Bills' domination of Dolphins sparked research
By KC Joyner
ESPN Insider
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In the early 1990s, I was about as big a Miami Dolphins fan as possible. Every Sunday my dad, younger brother and I would live and die over the outcome of the Dolphins game. Of course, during this time we did more dying at the hands of the Buffalo Bills than any other team, and it irritated me so much I decided to figure out what other teams did to beat Buffalo that the Dolphins didn't do.
I was a big fan of Sports Illustrated writer Paul Zimmerman when I was a kid, and Dr. Z frequently wrote of his game-tape scouting system. In 1990 I started recording televised games and breaking them down myself. It took a couple of seasons, but I finally came up with a really useful system to break down a team's formation tendencies. I tracked a number of different things -- how many pass rushers there were on a particular play, where the blitzes came from, which direction plays were run, etc. Once I got the kinks worked out, I began analyzing the Dolphins and Bills. After about 10 game breakdowns, the issue became crystal clear.
The Bills, led by quarterback Jim Kelly, were running their K-Gun offense -- multiple-receiver sets and hurry-up tempo -- with great success. Opposing teams tried many things to slow them down, but the only one that seemed to work was pressuring Kelly with the blitz. If a defense got a rush into Kelly's face, he often would do very foolish things with the ball.
The problem for the Dolphins was that defensive coordinator Tom Olivadotti was incredibly reluctant to send the blitz. I tracked the number of times Miami rushed three, four and five or more defenders, and the Dolphins rushed three defenders much more frequently than other teams. Against most teams, this worked. Their defense fared quite well statistically during a portion of Olivadotti's career, but Olivadotti wasn't willing to adjust the pass rush to the circumstances, and Miami paid the price against Kelly & Co.
What was most amazing to me during this time was that I never heard anyone mention things like this. It was completely obvious to me that the Bills had an Achilles' heel. It showed up in nearly every big loss (see Super Bowls XXVI and XXVII for proof), and the Dolphins rarely targeted that weakness, but few analysts pointed out either fact. When things like this were mentioned, they certainly weren't quantified or placed in context with the rest of the league. Being a consumptive NFL fan and frustrated armchair scout, I knew these weren't the only questions that weren't being answered by the mainstream NFL media.
In addition to being a disciple of Dr. Z, I also was an even bigger fan of Bill James. James' effective use of the scientific method in researching baseball was revolutionary, yet no one was effectively applying his methods to football. There were hundreds of questions that only a methodical, analytical and scientific approach could answer. I had wanted to undertake this type of research since I was a kid, and about two years ago I decided to quit my regular job in the telecom field to live the dream. The first real result was "Scientific Football 2005," a book I self-published this year.
I like to focus on performance-based metrics, measurements I use to determine how well a player is doing in specific areas of his job. For example, before last season I listed the things I wanted to know when it came to a quarterback's performance:
• How often does he throw short? Medium? Deep?
• How often does he throw to an open receiver, and how often does he force the ball into coverage?
• How often does he make a mistake? Does he force passes into coverage? Does he try to throw the ball while being sacked? Does he stare at receivers?
• How many of his yards come against a prevent defense?
• Completion percentage doesn't tell the whole story of a quarterback's accuracy. How often does he throw a well-timed pass, and how often does he hit the receiver in stride?
• How many yards and completions did he lose because his receivers dropped catchable passes? How many yards and completions did he lose because of his own bad passes?
I taped nearly every NFL game from the 2004 season and broke them down using a tracking system I devised to quantify a quarterback's performance in each of the categories listed above. Some of the results were quite enlightening. For example, the system quantified which quarterbacks make the highest percentage of bad decisions (Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger), which quarterbacks were most accurate (Brian Griese and Patrick Ramsey surprisingly topped that list), and which quarterbacks were the least accurate (Kurt Warner and Byron Leftwich).
I also asked similar questions of other offensive positions, including wide receiver and tight end, and did similar analysis for defensive players such as cornerbacks and safeties. This season, I'll be adding additional granularity to my passing breakdowns, and I will be expanding my focus to cover the running game and to track some special-teams metrics.
The field of football research is at least 10 to 15 years behind the field of baseball research, if not more. There are a number of reasons for this, but it doesn't have to be this way. It is my goal to help improve football research to a level of influence closer to that of its sporting cousin, and I'd like to invite you to come along with me on that journey.
KC Joyner, aka The Football Scientist, has a Web site at http://thefootballscientist.com. He is a regular contributor to ESPN Insider.
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.. you crack me up... is this a money league?
