DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Paul DePodesta joining Browns as Chief Strategy Officer

What's the difference between doing that and benching a guy in basketball because he can't hit free throws or benching a batter that can't hit off of lefties?

Great we get a guy that goes from analyzing shortstop to analyzing
Short WRs.
That Farmer was truly the dumbest GM in the NFL.

Like anything in life, there needs to be a good balance between analytics and traditional football information. The analytic people need to accept and employ the ideas of the traditional football people and vice versa.

How would a player ever know by what criteria the HC decided to take him out of certain situations? All the coach has to tell him is, which would be the truth, I decided to get a look at so-and-so in that situation. Coaches don't go into deep explanations as to why they do anything. Doing whatever they want for whatever reason they have is their job.

I don't think the "strategy" guy works on that area of the team. He would develop strategies for keeping everything aligned so that the organization is on the same page and runs smoothly.

Football strategy is the job of the HC.

Mac...Farmer picked JM. He even said so.

In otherwords, make use of, and apply to the field, the information provided. Information, by itself, is of no help unless it is used (and correctly applied).

Therer are just as many unknowns in both sports.

I don't see it being used so much in a situational manner. I think it will set our direction as to who to keep and who to cut. Also, players are rotated in and out depending on the situation all the time. Different receiver packages, backs in and out, D line rotations,nickle, dime packages. About the only groups you don't see rotating is O-line and QB.

The first order of business is to look at our players and see who we need to keep and who we need to cut, or elect to sign or let walk.

I can see how the coach has to be all in. He may see the numbers showing he needs to be playing this guy way more and this other guy way less. If the coach is going to ignore the data, then it will cause a problem.

I just posted an article stating that Sashi Brown and Paul DePodesta will each report directly to Haslam as will the HC. The GM/Talent guy will report to Brown.

So I think it's safe to say, Haslam hired DePodesta.

No doubt, but then I think Haslam hires all the front office people. Scheiner and DePodesta go way back. I think Scheiner had some pull in bringing him here as well.

Well...........it is pretty obvious that "analytics" is the buzz word. It will be repeated over and over and over to opiate the masses. Don't worry that we are 3 and 13, we now have analytics.

I don't have anything against analytics. I think it is a tool that can give you an edge. We don't call it analytics in education, but I have used something similar in education for years. It really helps, but the bottom line is that education and football are still both a people business.

I don't believe analytics is going to change how the Haslams interfere w/the team. I don't think that having too many cooks in the kitchen is going to change because of analytics. I don't think that a quality coach and/or GM is going to come here because the Browns use "analytics."

And things aren't going to change until changes are made by the things I addressed in the previous paragraph.

Btw..........I am already sick of the term analytics. It's like it's some new, revolutionary concept that will magically transform us into a contender. LOL

Again...........I think it is a good "tool," but it's still a people business.

It's just another tool to narrow down the prospective talent. Once you have the people with the talent here, then be people persons with your talented people.
As I've said before, this approach does make me optimistic, it has turned everyone (in baseball I know) into a contender where this guy has been so...WHY NOT HERE? WHY NOT US?

jc.

Forget whether or not we had an analytics dept before, or how much we used it. With the hiring of DePodesta, it will all be reworked and revamped. I don't think you can apply analytics from baseball to football directly, because of the law of averages. In baseball and to a lesser extent basketball/hockey, you have so many regular season games that the day to day ups and downs average out into something you can plot. There are only 16 games that matter in a regular season of NFL. Everything a player does, good or bad, will be greatly amplified.

I think a smarter approach could be to analyze schemes, tendencies, techniques, and use that to build a coaching staff/roster. If the current 'winning' strategy is a 4-3 defense and a highly optioned route pass heavy offense with a pocket QB, then lets build a team that can run that. Then you know what players to sign/cut based on how well they'd fit that scheme. You shouldn't have chemistry issues because the players would be on the same page with the coaches, and if you pick the right strategy then you should be able to show signs of success very early.

