Ian Rapoport @RapSheet 1h1 hour ago
New #Redskins GM Scot McCloughan is hoping to add #Packers senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith to his front office, source said.
Ian Rapoport @RapSheet 1h1 hour ago
New #Redskins GM Scot McCloughan is hoping to add #Packers senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith to his front office, source said.
That would be a loss. Isn't Highsmith in charge of scouting? I also know he had a lot to do with getting Sam Shields to come here.
Highsmith might be the Pro Personnel head guy now.
Nope. Super Scout in charge of Nick Sabanland.
Quote:
An NFL player for six seasons, Alonzo Highsmith enters his 16th year with the Green Bay Packers’ personnel department. He was promoted to senior personnel executive in May 2012 after 13 years on the Packers’ college scouting staff, where he maintained primary responsibility for the Southwest region.
What do the Redskins need a scout for?
Key and Peele's Pro Football All Pro Game participants have been announced. Watch for two surprise participants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDp-ABzpRX8
Mel Kiper gives the Packers 2014 draft class a good grade but says they might have had the best Year 1 production out of any team.
Demovsky gives a summary: http://espn.go.com/blog/green-bay-pa...ed-packers-win
Bump
Advanced Football Analytics (formerly Advanced NFL Stats) has the Packers O line at 8th best in the League.
However, its hugely tilted in favor of their pass blocking. Their run blocking actually lowered expected points by the offense.
http://www.advancedfootballanalytics...ffensive-lines
http://t.co/lGUyILr97Z
McCarthy thought the Packers were the best team in the League at the end of the year.
Quote:
“Frankly, the way your season ends always puts a dent on it if you win don’t it all. [But] I thought it was probably one of my best years of coaching,” McCarthy said. “I was hoping to be able to say it was the best and winning in Phoenix [in Super Bowl XLIX] would have done that.
“I know you guys have to cover us like we’re 8-8 every year. I get that. That’s how you guys make your business. But this was a hell of a football team we had this year. And it grew. We had some bumps there early. But I thought every time we were hit with a challenge, they accepted it and they worked at it and we got better.
“I thought we were the best team in football when our season ended. [But] you have to prove it on the field, obviously.”
From same Wilde piece, gathering ideas for next season:
Quote:
“They have that ‘Notes’ category. I’m up to 36 already since the season ended,” McCarthy explained Thursday. “I have two [categories]. I have what I call ‘Situations’ and I have ‘Themes.’ [They come to you] when you’re driving or showering or whatever. You’ve got young kids, you don’t get a whole lot of time by yourself. So sometimes Gabby says something, I think, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea.’ Some of the movies that you watch. It carries over.
“[But] it takes forever [to type them in]. I should’ve paid more attention to Mr. Stanzak and his [high-school] typing class.”
Analytics in the Four Major Sports. Packers rank in the second group, get dinged for McCarthy's non-use in games and Thompson only beginning to dabble. But have respected researcher (Eayrs) and have adjusted their practice schedules to data on athletic performance.
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/stor...nkings#nfl-gnb
This is an interesting and rapidly evolving subject for the game of football.
I think the use of analytics has strong potential to differentiate and/or validate what people see - because so many people watch the exact same thing yet see things radically different. So many different variables impact outcomes that it's difficult (at best) to model and analyze.
And at the same time the game changes so rapidly and players develop so much that they sometimes outpace reliable sample sizes for how various teams and players are likely to respond in different situations. So you've got to be careful about what data you look at and how you use it all.
I think there's a national conference on cybermetrics in football if I'm not mistaken. Or perhaps it encompasses all sports. There's a lot to be learned yet in using analytics in football I'd say, but it's time to dive in, build up the data and start making some models at minimum. Practice situations, injury probabilities, officiating tendencies...those seem to be good places to start but I do think analytics can aid coaching and GMing decisions too. Again those get very complex very quickly though. Not including all the variables that impact an outcome can lead to bad conclusions.
For the time being, I'll take Ted's experience and gut over some Moneyballer all day long. He's analytical enough on his own. RoboTed can wait until the real deal is gone.
Analytics should support experience and knowledge in the field, not replace it.
/ begin rant
Please allow me a tangential vent. Colin Cowherd mocks analytics (often mere hours after offering them in support of his position, but save that for later) and nerds for being stat obsessed. He even has a nerd voice for the routine. But what completes the circle jerk is that when he is discussing Hall of Fame cases, he starts by decrying stats nerds, claims he knows a Hall of Famer when he sees it, and then begins to rattle off total career numbers (All-Pro, Pro Bowl, HRs, doubles, rebounds, etc.).
One day you will here about a sports radio listener who has wrapped his car around a tree because instead of driving, he was yelling at Cowherd in the car. That will be me, sometime between 9AM and 1PM or so. I actively try to avoid him, but n some places in the State, you can't get any other sports station.
/end rant
Back to the topic at hand, analytics offer support and context, occasionally clarity where there was fog before. M3 didn't have clue one why his team was always more injured until he hired a sports science and nutrition guy who changed the way the players were fed, hydrated and altered the schedule to something unheard of in M3's experience. If you want to solve a problem that has resisted your solutions for a long period of time, you have to look for information and expertise elsewhere. This is something analytics and data can help with.
They also help you correct normal human biases and help place context around events. Thompson doesn't need help identifying who can play, but data and analytics might help him project better where the player should be drafted (possibly even where he likely will be drafted) and might help identify the blindspots.
I don't want RoboTed to be GM, but I want RoboTed sitting next to mostly human Ted.
Agree on all fronts. Cowherd's a punk hack who knows radio but not football.
you could try listening to musicQuote:
Originally Posted by madmax