IBvBB Blogstravaganza (Part 3)

This is part three of our discussion with Gabe, the guy who continually makes oblique Simpsons and sci-fi references while discussing the Eagles over on BountyBowl.com.

For those who missed the beginning, part one is here on my site.  Part two is over on his.

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Gabe,

It turns out the hardest thing about this little discussion we're having is avoiding my comments section all day.  It's not uncommon for me to write something that's less than crystal clear in my posts -- and by "not uncommon" I mean it happens pretty much every day. 

That's sort of the deal with this blog (and most others).  I can either churn out an endless series of first drafts with the goal of putting forth the greatest number of new ideas possible, or I can spend a few hours each night trying to polish what I've already written, with the inevitable result being that I would write much, much less.  I think the first option is better, plus it allows this site to continue to be my writing playground and escape from a world where I must ensure our messaging leverages our existing brand position and is strategic, on-target and impactful, while also offering applicability to a wide range of possible audiences, whether corporate, consumer or political...

The problem is that if I venture into the comments to respond to something I wrote earlier, I'm basically clarifying/adjusting something that you should get a first crack at.  That makes it a moving target and isn't really fair. 

So I bit my tongue all day.  Which now leaves me with this:

1. Not sure the Marlins intended to tear everything down after the first WS.  I think I remember instead that when the stadium deal didn't go through, ownership had a tantrum.
2. Easy to forget what 10 years of sucking feels like.  It sucks.
3. I've been to two Redskins games in Washington.  Both times the Eagles won.  Both times the fans walked around after the game yammering about how the Eagles had never won a Super Bowl.  Didn't stop us from kicking your asses five minutes ago, dude.
4. Agreed totally.  I loved the Jeff Garcia experience, but felt the same way.
5. Exactly.
6. I said "classless" not "clueless."  And because it's my hypothetical. 

You bring up an interesting point about the 1993 Phillies.  Were those guys really a "fluke" though?  They sort of came out of nowhere, but after that 17-5 start, it felt all season like there was something special going on there.  If anything, not winning because of a couple of horrific blown saves felt like the fluky part.  That was a team of destiny.

Moving on to your specific questions, let's talk first about the Eagles' data-driven approach, since nothing drives sports blog traffic like an in-depth discussion of spreadsheets. 

I'm like you on this one -- totally without any hard facts to go on.  All we ever get are those occasional cryptic remarks from Andy Reid where he says something like, "I've looked into that and found that basically you idiots don't know what you're talking about."  But something has to be in that famous big fat binder, and it can't all just be calisthenics schedules, right? 

In fact, I'm still waiting to hear an explanation for one of those remarks Reid made last season:

On what his ideal run-pass ratio would be:
"I don't do that. I know that this offense is the best when it's as close to 60-40 or 50-50 as you can get it. I also know that, through studies that I've done, with a number of Super Bowl winners, that really doesn't matter as you go through there. You guys might take your time to do a little homework on that." 

If you follow the link to that post, you'll see that I actually did go back and "do a little homework on that."  What I found is that either my methodology didn't match what Reid meant ... or else he was kind of full of crap on that one.  I'd still love to find out what he was talking about some day. 

I also think there's a clear Moneyball slant to the team's thinking about personnel acquisition, but it's a LOT more refined these days than it was a few years ago when it basically seemed to boil down to: "Don't spend money on linebackers."

The biggest thing we've seen the past few years in the draft is the Eagles drafting more than their fair share of guys who dominated at the small-school level.  It's one thing to draft those Wheaton guys with freebie picks in the sixth round.  It's another thing entirely to be consistently taking guys from Cal-Poly, McNeese State and Saginaw Valley in the top half of the draft. 

All of which leads me to conclude that the Eagles think there's a market inefficiency around small-school players in the draft.  And it's one they think they can exploit.

The rumor for years for why the Bengals drafted all those thugs young men with character flaws was simply because the team refused to invest in its scouting department.  Faced with an inability to identify the best all-around prospects, the Bengals figured they would be better off gambling with those character issues, since even a blind squirrel could see these guys had talent. 

What if the Eagles are in the opposite situation?  What if they provide more resources to their scouting department or have otherwise figured out a way to increase their efficiency there?  Then they could -- in theory -- invest time in a broader range of players.  This would give them the chance to really do their homework on guys from schools where scouts don't usually hang out.

Or maybe the explanation is even simpler than that.  Maybe every team rates these guys the same way athletically, but other teams dock them more "points" in their evaluations for having played at a lower level of competition.  If the Eagles did a study on how those small-school guys have historically performed in the NFL, maybe they realized that there was too much of a discount being factored in.

Whatever, none of those ideas explain why the Eagles -- a team that seems committed to staying with a 4-3 base defense -- continue to draft so many guys everyone else seems to think would fit best as 3-4 outside linebackers. 

Just looking at the roster right now, they have clear 3-4 linebackers in Chris Gocong, Andy Studebaker, Bryan Smith and Chris Clemons.  Heck, that was actually the position Clemons played last year.  You could even throw in Trent Cole and Juqua Parker as two more guys who were looked at as tweeners coming out of college. 