Can analytics work? I think they can help for sure. But being that this is Cleveland and we appear to be cursed, I put the odds of it working at an optimistic 50:50. Worst case scenario it fails for us and DePodesta goes to another NFL team and it works there...

Bells and whistles. Until we get a good coach and a gm he can work with, this is all it is. Unfortunately, going this route probably eliminated our chances at some quality people. I hope Mrs. Haslam picks us a good coach.

Who has it eliminated? Our last coach pool was pretty shallow.

that's a fair point.

I've just finished watching a video that Peen shared with me.. He said he put it up on here somewhere. But if you watch it, you will see how wrong your take seems to be.

Since when is fired from a job been an issue in the NFL? Biggest carousel in history.

He wasn't a baseball guy either. I'm comfortable with him as an idea guy. Smart Ivy league guy who wanted to be in football to begin with. I'm pretty sure he's not going to make any final decisions on the people he suggests we look at.

First Sashi, now this guy. May as well try something different. Nothing else has worked.

WED JAN. 6, 2016
Can a Moneyball Maven Fix the Browns?


Desperate to address organizational chaos, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam reached into the world of baseball analytics and hired Paul DePodesta of Moneyball fame to reshape the woeful Cleveland franchise. An MLB expert weighs in on what it means for the Browns and the NFL


Tom Verducci is Sports Illustrated’s lead baseball writer and an on-air analyst for MLB Network and Fox Sports.


Most of us, after we finish a good book, simply close the cover and put it away. When Paul DePodesta finished a good book last summer on how technology will change health care, he excitedly dashed off an e-mail to the physician who wrote the book, which led to a three-hour lunch with the author, which led to a featured speaking role for DePodesta at a “Transforming Medicine” conference, which led to his hiring three weeks ago as an “assistant professor of bioinformatics” at a digital medicine institute. The role was a side gig to his day job as vice president of player development and scouting for the New York Mets.


While DePodesta was reading The Patient Will See You Now by Dr. Eric Topol, Jimmy Haslam, who was entering his third full season as majority owner of the Cleveland Browns, was criss-crossing the country in search of his own cutting-edge information. In what amounted to a year-long “best policies” tour, Haslam visited some of the brightest minds in professional sports to learn about their systems and practices. He met with executives from baseball teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals and Cleveland Indians and basketball teams such as the Oklahoma City Thunder.


On Tuesday, the inquisitive minds of DePodesta and Haslam officially came together when the Browns announced the hiring of DePodesta as their “Chief Strategy Officer.” DePodesta will report directly to Haslam.


To the uninformed, the takeaway from the hiring went something like this: “Hapless Browns hire baseball’s Moneyball stat geek as football guru.”


Hey, why let a little information get in the way of good snark, right?
“Paul is the smartest person I’ve ever been around. If the owner gives him enough runway, in a short time Paul will make an impact.”
But when you actually bother to get beyond the Johnny Moneyball jokes, you begin to understand that the Browns—yes, the Browns—after extensive research have hired a bright analytical mind, a former college football wide receiver, an asset that plays well in today’s data-rich business environment, including even (or especially) in the macho corner of sports known as professional football.


“From the standpoint of raw intelligence, Paul is the smartest person I’ve ever been around,” said Josh Byrnes, vice president of baseball operations for the Dodgers, who worked with DePodesta in the Indians’ front office. “From a strategizing viewpoint, he’s brilliant. If the owner gives him enough runway, I have no doubt in a short time Paul will make an impact.”

The first thing you have to do is get out of your head Jonah Hill’s Peter Brand character in the Moneyball movie. Overweight, unathletic and socially awkward, Hill played a character based on DePodesta and intended to use DePodesta’s name. But the role was such a sloppy, inaccurate caricature that DePodesta insisted his name be removed from the script. (DePodesta actually was a letter-winner on the 1994 Harvard football team as a wide receiver, listed at 5-9, 160 pounds.)


