Money(foot)ball: Do they get on base?

Or, how to create the perfect offense for just over $50 million

When you think of Moneyball in the context of the NFL, you probably think of the Browns acquiring a ridiculous number of draft picks or hiring Paul DePodesta (aka the Jonah Hill guy).

What you probably don’t think of is Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane asking the question “does he get on base?” over and over again. And rightly so, because the mechanics of baseball have little in common that can be transferred over to the NFL. Or do they?

The fact that I’m a Brit obsessed with all things football, one who bleeds purple and gold (Sköl Vikes), probably tells you that I like to think outside the box. That’s why, despite barely scraping through high school maths — or math, as you guys would no doubt prefer — I wanted to see if there was any way to distil the incredibly complex field of sabermetrics into a single stat for each offensive position.

The results were…interesting. Some of the stats I suggest below seem to fit with those we tend to view as elite players for each position. Others, not so much. For example, Julio Jones and Antonio Brown are nowhere to be seen in my “All Moneyball” team.

Coaches and scouts are, generally speaking, interested in flashy stats. They talk about how quickly prospects ran the 40 at the combine and how many yards they racked up in their college playing days. This ignores the fact that — with the exception of kick returns — straight line speed is far less important than things like route running and that a 100 yard breakaway TD run means very little if it was the result of a stellar O-line block or a botched tackle by an opposing player.

There’s a hefty dose of luck involved in whether or not a draft pick turns out to be a boom or bust player but, even so, I felt it necessary to base the below on current players and their current salaries…no matter how problematic the latter might be. Let’s take a look at some of the best, in Moneyball terms at least, players on the field today.

QB:

What’s the job of a quarterback? Is it to throw a lot of yards? Score a lot of touchdowns? By that logic, Blake Bortles was the 7th best quarterback in 2015 and last season’s Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady was…well, tied for 7th best quarterback.

If a hitter’s job is to get on base, then a QB’s job is to complete passes. When you think of the phrase “dink and dunk” — Lord knows commentators have used the term to describe his play style enough — you probably think of Alex Smith. I was surprised to see that, despite his reputation for short completions, Smith only clocked in at 7th place with 67.1%.

In 2016, the most efficient QB (in terms of completion percentage, at least) was the Vikings’ Sam Bradford. You probably already know that, since ESPN and CBS both talked about it a LOT. But it’s worth pointing out that, as you would probably expect, Bradford was also tied for the second lowest INT% with Dak Prescott. He was beaten by 0.4% by Tom Brady, but Bradford attempted almost 100 more passes than either of these guys.

If we’re talking about “getting on base” in football terms, you want Sammy Two Sleeves. It’s understatement to say that the Vikings’ run game, not to mention their abysmal O-line performance, was sketchy at best last season. In other words, provided the offseason improvements pan out, the Vikings’ offense should be scary in 2017.

Sam Bradford (71.6 Completion PCT)

Drew Brees (70.0)

Matt Ryan (69.9)

Dak Prescott (67.8)

WR:

A few days ago, at the time of writing anyway, Desean Jackson posted the following picture on his Instagram:

Looking at those numbers puts DJ in good company, and will have plenty of Tampa Bay Bucs fans salivating even more than they were when he was initially signed. Jameis Winston isn’t short on arm strength and, when you combine this with Jackson’s strong YPC and YAC showings he represents a great 2017 case study for the type of player I’m talking about in this section. Watch this space…

For the purposes of offensive efficiency, YAC has to be THE stat to look at. And it doesn’t hurt my case that the players above all qualify (right?) as near locks for the HoF. But there’s a dark side to this theory…

2016’s YAC leaders are not the players you’d expect. They were all drafted in 2010 or later, which initially made me think that they’re all young guys and have bodies that can take the punishment associated with fighting for good YAC. Then I realised that 2010 was 7 years ago (man, I’m old), and the theory started to carry more weight again.

Jarvis Landry (593 Yards After Catch)

Golden Tate (588 YAC)

Odell Beckham Jr (524 YAC)

Doug Baldwin (467 YAC)

Amari Cooper (451 YAC)

RB:

When talking about offensive efficiency at the running back position, there are a few different things you could base effectiveness on. For dual threat RBs who catch and run, it’s worth looking at YAC again — Bell and Johnson are, probably unsurprisingly, top of that list.

But you could also choose to look at how many yards players rack up after contact. If you go down that route, the road splits again: it’s tempting to look at a player’s percentage of runs with 10 yards after contact but, if you’re sticking with the fairly unsexy idea of “getting on base”, you might want to focus on players who regularly grind out 3+ yards after contact.

