The elder Kiffin. Despite the weirdness of his recent career path — due entirely from following his son around — Monte Kiffin remains both one of the most well-respected defensive minds in the game as well as a source of hope for the fans whose team is (currently) coached by Lane. So it is with the excellent Trojan Football Analysis, which adroitly summarizes Monte’s defensive philosophy.
2. Tebow’s motion, cont’d. Tebow is changing his release. I’m fine with this: it needed to be done, it appears (from the few clips I’ve seen) that he’s getting good coaching and things are improving, and if he didn’t the story threatened to derail him from getting drafted at all. And most importantly, if it works, he should be a better quarterback. Two points. One, realistically, Tebow just has three timelines with all this. The first is his pro day. If he can improve enough there to get drafted somewhere, then that’s a major hurdle. And then guess what? He has a long time to work on these mechanics and get better — his next two deadlines would be (a) preseason when he might play a bit, and (b) the eventual day he would get in a regular season game, which might be years hence. So while this overhaul requires a quick turnaround for his pro day, it is just one day and involves throwing in a controlled environment to receivers he knows, like Riley Cooper. (Of course, this fact that Tebow needed to learn to play pro quarterback is why I said he should have gone pro last year and sat the bench working on these mechanics all year.)
Second, the Senator rounds up the minor dust up regarding who is to blame for Tebow’s crappy throwing motion. If there must be blame for this, I blame Tebow, though I don’t think that’s really fair either. Basically, Meyer’s job was to win games, and Tebow is the all-time greatest; yes there was some spin in hiring Scott Loeffler, but Loeffler was basically told not to mess with Tebow’s motion. (And as others have pointed out, they had limited practice time together.) But Tebow regressed during his time at Florida. Here’s what I saw from Tebow, especially as a senior: Instead of trusting his footwork, his release, and his progressions, he would drop back, look for the first receiver, and then simply try to buy time and scan the field. Quite literally from one side to the other, the way you would do in a backyard game where each receiver is just making up his route. This is why he was so often late with passes; he wasn’t throwing on time. And as he became fatigued his footwork regressed and he relied on an increasingly large wind-up to try to deliver the ball with velocity. Remember, it’s much easier to have good form if you’re throwing on rhythm. Can you blame Meyer for this? To an extent, sure. But remember who you’re talking about, the most celebrated and maybe the most successful quarterback ever. A guy who won games on moxie and guile alone. This business about dropping back, scanning the field, looking for Hernandez or Cooper, and then throwing on the move with a huge wind-up became part of his game. In any event, he has time to rectify the problems, and I wish him luck in doing so.
3. HGH testing in the NFL? It’s on the table in current negotiations.
4. How do you evaluate kickers? The WSJ Numbers guy chimes in, as does the Sabermetric Research Blog:
And that just seems wrong to me. League-wide, a 51-yard field goal attempt is successful only about 55% of the time. Admittedly, Stover has been worse than that, but still, when you try something that succeeds only about half the time, and then it winds up failing, all that second-guessing isn’t really called for.
5. Bench the quarterback! It was clear that the Packers of Lombardi’s day could only rise to the top if they did one thing: bench Bart Starr. Or so says a fan letter from 1959, from Pro Football Reference Blog.
6. Fire zones. Brophy with more wisdom (and video).
7. Regression to the mean in college football. More from the Numbers Guy:
Sports Illustrated has a very rosy view of the future for most of this year’s top college football teams. The magazine, in a roundup of non-BCS bowl games, assigned an up arrow to those teams that will be on the rise next year, and a down arrow to those that will be on the decline. Of 56 teams rated, 36, or 64%, got an up arrow. But it’s likely that most of these teams will see a decline next year.
The reason is a statistical principle called regression to the mean that is critical in sports, yet poorly understood. A player’s or team’s actual performance is an imperfect indicator of underlying ability. Luck — or statistical noise, if you prefer — also plays a role. Generally those who do well are better than average, but they’ve also probably had more luck than average. And the opposite is true of players or teams that do badly. SI . . . isn’t accounting for the underlying forces that are pushing these above-average teams — losing teams need not apply — back to average. After all, some of the teams that missed the bowl games this year are going to qualify next year.
[C]onsider the fate of the prior season’s non-BCS bowl teams. In the 2008-2009 season, these 58 teams combined to go 486-275, with 29 bowl wins. The next year, that same group went 436-311, with 17 bowl wins. And 16 of the teams missed bowl games entirely. Of course, some were indeed on the rise — 19, or nearly a third, had better records than the year before and five qualified for BCS bowl games (two of them won). But bowl teams have more room to fall than to rise. Central Michigan saw the biggest improvement, from 8-5 with a bowl loss to 12-2 with a bowl win. But five bowl teams fell all the way to 2-10.
It’s possible that some of the teams with worse records still were on the rise, finishing with a worse record because of fluky results or a tougher schedule. But the decline in cumulative results suggests that most teams did indeed regress to the mean — as this year’s bowl teams are likely to do, as well.
I agree with this, but would only add that path dependence is likely a strong mitigant of mean regression when it comes to the biggest BCS teams, due to recruiting advantages and so on.
8. Is Adrian Peterson a liability? So asks Advanced NFL Stats.
9. Roger Aumann on applying game theory to business decisions. Excerpt:
Q: . . . Are you happy with the proliferation of game theory in real business?
Prof. Aumann: Of course I am happy. It is an applied science, absolutely. It is amazing how useful it is, and for all kinds of things, such as traffic, arbitration, auctions, etc. There is a lot of useful work. Let me give you another example of how game theoretic principles have been applied to business. . . . In most arbitrations you have, say, an employer and the union, and they are fighting over a wage contract and the union threatens to strike. . . . The arbitrator will listen to both sides and he will usually arrive at some sort of a compromise . . . . The incentives are for both sides to exaggerate their claims. Let us say that the union is satisfied with a payment of 85. However, they know that if they ask for 85 they might get less, so they ask for more, just like in any other bargaining situation. So they ask for 110. On the other side, the employer might be willing to pay 65, but they also know that if they offer 65 they might end up having to pay more. . . . As for the arbitrator, his range of decisions has now become enormous, and that is not good for either side. Now there is an alternative scenario that has been suggested by game theorists, called “final offer arbitration,” which essentially means that the arbitrator is not allowed to compromise; he must choose one of the two positions, exactly as they have been presented by the different parties. Some might question the logic of such a process, since many believe that the arbitrator is there in order to compromise. But look at the incentives . . . . [E]ach side is [now] motivated to present as reasonable, as moderate, a claim as possible. If the union claims 110 and the employer decides to go to 65, the arbitrator will realize that given the details of the case, 65 is much more reasonable. The arbitrator cannot increase that, so he would award 65. Consequently, the union will decide not to make an unreasonable claim, and may even be willing to claim a little less than what it really wants. As a result, the offers of both sides would be very close to each other . . . The implication is that both sides become more truthful, and perhaps even a little more forthcoming. This is a very simple application of game theory, but it explains the basis of game theory, and that is to build a system where the sides have an incentive to do what you want them to do; in this case you want them to agree to be as close to each other as possible and give the arbitrator as much information as possible.