Pro Football Prospectus 2006 -- year twoWhile baseball has seen decades of fairly visible work done on the statistical front, leading us into this golden age of Moneyball (go Oakland A's!), and ahem, 82games.com is certainly changing the NBA world, football analysis has seemed to lag behind in generating both a community of stats analysts and also the kind of breakthroughs that actually make differences in teams winning more games.
TwoMinuteWarning.com can rightly claim its place in pioneering innovative statistical coverage of the NFL, but we've always had a shall we say prediction oriented focus to our work and ignored some of the more mainstream concerns. Then along came the brilliant FootballOutsiders.com to shake things up. Aaron Schatz and the crew at FO are breaking down NFL play-by-play data to craft a new world of stats, ratings, and understanding of this dynamite game that is pro football. The book is really an extension of the web site and will no doubt help build an even broader audience for their ambitious endeavors.
If you want something, sometimes you have to go out and do it yourself...One of the big developments with FootballOutsiders was the initiation of their own NFL charting project. TMW again has always been at the forefront of this movement, starting back in 1997 when we first charted drives and then basic play by play actions, but FO has moved to where we had always intended to get, with much more team and player specific detail.What are they charting?
- Formations That alone warrants a standing ovation (along with what KC Joyner is doing as the Football Scientist...we'll try and review his book shortly too). Suffice it to say though that if you are looking for exclusive insights into NFL team and player performance, this book has the goods. Pro Football Prospectus 2006 devotes several pages to each team, complete with scads of stats tables, and a relevant article that often touches on a wide ranging NFL topic of interest. Additionally there are a few bonus articles, the most enjoyable of which this reader found to be Dave Lewin's take on projecting how college QB's will do in the NFL (Matt Leinart has the highest projected performance of the current crop for example, but Philip Rivers, the new starter in San Diego, has a rating that's almost off the charts!) Of course the two mainstay metrics of the previous volume return with prominence:
Got your attention yet? There is just a huge amount of statistical information. The really wonderful thing is that the presentation of the data is done in excellent fashion which makes the numbers both useful and usable.
Yeah, but how good are their predictions?Some readers, particularly those lurking here on TMW, can probably appreciate the great analysis, but for these difficult customers, the bottom line may come down to are the projections going to help me win -- my fantasy league, my bet, my convincing the significant other that it's worthwhile getting season tickets for the local crew...Now with only one year of actual real time projections, it's a little tough to answer this you might think at a statistically significant level, but let us give you the breakdown from last year: in preseason as part of our "Season Wins Picks" research we highlighted six teams where the PFP stats suggested a significant divergence from the line on the teams:
Under - Atlanta, Jacksonville, Minnesota ...and for those keeping score, the PFP "picks" as we saw them went 5-1! The book brings back the same confidence percentages for various win ranges, but adds in further a Mean Projection:
NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS Nifty! And you can be sure we will be incorporating this excellent statistically derived and driven information into our own selections for team season win totals. But wait there's more! The fantasy football addicts get their fill of individual player projections, and last year had a few misses certainly (Kevin Jones? paging Kevin Jones), but also some monster picks (no one else had Tiki Barber higher we'd have to think and the Tiki man delivered big time for his backers). Even better the PFP player projections deviate considerably from the kind of consensus you often find on the top fantasy sites (KFFL, FootballGuys, FantasyGuru, 4for4, etc). For those venturing forth in fantasy games this season, you'd be well served by getting this book and carrying it with you faithfully to the draft and through the season. Here's a gutsy call for instance:
Top Fantasy Fallers... ...and they have a paragraph that explains the reasoning for Edge being a dropper. Every player gets similar treatment with a four year view (2003-2005 actual stats, 2006 projection) including some of those ultra-cool game charted notes: Randy Moss was targeted 124 times in 2005, 13% short passes, 38% medium, 28% deep, and 22% bombs!
Our recommendation?If you are a typical NFL fan you pick up some kind of material during the preseason to be prepared for when the season starts. There is no shortage of magazines published on an annual basis that give team breakdowns, roster moves, some stats, color pieces, and so forth. There's even some heated competition in certain niches, particularly fantasy football, with a plethora of options on your local newstand. Our advice is simple though, do yourself a favor and bypass the 'light and frothy' for this real deal NFL stats book and season forecast. We are constantly impressed with the efforts over at FootballOutsiders and the progress they've made. So it is without any hesitation that once again we can praise this incredible landmark in the NFL stats evolution with our strongest "highly recommended" wording...in other words Buy this Book!
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