I realize Jim Johnson likes his guys to be versatile, but that's still sort of weird.  For a team that seems to put so much emphasis on production at the college level, there's a whole lot of projection going on at those two positions.

One more NovaCare mystery I'd love to learn more about.

Since I need to wind this down, I want to shift gears to another topic we both care a lot about.  Play calling.  You've mentioned on a few occasions in the past that you feel like you can predict with about a 50 percent success rate what the Eagles are going to do in any given down and distance situation.  Leaving aside the issue that predicting "pass" every play would generally be a profit maximizing strategy in that game, what do you think the problem is and what can be done about it?  

I'm kind of split on this issue.  I do think the Reid/Mornhinweg pairing might be a little bit paint by numbers in its approach to attacking a defense.  That's one of the reasons I'm so irrationally excited about the hiring of the mysterious (and silent) Mark Whipple.  Something called the "whiplash offense"?  Yes, please.  I'll take two.

But beyond that, I'm not so sure the issue is having predictable playcallers as much as it is having predictable players.  After all, if it's a crucial time in the game, 65,000+ people in the stadium know the ball is going to Brian Westbrook.  There are only so many ways for that to happen.  Maybe if the Eagles had a few more -- ahem -- playmakers out there, they'd be able to mix it up a bit more. 

Or is Kevin Curtis really, truly a number one wide receiver and I should just shut up about the fact that he doesn't seem to be able to run past anyone on the outside under the age of 42?

Comments

[Andrew]

Reid has a couple of stats professors on retainer who create regression analysis studies and the like for him.

I also think you misunderstand his 60-40 50-50 pass-run comment. If you are a winning team, these ratios can both work to win a Super Bowl. His point was that the ratio is not the cause of winning. Since about 1990, the middle-band of the league in this regard has been 50-60% passing. There is a correlation between wins and rushing yards and rushing attempts (but not really with yards per rush) because winning teams tend to run the ball at the end of a game to drain the clock, while losers pass to attempt to catch up.

The best correlations to expected winning in traditional statistics (all near or over an R squared value of 0.3), aside from points and touchdowns, are offensive yards per attempt, offensive total yards, and defensive rushing yards. For example, there's only been one team with over 8 yards per attempt with an expected losing record since 1978. And only 9 teams have allowed under 1500 rushing yards and had an expected losing record.

[Me]

Andrew -- and I'm breaking my no comment rule here but screw it -- thank you for the information on the stats profs.

With that said, there are two separate points there. One would be the statistics you just cited -- which are fine -- the other is that no Super Bowl winning team in history has ever passed the ball as frequently as Reid's Eagles.

I think by now everyone gets the causation/correlation deal with rushing attempts and wins, but even when the Eagles are winning lots of games, we're not seeing the high number of rushing attempts every other team in history has achieved.

Now maybe it's because Reid thinks he's figured something out with the passing game. And maybe it's because he knows he has a quarterback he can trust not to turn the ball over. But that doesn't change the fact that his offense is without any precedent I can find.

[Eric]

I've noticed the small school trend you have expressed. I kind of think, too; that the Eagles believe they've "cornered" the market on under-appreciated talent.

But if the entire league deems these people 5th round or lower status players, why do the Eagles still invest 3rd and 4th round picks? If you know teams will probably snatch these guys up beginning in the 5th then trade down near the end of the 4th and pick up an extra pick or two.

It all seems a waste of a 3rd round pick despite what talent you may think you have. It was the same case for Westbrook. He's an obvious first round talent, but the Eagles assumed they could get him late 2nd / early 3 and did. If they had gone and spent a 1st round pick on him, despite his obvious talent today, it would still be viewed as a non-cost effective pick. If you knew you could get Tom Brady in the 6th round and knew he future potential, would you draft him in the first round? No. So why "waste" a 3rd round pick on Bryan Smith? Hell, he could have 20 sacks next year, but other teams and analysts had him as a 4th round or later projection.

It's just all really confusing.

[Me]

I guess the issue there is that even if 30 other teams have a guy rated as a 5th rounder, all it takes is the 31st having him in the third to mess up the best-laid plans.

Similar situation with Kolb last year. No one had him on the radar screen, obviously, but after the draft we heard rumblings that a couple other teams were looking to move up and draft him right around the time the Eagles did.

[shlynch]

Two points:

1) On Reid's "do your homework" point, I do think that the proper question is whether a team that is either the more pass-happy team or the more balanced team on a season-to-date basis is more likely to win a given playoff/Super Bowl game. I haven't seen such a study done, though it may well have been, but if neither relationship holds, then Reid's point should be that the offense should do what the offense does best. If that is, in AR's mind, passing the ball, then so be it. But I think that is the homework that would be relevant.

2) I have suspected that the small school bias may come from both the bigger scouting budget, as you suggest, and also from the reality that the Eagles expect absolutely nothing in Year 1 out of draft picks after the first round (or for the first time in forever, the second round this year). That allows them to take the better long term prospect. That naturally suggests small school guys who need polishing.

