historian, comments about the way Tom Landry was blocking when the franchise began would be useful to those tracing the origins of the zone blocking scheme. We’ve talked about the specific quotes involved in our review of Pat Kirwan’s book.

Along with Pete’s book, I would also recommend this set of DVDs

along with this set of 10 Cowboys games.

These videos, along with the book, would aid any fan in tracing the nature and character of the franchise over the years. The one place where the book appears to be lacking is in any coverage of the Miami 4-3. While a ton of interviews touch on Tom Landry’s contribution to the 4-3 defense, such as the flex defense, coverage of Jimmy Johnson’s Miami 4-3 just isn’t there at all. That, I’d suggest, is the largest open hole in the Golenbock book.

 

A best buy in NFL books: “The Eagles Encyclopedia”, by Didinger and Lyons

Anybody who says without qualification or categorization that “Eagles fans are scum” has never seriously read or listened to Ray Didinger. The book, “The Eagles Encyclopedia” is excellent, thorough, well researched, and better than any single book written about the history of a football team that I’ve read so far. And it does it by going about the subject in as many different ways as you can imagine, and with an acute eye for detail. There is a general history of the team. There is a section that highlights the important players on the team – guys like Steve Van Buren, Norm van Brocklin, Chuck Bednarik, Tommy McDonald, Tom Brookshier. There is a section for the coaches, especially valuable is the coverage of Earle (Greasy) Neale, but also including Buddy Ryan, Andy Reid and Dick Vermiel. They talk about every championship team  the Eagles have ever had. There is a section that talks about each and every playoff game for the team. The year to year details are stuck in the back, in an appendix.

Because the authors touch the team in multiple ways, you have the effect of many different lenses into the history of the Eagles. It makes them accessible, it shows sides of the team you might not have expected. The legendary Minnesota coach Bud Grant is an example: he spent some time playing for the Eagles, and he was good. He was just proud, and wanted to be paid in an era when players weren’t paid very much. So he left, to play for years in the CFL.

Back in the day, Bud Grant was an Eagle.

Roman Gabriel played for the Eagles for a while. That’s discussed in depth. The  two years that Herschel Walker played for the Eagles is discussed, Terrell Owens, and Jevon Kearse. Hugh Douglass, an underrated end, also comes to mind. Wilbert Montgomery, whom I saw play in his freshman year in the NAIA championship in Shreveport, has some excellent coverage.

The section on Bosh Pritchard caught my eye: he was a halfback who played alongside Steve Van Buren on the Earle Neale teams of the late 1940s. This Boss Pritchard quote is worth mentioning.

It’s such a different game now. Our tackles averaged 220 pounds. Today, they’ve got fullbacks who weigh 250.  These players work out with weights all  year. Our coaches wouldn’t let us lift weights. They said that weights made you muscle-bound. Of course, no one ever said that about me.

Not only is the “Eagles Encyclopedia” a good oversized hardback, you can get it for about 2 dollars on Amazon these days. It’s cheaper than a drug store paperback. And if there is any downside to the book, it ends in the 2004 season. So, it’s a few years behind the current state of the Eagles.

 

“Adapt”, coaching, and the NFL draft

“Adapt”, by Tim Harford, is a book focused on teaching how a corporation can survive “extinction events“, and what kinds of skills create sound and adaptive companies. It’s a worthwhile read on that basis alone, but what kinds of lessons can this book have to, say, the average high school football coach, and perhaps as well, decision making in terms of the NFL draft?

Chapter One lays the premise of the book. Tim Harford talks about a toaster,  talks about how incredibly difficult it is to make a toaster from scratch, and uses that as an example of how sophisticated the modern world is (think of a modern defense, or football offense, and how specialized these have become), and how interdependent the parts are. He then makes the parallel between corporations, their lifespans, and how even very successful corporations have disappeared over time, and biological evolution. The metaphor, though, is simply a framework for some provocative case studies.

Chapter Two gets into a lot of meaty detail. He talks about the failure of  the Iraq War and as well, the failures of Vietnam as well. He points out organizational parallels in both circumstances. I’ll note, on my own, that both Donald Rumsfeld and Robert McNamara were exceptionally smart and capable individuals. But when circumstances changed, they were both unwilling to take input that didn’t confirm their current viewpoints.

A point that Tim Harford hammers home again and again, it’s that  many heads are always better than one. Evidently, this is something demonstrable in a formal problem solving study. From page 49 of Tim’s book:

An alternative perspective on the value of an alternative perspective comes from the complexity theorists Lu Hong and Scott Page. Their decision-makers are simple automatons inside a computer, undaunted by social pressure. Yet when Hong and Page run simulations in which their silicon agents are programmed to search for solutions, they find that  the very smartest agents aren’t as successful as a more diverse group of dumber agents. Even though ‘different’ often means ‘wrong’, trying something different has a  value all of its own… Both because of  the conformity effect Asch discovered, and because of the basic usefulness of hearing more ideas, better decisions emerge from a diverse group.

