No, it’s not too early to start talking about it.
By this time in the season we already have a wealth of information on who is succeeding in the NFL and who is not. With a fair degree of certainty we know who is going to make the playoffs and who is going to advance to the divisional and championship games. Sure, there may be an outlier here and there, a team with a .500 record who’ll barely make the playoffs and survive for a week or two there (or like the Giants two years ago win the whole thing), but what strikes me about this year in particular is the “distance” between the top tier teams and the bottom. Since the introduction of the salary cap the NFL has become more and more competitive every year – this year is the anomaly. There were games that were played in the last two weeks where we could all but certainly predict the winner. All that was left for chance was the point spread.
My point here is that except for the top tier teams that KNOW they are going to the playoffs (Saints, Patriots, Broncos, Colts, etc) everyone else should be starting to look at building their team for the next year. How is that done?
Much like any multi-step self-help process, the first step is the admission you have a problem. Is your problem on offense, defense, special teams or all of the above? Then, break that problem down into positions – quarterback, offense line, defensive line, backfields, gunners, kickers, etc. Ask yourself this:
What is it specifically about these units that are not functioning as expected?
More importantly, define and standardize the performance metrics that are most important to your team being successful.
What elements (grading) are showing where individuals or groups of individuals are not performing for your team?
Once these “holes” are identified how do you plug them? Off-season trades are a good way. As teams drop out of the post season picture, in-season trades may even work well (it’s also a great way to improve your draft position). But, the one instance that occurs EVERY year for EVERY team is the combine and draft. Since this is the most important event, shouldn’t we start talking about it now? Where do most of these players come from? You bet, they’re in action every week just like the NFL squads with one exception – they play on Saturday.
Over the next couple of months I will be building my special “draft edition” of Real Sports Analytics. I’m going to take the top 100 draft possibilities and score all of their 2009 collegiate games. I’ll use the base metrics (already qualified vs. on-field results) and make small modifications along the way to adjust the weights to get a finely tuned model.
This information can be critical to teams already looking ahead for next year and I’m looking forward to seeing the results myself!
