Cleveland Browns: 3 keys to understanding the use of analytics
By Joel W. Cade
The Browns are not using analytics to find the best offensive scheme. The scheme choice is being left to traditional football people – the coaches.
The national fear is that the Browns will do to football what analytics has done to baseball. In baseball, analytics is employed to determine defensive schemes, hitting approaches, in-game strategic approaches and on and on.
Commentators lament that football is not baseball. Football is not a static game of nine individuals whose play can be analyzed independently of each other. In this respect, the commentators are correct. Football is the ultimate team sport. One cannot analyze the play of individuals because their actions are integrated like a great symphony.
By placing analytics at the service of the scheme, it puts traditional football people at the forefront.
Related: Analytics are not running the Browns
This (as I will explore below) is the great challenge of analytics in football. However, because football is a far more integrated sport than baseball, analytics has yet to be able to break down which overall schemes (west coast, vertical, power run, zone read option) are the absolute best for football. In many ways, that nut is not even worth cracking at this nascent period of football analytics.
Instead, it is better for analytics to serve whatever scheme is being employed. By default, placing analytics at the service of the scheme puts traditional football people at the forefront.
The coach becomes one of, if not the most, important hire in the organization. The coaches need to determine which offensive and defensive schemes are to be employed. It is of utmost importance an organization finds the right head coach to lead.
Once that is key aspect is settled, the first phase of true football analytics can begin – the acquisition and evaluation of player personnel in terms of scheme fit.
Next: Analytics is about finding players