This speaks to the idea of a leader being a good listener as well as someone who knows and inspires. Create a team. Make sure the team is diverse in terms of  its thinking, make sure everyone has a voice. Listen, because you don’t know whose solution will end up succeeding.

Chapter Three gets into the value of the unexpected solution. To me this provides the orthodox reason for mining the later draft choices. Tim Harford gives the example of the Supermarine Spitfire. When the British government decided to fund the development of the Spitfire, the orthodox military theory (see here and here) of the time said that pursuit aircraft, as fighters were then called, were useless. Airplanes such as the Boeing B-10 and B-17 were as fast as pursuit planes and bristled with guns. Waves of hundreds or thousands of these aircraft would  obliterate cities and make conventional war obsolete. Things such as

Billy Mitchell‘s sinking of the Ostfriesland

had so captured the imagination of military theorists they couldn’t conceive of a world where bombers could be stopped. But the government, hedging its bets, spent some money on the Spitfire anyway. Later, they were grateful they did.

This point, translated into draft theory, would go something like this: the net value of finding Pro Bowl or starter talent in the later rounds is almost incalculable. So that’s why you look, that’s why you do it. Further, you need to look for players that could start. Drafting players as perpetual backups isn’t  the point of the later rounds.

Tim goes on to develop  the theme of the affordable risk, to talk about the value of decoupling risk factors (a lot of interesting studies of failed oil rigs here). There  is a lot of meat for those in the business world, in the military (the organizational notes are exceptionally worthwhile), and as a foundation for the value of late round draft choices, one for which I’m personally grateful.

Read it sometime. You won’t regret it.

 

Championship Football, by Dana X. Bible

Amazon.com, if you guys don’t know, is a  terrific source of penny books, books that third parties sell through Amazon for a penny. I’ve picked up a slew of books that way, and I’m reading quite a few of them. Of them, the most promising is “Education of a Coach” by David Halberstam, but I’m not going to talk about it until I finish some film study of the 1990 Super Bowl. David Halberstam has said some things about that game that absolutely deserve video study, so I’m in the middle of doing that. In  the meantime, I’ll mention a book I picked up for sentimental reasons, my father’s only football book when I was young, the book “Championship Football”, by Dana X. Bible.

Originally copyrighted in 1947, and a fifth printing from 1949, the book is old. The book is musty, and it’s a library copy from a junior high near Texarkana Texas. For all I know, this book was held by H Ross Perot some time in the past.

My first impression was how relevant the material was. Not the bits on strategy, but other things, like plays, like tips on playing, tips on blocking technique, tips on tackling a quarterback higher, so that you pin his arms to his body. Photographs, such as Bobby Lane showing people how to pass the ball, and players in 2, 3, and 4 point stances, are useful. Someone needs to resurrect this book, at least in PDF form, if nothing else.

The late 40s were a period when the T formation was coming into common use, but the older formations, such as the single and double wing, long and short punt formations, were still around. Dana talks knowledgeably about spinning backs, or spinners.

Dr Z: Vick as back 4, Duckett as 3, Dunn as 1, Koslowski as 2.

Spinners? You are a Dr Z fan, aren’t you? Can’t you remember Dr Z, Paul Zimmerman, trying to convince Dan Reeves to use Michael Vick as a single wing tailback, and growing sentimental about spinners?

In my dream, I lined up Vick at the run-pass tailback spot. T.J. Duckett was my spinning fullback. Warrick Dunn was the wingback, and Brian Kozlowski, normally the second tight end, was the blocking back. I just couldn’t shake the vision. Finally I called Dan Reeves, who was the Falcons’ coach at the time. Of all the loony calls he’s ever gotten, this must have ranked right up there. Anyway, I laid it all out for him, ending with Duckett as the old Michigan-style spinning fullback.

“What’s a spinning fullback?” Reeves said, and I realized that I was either real old or just dopier than usual. The idea never got any further, but I still think something like that would light up the sky.

Well, Dana has a whole page (or more) on spinners, and not just spinners, he offers a variety of formations on those pages.

Zone defenses, 1940s style. The 5-4 is what we'd call a 34 today.

Curious about the origins of scouting? Wonder how it was done before Steve Belichick came out with his scouting book? I found it interesting to compare pages between the older and the newer book. Seem familiar?

Scouting tips from Steve's book

Scouting tips from Dana's book.

Of course, strategy in those days was incredibly conservative, as offenses were not really well developed in  those days.This is a strategy chart from Dana’s book.

That chart did more to throw me for a loop than anything else, though when teams would quick kick here and there, I was at least ready for the tactic.

Upshot? Terrific book. It probably needs to be preserved in a PDF version, one that won’t age over time. These library copies won’t be around forever.

Update: Google Books has a scan of this book.