3) With respect to the 3-4 LBs, I think people at the draft get too into size-typing guys. 6'2" 240 LB DE? 3-4 LB. But guys can't always do that -- Trent Cole looked horrible at LB in the Senior(?) Bowl. Smith also did not look that good. ND Kalu is another example of a guy with that frame who just wasn't a LB, had to be a DE. And while Clemons may have lined up like a 3-4 LB last year, he has never done LB-type things that well. He did seem to be able to do DE type things. And that defense is a hybrid, doesn't really know what it is, and Clemons' role was far more like a 4-3 than a 3-4.

I think the Eagles are looking at production in college in terms of situations, not in terms of position. Can he rush the passer, can he move in space. Then they ask guys to do that at the NFL level. Gocong was a projection. Studebaker is too. The rest of the guys, they are really keeping them in the same role they held in college (or, in the case of Parker, in their previous jobs). They played DE there. The projection would be moving the rest of the guys to a 3-4 LB.

[Me]

To point #1, I have to respectfully disagree with your framing of the problem. No one's arguing that the "passing" team always loses to the "running" team or vice versa.

What we do know is that none of the Super Bowl winning teams I looked at has ever passed as frequently as Andy Reid's offenses have. At some point, that becomes a significant result.

Sure, maybe he thinks that doesn't matter, but that's not "homework" -- that's just Reid believing what he believes.

[shlynch]

I think you are making a black swan point, though. Just because we haven't seen it happen before doesn't tell us anything about the likelihood of it happening. The question has to be whether passing more than running hinders your chances of winning. Very few teams regardless of whether they win or lose pass as much as the Eagles have. That none of them have won the SB might just mean the sample is too small, not that running teams are better.

[Me]

Getting pretty far afield here, but that seems to me to be a misreading of the black swan theory. Just because black swans _do_ exist, that doesn't change the fact that most of us still have never seen one. Just as none of us has ever seen a team win a Super Bowl passing as often as Reid does.

But your core question is the important one: "The question has to be whether passing more than running hinders your chances of winning."

Although I would rephrase that -- since no one's claiming that 50-50 is the right number, just that 64-36 seems a bit off -- I think it's clear from watching this team that the Eagles as currently constructed would be better off running the ball a bit more, for the following reasons:

1) Fantastic running game.
2) Speed defense that is more effective the less it has a chance to get worn down.
3) A quarterback who for all his strengths still has an annoying tendency to miss guys on those easy six-yard slants that keep drives going when you pass a lot.

Compare that to last year's Patriots, who had one of the best passing offenses of all time, including two guys (Brady and Welker) who were absolutely murderous on third down.

By my quick calcs, they still only passed 57 percent of the time. And that's with trying to run up the score half the season too.

[Me]

And now I have to stop, because this dialogue is quickly turning into a tria-, tetra-, or pentalogue.

[Eric]

http://coldhardfootballfacts.com/

These guys have great statistics and analysis. Look through their archives. They've covered the topic often on run v pass teams. Historically good passing teams are generally successful whereas teams that run great are usually not very successful.

That doesn't really answer the posed question, but I felt I'd interject a point here using their analysis.

[Eric]

Found it here.

Passing: http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Articles/7_1706_Best_passing_teams_of_the_Super_Bowl_Era.html

Running: http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Articles/7_1709_Best_rushing_offenses_of_the_Super_Bowl_Era.html

[Sean]

I've been thinking about the small school draft bias a lot lately. My theory is that they are trying to be as risky as possible with the picks in rounds 3-7, because if you play it safe and draft like everyone else, you get players that are on average better, but with less upside and less downside.

This is great if you are rebuilding a team, but not so great if you already have some solid starters. Gambling on small school players might miss a large percentage of the time, but you're more likely to find a gem. This is a luxury the Eagles can afford because they have very few glaring holes in the roster. They are willing to throw away a few picks every year to find a Trent Cole or Brian Westbrook. Of course this analysis already assumes that small school players are riskier bets, but I would also add "LB/DE tweeners" and guys going straight to IR (Ikegwuonu) as well.

Note that the Eagles are not being risky all the time. In rounds 1 and 2, the Eagles tend to play it safe and take a pick that they know will be an above-average, starting-caliber player. There's some relationship here to portfolio theory in finance, but I'm going to need more time to develop it.

[shlynch]

I certainly agree with the point that the Eagles as constructed may (actually, I would argue "would") be better served with different play calls. I agree with your three supporting pieces of evidence. (By the way, has anyone ever looked at the pass/run ratio question controlling for RB screens? Seems relevant in our case.)

I guess what galls me is that people state that it is not possible to win with the run/pass mix that AR uses. That is not necessarily true. I haven't seen any evidence that is convincing either way that pass (or run) heavy teams are better than the other. I do believe that the teams that use the talent they have optimally will be the most successful. That is tautological. And as far as the Eagles are concerned, the more relevant question -- and the one that AR was dodging in the first place.