If you choose the onerous task of digging down and really analyze the football you’re watching there is one important rule … don’t trust your eyes.

Your eyes will lie to you. You’ll curse at your quarterback for throwing that horrible interception when it was the receivers fault. You’ll marvel at a 14-yard run when in reality the running back should have gained 40. Every play there are 24 individuals each trying to perform a separate task in a 7-10 second span, that’s a lot of balls juggling in the air. So what to do when you want to understand what is actually going on, when you want to see what your eyes can’t show you?

Analytics! No, no, no don’t run away I promise this won’t be a boring tsunami of statistics analytics column where you feel you’re getting talked down to.

If used as a tool rather than as a 100% dogmatic approach to consuming sport analytics can be a great resource to try and figure out what the hell is going on. But just like hiding the dog’s medicine in the middle of ground meat sometimes you need a spoonful of sugar to help the numbers go down.

In this case that sugar is TSN’s own Derek Taylor! His weekly video feature, ‘Details with Derek Taylor’, combines fascinating football analysis through the prism of analytics mixed with crude animation. They’re under two minutes long covering a massive array of mainstream and arcane topics and I guarantee you’ll learn something new every time you watch.

Oh sure, he doesn’t always get it right (Check out “27 reasons the Stamps will win the Grey Cup”) but he’s always entertaining. I recently sat down with Derek to discuss where the numbers were right and wrong about a whole host of topics from the shocking Grey Cup to Nik Lewis’ resurgent season.

Here are the things that I didn’t realize about this past season:

1) Being a fancy TV host on air does not affect how you dress off-air

Derek answered the door in grey sweatpants and a Montreal Alouettes tee shirt.

2) The Grey Cup was even more shocking to Derek than to the average fan

When I asked him statistically how much of an upset the Grey Cup was all he could say at first was “Unbelievable “. He stressed just how no other team was even close to the level of talent and production on the defensive side of the ball for the Stampeders. He wracked his brain trying to summon up a more “shocking” game but could not find a better example.

3) That was the best statistical game ever for a winning Grey Cup quarterback

Often you’ll see quarterbacks put up big numbers in losing situations. This is a frequent occurrence because there team is down by a fairly large deficit so you have no choice but to pass on every down. Now a lot of those yards are easier to come by as these losing quarterbacks will be facing prevent defences. This was not the case for Henry Burris who was playing with an injured finger, no Chris Williams and a back-up running back. The adjective “crazy” came up quite a bit while discussing what Burris did.

4) The Hamilton Tiger-Cats hate to run the ball and C.J. Gable could be a bigger star

We all knew that Kent Austin hates running the ball but I didn’t know they only called running plays 24% of the time, the lowest mark in the league. Derek believes Gable easily would be a 1,000 yard rusher in a different offence and his talent level is superior to many other backs with better statistics.

5) The Saskatchewan Roughriders are primed for a resurgent 2017.

“If they find a running back glory be to the Riders”. I mean I found that quote by Taylor a wee bit hyperbolic but who am I to question a guy who spends so many hours poring over film? Though their 2016 numbers won’t blow you away Derek was impressed with the in-season acquisitions of receivers Armanti Edwards and Jell Fuller and believes both could have a big impact next year. On the other side of ball look for another mid-season signing, Willie Jefferson to be a difference maker in 2017 at defensive end. It’s for these reasons that Derek believes Saskatchewan should bring back Durant … there is a window of opportunity next season for the Roughriders.

6) Slow down a little bit on James Franklin

Franklin is the classic “eyes” versus “numbers” test case. I’m fully on board the James Franklin hype train, in fact I’m in the fancy first class car where you get first dibs at dinner. Every time I watch him he’s making plays and looks like a 10-year veteran. Derek is quick to point out that Franklin has less than 160 pass attempts for his career and maybe I should calm down a little bit. I believe he’s a mix of Warren Moon and Anthony Calvillo only 100 times better while Derek wants a larger sample size. Whatever.

7) Winnipeg’s offensive line was better at pass protection than Calgary

Wait what? There is no way any team had a better offensive line than immovable wall of flesh we saw in Calgary. Of all the crazy stats we went over, this one blew me away. Matt Nichols was pressured on 15.6% of his passes compared to Bo Levi Mitchell who faced pressure on 18.8% of his passes. There is no way my eyes would ever have caught that. A couple thoughts on that statistic. First total credit must be given to Winnipeg’s coaching staff for turning a good offensive line into an elite one.

