The NFL Media Needs to CALM DOWN
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Sabermetrics
1 min read
The article discusses the analytics revolution in football and compares it to baseball's statistical clarity. Sabermetrics is the original sports analytics movement that inspired football's data-driven approach, and understanding its history illuminates why football analytics faces unique challenges.
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Sample size determination
1 min read
The entire article centers on the problem of drawing conclusions from insufficient data. Understanding the statistical principles behind sample size determination would give readers the conceptual framework to evaluate sports media claims more critically.
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Hot hand
1 min read
The article critiques overreaction to short performance streaks, which is the exact cognitive bias the hot-hand research addresses. This Wikipedia article covers the famous basketball study and subsequent debates about whether streaks are real or illusory—directly relevant to evaluating NFL narratives.
Consider how smart football journalism was supposed to be by now. Long the domain of ex-jocks ladling out evidence-free bromides about how you have to pound the ball and causation-flipping claims that time of possession is the ultimate metric, today NFL media is dominated by the nerds, analysts who proudly announce that they’ve never played the game and let their teenage resentments power their never-ending performance of Well, Actually football contrarianism. Experience is out! Numbers are in! Empiricism reigns! The bible was right: someday, the meek will inherit the earth, and it’s happening every Sunday on NFL Twitter, where it’s always time to re-prosecute high school.
And yet…. The analytics revolution promised to graft rationality and context onto our game-day commentary, but when it comes to the most common and pernicious trend in NFL analysis - overreacting to small samples and short runs of good or bad performance - nothing has really changed. That’s because NFL new media conditions dictate that even the most temperamentally sober and judicious talking heads operate as 24/7 hype machines. This is not, to put it mildly, a new problem. In 2007, ESPN’s Kevin Jackson wrote that NFL media was “Overreaction Nation – a land where no sample size is too small for drawing conclusions, where the most common movement is the knee-jerk.” That description still fits the NFL media perfectly. Week after week, cable TV and podcasters spin wild narratives, proclaiming teams hopeless or superhuman after one game, seemingly embracing the idea that “no sample size is too small.” That this all comes from people who will tell you that they’re the keepers of the flame of Rational Football Analysis only makes it all more annoying.
Modern front offices have jumped on modern statistical analysis, with every team employing analytics departments and with more and more coaches regularly expressing disdain for yesterday’s conventional wisdom. This isn’t a secret; the Ringer, which has always employed its fair share of football nerds who heap contempt on the old ways, proclaimed back in 2018 that “football’s analytics moment has arrived,” pointing out the rise of modern tracking data and explaining how it gives teams an edge. But if we’re honest, even the Ringer was clear that football will never be baseball in statistical clarity: “Football will likely
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