House Rules, according to Jeff Ma
If you have time to read but one on-line article today, then, this is the one it should be:
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Jeff Ma on the House Advantage
Henry Abbott: You sitting there with Jerry West and the salt shakers and the mustard containers … this is where this field will develop, right? The statistical mind meeting the basketball mind. The more you’re speaking the same language, the more useful your statistics are going to be, it seems.
Jeff Ma: I think that’s kind of the key.
When I first met Bill Walsh, we had developed this football system that was supposed to measure success on any NFL play. If you’re first-and-ten and you gain five yards, is that a success or is that a failure? We kind of graded out the plays and the people in the plays based on that. We came up with a statistical system based on four years of NFL data looking at every play, a team’s winning, and we could tell you how you did on this down and how that affected your team’s chances of scoring.
But we needed a way to validate that. We went to Coach Walsh so he could help validate us. So we asked him some very simple questions. So, on first-and-ten, what’s a success? He said well, four yards is probably not a success, five yards probably is. Somewhere in between.
Our numbers showed that four-and-a-half yards was the threshold.
Then on second down he says well, I think you need to gain at least half a yard. And that’s exactly what our numbers showed also.
What we learned from that, and I would never use this quote because it’s very self-promoting, but he once said to our CEO: “I have no idea how he gets it, but he’s in my brain.” And he was talking about me. That was kind of like the biggest compliment that he could ever give me, because that’s all I was trying to do.
There are people out there like Jerry West and Bill Walsh who can make really good decisions without a spreadsheet behind them. But there are only a few of them. And so the goal is to create a mathematical system or methodology to use data and information that can make as good a decision as Walsh and West made, in a more structured and regimented way, so anyone can make them.
So what you’re saying is absolutely true. What you’re saying is absolutely true. The goal is to take what’s between Bill Walsh’s ears and put it in a spreadsheet, so people can actually understand what it all means.
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Amen to all concerned!
The best speadsheets in the world are simple attempts to blue-print the mental machinations of the best coaches in the world who already have the capacity to think the game accurately with nothing else but the benefit of their own experience.
The ability to generate an average gain of 4.5 yards on 1st down is the real objective here … whether on the ground - in a cloud of dust - or, through the air - via a Sid Luckman or a Don Coryell-inspired piece of artistry.
It is both the accomplishment which counts and the method of the madness … because - depending on the time, and the score, and the other complicating circumstances - the one is intricately connected to the other.
Tags: Bill Walsh, Dan Fouts, Don Coryell, Henry Abbott, Jeff Ma, Jerry West, Joe Gibbs, John Madden, Kellen Winslow, Sid Luckman