Analytics and the NFL: Finding Strength in Numbers

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Paraag Marathe Ron Santo Jersey arrived in San Francisco with a very clear directive from the 49ers, to reimagine the Jimmy Johnson draft chart. And after a couple months work, the Sammy Sosa Jersey senior associate from the Boston consulting firm Bain readied to show team president Bill Walsh and GM Terry Donahue his findings, in disbelief at the results being spit back at him. It was uncanny. “I tried to use historical trends Tim Federowicz Womens Jersey and true value,” says Marathe, now the Niners’ chief strategy officer and EVP of football operations. “And it wasn’t like Coach Walsh was telling me, ‘Hey, a third rounder has more value than it says here, and a second rounder has lower value.’ It was meant to be totally independent. And Travis Wood Jersey once I was finished, I looked at all of Coach Walsh’s trades over the years. And it was a total match with all of Coach Walsh’s trades.” All that work, and all that was proven was what some guy on his couch down the street in Santa Clara could’ve told them: Walsh was a savant. That was 2001. Moneyball—the best-selling book based Trevor Cahill Jersey on the baseball team across the Bay from the Niners, which would shed light on the coming numbers craze—was still two years from release. The idea of using advanced statistics to drive decision-making in baseball was still in a nascent stage, at least publicly. And that, of course, implies the truth about the NFL then, which is that few in football had even given that concept a thought. It’s a different time now. Analytics in the Trevor Cahill Kids Jersey NFL have moved well beyond the point where a team hiring a consulting firm to run numbers constitutes outside-the-box thinking. Yet, there remains resistance, a battleground of thought, and a general cloudiness on how far you can take numbers, and how far numbers can take you.