But on a bigger picture I wonder what sort of new contract Nichols deserves. Yes you can point to his winning record as a starter and say he deserves top money but how much of Winnipeg’s 11 win season was about him versus the work of players like Stanley Bryant and Travis Bond or the number of interceptions generated by the defence? How good can Nichols be if he has to face even league average amount of pressure? Hall of Fame passers can look like backups when they have multiple defenders bearing down on them. Does he deserve Mike Reilly kind of money? All right that’s enough question.

Derek acknowledged that Nichols threw a damn good deep ball in that playoff loss to the Lions but Winnipeg needs to be cautious when it comes to contract negotiations. Of course the normal rules don’t apply when it comes to paying quarterbacks. Fingers crossed that what we saw from Nichols in the playoffs is the quarterback we see going forward.

8) Justin Medlock had the greatest single season for a kicker in the greatest regular season for kickers

CFL kickers ended up scoring 58 more points than what was expected. What does that mean? I’ll be honest all that math started to make my head hurt but just know this, the previous record for most points scored over expected points was 24. Medlock stood out in a year where just about every kicker was setting personal records. Just check out the average yards per field goal attempt and it’s clear that no kicker had a bigger impact on his team’s success quite like Medlock.

9) Dark clouds could be coming for Calgary and Winnipeg

For the Stampeders, this is more about free agency with names like Derek Dennis, Dan Federkeil, Charleston Hughes, Micah Johnson & Marquay McDaniel all floating out there. You could build an All-CFL team with the players in Calgary looking for new contracts. As for Winnipeg well the math is not in their favour. It’s impossible to expect Winnipeg to come up with 30 interceptions again. The next highest interception total was Hamilton with 17, that is an unsustainable pace for any team. Winnipeg finished with a +29 turnover margin, the second highest total in the last decade.

This isn’t personal against Winnipeg, numbers don’t have emotion. Much like with the Matt Nichols conversation just ask yourself what happens if the Bombers were only slightly above league average in interceptions and turnover margin? How many wins would they have had? The flip side is if the coaching staff did such a great job in 2016 why can’t they do the same in 2017 and devise whatever schemes are needed to stay successful?

10) Shakir Bell is better than people think

Bell made a defender miss every 2.8 touches, highest in the league. To put that in perspective Andrew Harris did it every 3.7 touches. Bell also finished second behind man mountain Jerome Messam for yards generated after contact. To quote Derek: “Shakir Bell is just gross in the way he makes people miss”.

11) Kenny Shaw had both a great season for all the right and wrong reasons.

Gaining a 1,000 yards receiving is always impressive, doing it for a team going through a disastrous quarterback carousel is even more remarkable. However did you know that of his 77 receptions only one time did Shaw make a tackler miss? That’s nuts!!! How does that happen? Even more crazy is the fact that Derek can tell you the one time Shaw made a guy miss. Hang your head in shame Hamilton’s Chris Davis! Shaw caught a hitch pass, you were the primary defender and Shaw got past you. Also who charts that sort of thing? At this point in the interview Derek could be lying to me and I would totally believe anything he said.

12) Nik Lewis’ season was even more incredible than you may have imagined

Lewis was 5th among receivers for yards after the catch and no receiver did a better job eluding defenders. Lewis would shimmy his 34 year old body and make a defensive player miss every 2.8 receptions. One more time for emphasis, no receiver made more players miss than Nik Lewis! On top of that Lewis had just one drop all season. Any team that doesn’t try to sign Lewis is straight up crazy.

13) Finally Derek reluctantly agrees with Mike O’Shea … yeah he also would have sent Medlock out to attempt that 61 yard field goal

The win probabilities were about the same going for it on 3rd and four (converted 22% of the time this season) as it was for the Medlock field goal attempt. Derek dropped his statistical mindset down slightly and went sports philosophical as he proclaimed he’d rather go down swinging with your best player and Medlock is certainly that. Of all the questions I asked him, this was the toughest for him to answer … imagine what it was like for Coach O’Shea.