Le’Veon Bell (685 Yards After Catch)

David Johnson (643 Yards After Catch)

OR

James Starks (7.4% Runs with 10+ YCo)

Ryan Mathews (5.4% Runs with 10+ YCo)

CJ Anderson (5.1% Runs with 10+ YCo)

OR

Jonathan Stewart (41.5% Runs with 3+ YCo)

Ahmad Bradshaw (41.1% Runs with 3+ YCo)

Bishop Sankey (40.1% Runs with 3+ YCo)

TE:

This part is tricky because, while looking at a tight end’s YAC is tempting, it doesn’t really tell the whole story. Blocking is also a huge factor in the role of most tight ends, and it’s difficult to measure that without looking at a whole host of other stats.

So, for now at least, let’s be lazy and just stick with YAC. Can you tell it was getting late when I was writing this section?

Travis Kelce (655 YAC)

Martellus Bennett (406 YAC)

Special Teams:

With a ground and pound offense like the one we’re talking about above, it would be easy for the front office of this hypothetical team to go after a kicker with a big leg. Matt Prater, with his world record 64 yarder back in 2013 perhaps? Nah, that’s way too sexy.

Reliability is key here and, in an offense that’s effectively ignoring the importance of deep threats and red zone percentages, this team needs a clutch kicker who can put 3 on the board pretty much every time out. Enter Justin Tucker, with his absurdly high % of FG makes.

Likewise, until we can think about planning a defense to complement this hypothetical team’s format, we want someone who can pin the opposition back as far as possible. Depending on how you slice it, that means someone with a long average kick and low number of return yards (McAfee fits the bill on both counts) or someone who regularly lands the ball inside the opponent’s 20.

Kick and punt returns have probably the easiest measure of this whole team — average return yards.

KR: Cordarrelle Patterson (AVG 31.7 yards) / Alex Erickson (27.9)

PR: Tyreek Hill (AVG 15.2 yards) / Marcus Sherels (13.9)

K: Justin Tucker (97.4% of kicks made, 100% XP)

P: Pat McAfee (49.3 yards avg, 139 RETY)

OR

P: Johnny Hekker (51 punts inside the 20)

The All Moneyball Offense’s 2016 Salaries

With all of the above in mind, let’s look at a hypothetical setup for the first team offense. Obviously we’re missing key components (the O-line is more non-existent than the Vikings’ was last season), but it makes for an interesting looking team:

QB: Sam Bradford ($18,000,000)

RB: Le’Veon Bell ($1,197,347)

RB: David Johnson ($525,000)

RB: James Starks ($2,250,000)

WR: Jarvis Landry ($947,703)

WR: Golden Tate ($4,750,000)

WR: Odell Beckham Jr ($1,366,018)

WR: Doug Baldwin ($1,000,000)

WR: Amari Cooper ($5,150,708)

TE: Travis Kelce ($2,948,226)

TE: Martellus Bennett ($5,085,000)

K: Justin Tucker ($3,500,000)

P: Pat McAfee ($2,700,000)



KR: Cordarrelle Patterson ($1,009,689)

PR: Marcus Sherels ($1,450,000)

Cap Hit: $51,879,691

Are there problems with the above? Abso-frickin’-lutely there are. Head just two lines up and you’ll see Patterson’s salary listed at just over $1 mil. In 2017 he’ll be taking his talents to the Raiders (I’ll miss you, Flash) for more than five times that and, presumably, making the transition from kick return specialist to fully fledged wide receiver. And I have no doubt there are plenty of other players from teams I pay less close attention to than the Vikings who have made similar moves.

Other issues:

The salaries listed here are, in many cases, from rookie contracts and don’t necessarily represent what players would cost on the open market

Ignoring things like how many TDs players score is, as the old school guys would put it, “a terrible football move” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are plenty of intangibles like team chemistry and varying rates of production from year to year, not to mention stuff like O-line effectiveness etc.

I haven’t even begun to think about the equivalent stat(s) for defensive players or how to spend the remaining $100 million(ish)on them

Still, you have to admit that the idea of putting together the “most efficient” team is an intriguing one. And, with salaries for franchise players getting higher and higher, it’s one that teams may be forced to consider in order to build any sort of consistency from year to year.

But there’s a problem with all of the above. Coaches and scouts currently try to translate performance in the NCAA — usually in the form of touchdowns and all purpose yardage — to how players will do in the NFL. That doesn’t work. It’s why Tim Couch, Trent Richardson, Jamarcus Russell were picked first, third and first overall, but are considered three of the biggest draft busts in history.

Shifting the focus to a new stat, like YAC or completion percentage, doesn’t really help matters because the numbers still don’t translate. For example, Bradford’s, Dak’s and Ryan’s average NCAA completion percentages were 67.6 (vs 71.6 in 2016), 62.8 (vs 67.8) and 59.9 (vs 69.9). Looking at NCAA numbers, whatever they might be, assume that a football player will forever perform like the player he was at age 21.

Maybe that’s why we choose to look at the newest, freshest and sexiest numbers instead. Because we have to. Hold up, John Ross broke the world record for the 40 yard dash? First round, baby. First round!