Moneyball is the well told if selective narrative of how the Oakland Athletics used analytics—much of it driven by DePodesta/Brand—to gain an edge on their competition, never mind that Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson and Barry Zito, three aces in their prime, were starting about 100 games a year for the A’s. Oakland hired DePodesta from Cleveland, where analytics had been in full bloom, and where the franchise was a hothouse of front-office talent.


From 1998 to 2008, the Indians employed 10 current or future general managers—John Hart, Dan O’Dowd, Mark Shapiro, Byrnes, DePodesta, Neal Huntington, Chris Antonetti, Ross Atkins, Mike Hazen and Mike Chernoff—as well as past and future managers Bud Black, John Farrell, Terry Francona and Buck Showalter.


The Indians of the mid-’90s were one of the first clubs to establish sophisticated video advance scouting systems. Around the same time, they expanded their pro scouting system to include more detailed reports on all minor league players, and soon began using statistical analysis to supplement those reports.


In 1998, for instance, Byrnes, then the assistant director of scouting, and DePodesta, then an assistant in baseball operations, used those reports to scout for hidden gems in the minor league systems of other organizations. They found in the Detroit Tigers system a 26-year-old outfielder who had never advanced beyond Double-A and had very little power. They noticed that he did, however, show a consistent knack for getting on base—then an undervalued skill.


The player’s Double-A on-base percentage was .434 on June 24, 1998. That’s when the Indians traded slugger Geronimo Berroa to get pitcher Tim Worrell and this speedy outfielder who was dead-ended in the Tigers system: Dave Roberts. Though Roberts had a tough time cracking the talented Indians’ lineup, he did go on to play 10 seasons in the major leagues, had the most famous and significant stolen base in Boston Red Sox history and was recently hired by Byrnes’ Dodgers to be their manager. (Berroa was out of baseball in three years, having hit just two home runs after the trade.)


After Oakland, DePodesta had a run as Dodgers general manager that lasted only 20 months before he was fired, a four-year run as an executive with the Padres, and his five-year stint with the Mets. One colleague with the Mets, who said he was not surprised by DePodesta leaving for football, described him as someone “always looking for a challenge,” who was “not just a baseball guy.” He characterized him as a brilliant systems analyst who “does not like confrontations,” a trait that may have worked against him in his tenure with the Dodgers.



With the Browns, however, as a football source pointed out, Haslam smartly empowered DePodesta in what has been a chaotic organizational flow chart by having him report directly to the owner. By answering only to Haslam, DePodesta, an NFL outsider, now has unquestioned authority and can designate others to handle day-to-day confrontations. It was not immediately clear if DePodesta would move his family to Cleveland or continue to use the San Diego area as his home.


DePodesta’s first big move will be the hiring of a head coach. Based on the model used by analytically inclined baseball teams, he is likely to hire a coach who may not have much experience but who is comfortable implementing the business practices and systems endorsed if not created by the front office (though not necessarily offensive and defensive schemes). That’s a sharp turn from the old-school football model in which the coach sets the culture. The manager/coach as key conduit rather than majordomo—former Rays and current Cubs manager Joe Maddon is a prime such figure—was a vital component in Haslam’s “best policies” tour.

In The Patient Will See You Now, Topol, the director of Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego, argued for a very different future in medicine, one in which smartphones replace doctor visits for diagnostic tasks, and big data empowers providers to better treat and even cure disease. According to the Dec. 15 release from STSI, the book resonated with DePodesta because he was “looking to apply his skills and knowledge to a field with global impact.”


The announcement of his hiring was billed as “Moneyball Comes to Medicine.”


Explained DePodesta in the release, “In disciplines as disparate as baseball, financial services, trucking and retail, people are realizing the power of data to help make better decisions. Medicine is just beginning to explore this opportunity, but it faces many of the same barriers that existed in those other sectors—deeply held traditions, monolithic organizational and operational structures, and a psychological resistance to change.” (DePodesta interestingly used trucking— Haslam’s business—as one of his examples.)