 

NFL books – “The Glory Game”, by Frank Gifford

There is a sense of embarrassment that pervades Frank’s book, one that could perhaps be explained by the fact  that David Halberstam was planning on writing a book about the 1958 NFL championship game. But it seems deeper than that. He talks about the salaries the pros made in the 1950s, the failures on the field, the sense of embarrassment that he couldn’t win for his dad, his peripatetic childhood. As a focused study of the game, well, it isn’t. It’s an older man’s book, broad in scope, a little rambling and talkative.

And in that is the strength of the story, which captures a snapshot in time that doesn’t exist anymore. No, I haven’t read extensively about 1950s football, and for someone who hasn’t, it can be a fascinating glimpse at their lives, the character of 1950s New York City. Further, Frank talks candidly about the failures in leadership of the period, strips away common myths about the way the champion Giants worked, and in doing so, exposes the growing character of two towering football figures, Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

Cowboys fans might find this bit of text fascinating:

For my first two years , I played defense more than offense, which meant I was playing with Landry, who was even then a player-coach. So I knew how rigid, strict, and unyielding he was as a coach.

Actually,  in  one game against the Redskins, I made an interception and lateraled the ball to Tom, who ran it in for a touchdown. On the following Tuesday, we watched the film.

“Gifford, was that the coverage?”

“I know, Tom, but they were in a Brown right, L-split,” I started to explain, “and-”

“There are no ‘buts'”

“But what if –”

“There are no what-ifs”

If you didn’t play the defense Tom’s way, end of conversation.

“He had a computer mind”, is how Huff remembers Landry. “He studied the opposition’s offensive frequencies in various situations, and he taught them, and you studied them. He’d always say, ‘You have to believe, You  gotta believe. I’ll put you in position to make the play, trust me.’ If you weren’t in position, and making the moves he’d given you, he’d give you ‘The Look’. He didn’t have to say anything: you could read his mind, and what he was saying was ‘You dumb-ass.'”

Vince Lombardi? Gifford expresses a great deal of skepticism about Lombardi’s portrayal in Maraniss’s book, because Frank never saw Lombardi as dictator.  Lombardi was, Gifford claimed, a much more approachable man when Vince was their offensive coach.

And so it goes. The book is peppered with those kinds of details. As an example, Lenny Moore always kept a miniature bible in his thigh pad. Perhaps the most evocative writing is a description of the 1950s New York City night life, dominated by saloons, and the search for places where someone could pick up some or all of the player’s tab. After such a fine bit of work on the times, the setting, the game itself tends to fade into the background. Perhaps, this game has been so intensely covered that most of us in the hard core fan category could recite the ebb and flow of the game by heart.

Please note there is a coauthor, Peter Richmond. It’s a tribute to Peter that the book sounds as if Frank is narrating the text.

 

NFL Classic Books: The Hidden Game of Football

This book, by Carroll, Palmer, and Thorn, can be regarded as Deep Stats 1.0, a serious attempt to get past raw numbers and generate a Theory of Everything. Well, football Everything.

For a statistically minded crew,  it’s an absolute must read, because they completely destroy the NFL’s passer rating formula. They had thought a lot about the formula, and their critique is penetrating and incisive. It can also be treated as a critique of any goof who stands up and claims that today’s passers are superior because their ratings are better than the players of  yesteryear, because, yes, Carroll et al have taken that whole argument and flayed it open on the written page as well.

That it is an older theory can be seen by  the units the authors choose to use. They reduce everything to yards. Yards? Any self respecting creator of a theory of Football Everything knows that the unit du jour is wins. This has been true ever since Bill James’s Win Shares, at least, and as stats like WARP (i.e. wins above replacement player) have become common. This need to express everything in terms of wins, or better yet, playoff wins, is part of what is fueling the current micro-revolution in football stats (see, for example, this recent Fifth Down Blog article by Brian Burke). We don’t need no steenkin’ points, no yards. How does taking the head off the secondary receiver and separating him from the ball translate into wins, padre? What things does my team need to do to win games, win playoff games, and win championships? That’s what any self respecting data geek wants to know.

Any other issues? I note that they have a rather unique description, in their “how the game evolved” pages, of Earle Neale’s Eagle defense and Steve Owens’s umbrella defense, differing from the descriptions given by Dr Z in Thinking Man’s or Jean Bramel in the Fifth Down blog. And no, I don’t think the Eagle was a 6-2 or that Steve Owen’s “Umbrella” was a 7-diamond. I think Dr Z and Jean are correct and this otherwise fine book wrong.

That said, they go over all aspects of the game, analyze them in terms of yards.. yes, they even convert scoring to .. yards, and then present their version of football Everything to the reader. It’s actually a fine first attempt, and were it not for the trends of the day, to think and eat and breathe in terms of wins, we might still be rating offenses by how many yards they “score”, and defenses by how many “yards” they prevent.