Deeply held traditions … monolithic organizational and operational structures … psychological resistance to change … DePodesta might well have been talking about the National Football League.


He knows he will encounter resistance, even if most of it will be external. The information revolution in football is underway, but it lags behind the one in baseball, which is fully populated with types like DePodesta who have long entered the next stage: synthesizing the information with on-field knowledge and observation. Some day, for instance, just as we wonder now why baseball teams used to play their defense straight up for every batter instead of shifting, we might look back and wonder why teams punted away the football so darn much.


Immediately, though, DePodesta’s challenge is not how the Browns play football as much as it is how the organization is structured and how it evaluates, acquires and develops talent in a holistic manner. With his year scouring for information, Haslam understood that his Browns, long a disorganized mess, were in serious need of organizational repair. And when he found his man, he might well have borrowed from DePodesta’s summer reading list to explain to him the challenge ahead: “The patient will see you now.”

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/01/06/nfl-cleveland-browns-paul-depodesta-jimmy-haslam

an example of analytics in football is the study that Banner made as to who would be the best draft pick.. Manziel or Bridgwater.. the study said Bridgewater.. but the Browns went with Manziel.. looking back on it now, I would say the analytics were right.. this is just an example of how analytics could have helped us in the past..

Numbers are numbers...He is a numbers guy, not a baseball or football guy.

j/c:

I'm somewhat astounded with how much national attention these past two hires have garnished with the playoffs just days away.

However, the use of numbers is vastly different from baseball to football.

Baseball, at its core, is a series of one on one battles at a time. Football is not. Football is an entire unit vs the opposing teams opposite unit. Sure, there are tendencies and strengths, but it's not as simple as "don't pitch this hitter out and away", or "walk this hitter to get the the next, who struggles when having men on base".

That is where my concerns lies, if we use analytics as the 1st tool out of the toolbox, as seems likely.

yes, exactly right, YT. Much easier to define the input variables in baseball than in football.

Seems a pretty simplistic view to think that actual numerical game statistics will be the major determinant here.

It you want to draft properly, you can breakdown a whole series of elements that will impact the likelihood of a successful transition from college to the NFL. Education, grades, socio-economic factors, family stability, ... of the player, their peers, their parents, ... Is a guy looking for a payday, does he need a payday, ...

I think if you look at the past and analyze why a guy is successful or not and what are the contributing factors, you may avoid wasted picks. Which seems to be one of the greatest problems with the Browns.

And there is certainly time to evaluate this since the players are in college for 3-4 years before being drafted.

Use examples of guys who succeeded and failed where there were question marks about their character. Like Jamarcus Russell who failed vs (a supposed headcase) like Dez Bryant who succeeded. Maybe someone who brings in this sort of thinking will have us taking a guy like Derek Carr over a guy Johnny Manziel. And at the very least may help steer Haslam away from taking the exciting pick over the sensible pick.

Very true, but if one can find a way to define and describe quantum mechanics through numbers, one certain can define & describe something as comparatively simple as a football team... you just need a mind that understands the numbers, and how to get them.

Add in that the guy actually played the game, and he has even more of a leg up than anyone would have thought prior to this.

He was a 5'9" 160# WR at Harvard, 20+ years ago. he was an unpaid intern with the Baltimore Stallions, where he threw t-shirts into the crowd in between plays.

While I guess that is above someone who never played, it's not much above that level.

What does his height & weight have to do with his understanding of things, other than you want to use his smurf status to somehow discredit him where it doesn't apply in any way, shape or form?

He went to Harvard and graduated. That, if nothing else, speaks to how bright he is. "20+ years ago" is meaningless.... football is still football; it is still the same basic concepts as it was in 1929, 1979, & 2009.... if you understand football, you understand football.... and he only needs to understand football to the extent that it allows him to know which numbers to go after.