Last year - I went through an exercise of predicting which NFL team would be HBO's participant for the upcoming season of Hard Knocks.
And then the Atlanta Falcons blew it all up by volunteering for the job.
So, proving that I don't learn lessons well - I'm going back to the well to go on record before its officially decided.
The NFL must like Hard Knocks, but NFL coaches and management staff do NOT like Hard Knocks. Whether it's about revealing trade secrets or just trying to avoid looking like a doofus, teams don't exactly line up to go under a microscope (Atlanta being a recent exception).
But the NFL can compel teams to participate, except for a few conditions which if they apply, allows a team to remove themselves from consideration:
1. If the team has made the playoffs in either of the prior two years
2. If the team has hired a new head coach
3. If the team has appeared on Hard Knocks in any of the last ten years
ProFootballTalk identified the teams that do not meet any of these criteria: the Browns, Texans, Titans, Jaguars, Washington, Giants, Vikings, Buccaneers, and Rams.
Recently rumors swirled that the Browns were the front-runners, but today they've made it known that they do not want the 'honor'
Of course, the NFL can force them to participate, but let's assume for a minute that the NFL doesn't want to force the show on Cleveland (too bad, it would be interesting). Among the eight remaining teams, who would be most likely?
8. Washington - With all the issues around their team name, their ownership, and their QB-coach potential feud - I'm going to go ahead and assume the NFL doesn't want these guys front and center
7. Minnesota Vikings - Adrian Peterson child abuse/suspension means these guys are also EXTREMELY unlikely. Although the team is actually pretty interesting and has some compelling talent, I don't think you get past the elephant in the room
6. NY Giants - I suspect Tom Coughlin would rather slit his wrists, and the Mara family is pretty tight with the commissioner, so I doubt it.
5. St. Louis Rams - The owner seems to want to get the hell out of St. Louis, creating a lot of drama and uncertainty over the team's future. I don't know if that's the type of thing that would make their participation less likely (why would the NFL provoke them) or more likely (as a 'punishment' for maverick behavior). I'm assuming the NFL would avoid it altogether and just not enlist the Rams.
Tie:
3. Tampa Bay Buccaneers/Tennessee Titans: I think these guys are tied. They have the top 2 picks in this years' draft, which makes for a pre-made storyline. But both teams haven't been competitive in a while, and I think that hurts them here. They aren't really major forces in the NFL's public consciousness. And when's the last time a team with such a bad record was on Hard Knocks?
2. Jacksonville Jaguars - What was that I said about not being a part of the NFL's public consciousness? Jacksonville is pretty much as minimal an impact as you can get. But I still think they're an intriguing option because I think their ownership might actually be interested. The NFL's foremost ambassador to London is obviously willing to do favors for the league (or take money to do it, whatever). They have to be considered a strong contender.
1. Houston Texans - These guys would be pretty close to perfect across all the candidates we have to choose from. Start with the most obvious - JJ Watt. Not only is he a huge star - but he's also actually got a personality and seems genuinely funny. He doesn't need any more publicity, but the show would be his star vehicle and lay the groundwork for his eventual transition to studio show personality. He'd be amazing to watch. You also have a good injury redemption storyline in Clowney, a coach in Bill O'Brien who's very comfortable in a media swirl (see Penn State), and other interesting personalities like Arian Foster.
Of all the teams to choose from, the Texans would be my pick - and in my estimation, they should be considered front-runners until evidence suggests otherwise.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Nintendo Games for Smartphones!
If you follow me on Twitter - you'd know that every now and again I wonder why Nintendo refuses to port their games for iPhone and release them to generations of now-adults who played them as kids.
Every few months I would think about a fun Nintendo game I used to be obsessed with and wonder why I couldn't buy it for my phone.
It was never the technology - I'm pretty sure smartphones have way more sophisticated hardware than my old 8-bit NES system.
And it was never willingness to pay - I have at least a little discretionary income
And it was never because there were better options out there - Most of the super addictive iPhone games out there still can't hold a candle to the greatness of some of the best NES games.
But every time I would wonder, then I would look it up, and would read another recent statement from a Nintendo executive about how they refuse to release their games on smartphones.
The execs would invariably toe the same party line - moving to a smartphone platform would damage them in unspeakable and unrecoverable ways. Nintendo is a console company after all.
I would read those statement, pretty dumbfounded. It was like the entire organization put its collective head up its collective ass.
But finally, it appears, some semblance of logic and rationality has prevailed:
"Until now, Nintendo had refused to bring its games to platforms outside its own consoles. On Tuesday, it announced a partnership with a Japanese mobile gaming company called DeNA to start developing new smartphone and tablet games featuring Nintendo characters."
Finally, they're at least acknowledging that there may be a future in these smart-phone things.
I get that Nintendo wants to keep its core business focused around building/selling new consoles and games for those consoles. I get it, that's their history. But unfortunately for Nintendo traditionalists, that's not what their customers want.
Nintendo has never been great at making the most hardcore gaming systems out there - the ones that allow for hyper-realistic action sequences and zombie head-busting gore. Nintendo has been great at making games that are approachable and enjoyable (i.e., your mom and your kids can play).
Well - to me the future of those games is NOT married to a console, it's on a tablet or a phone. And that should be pretty obvious to anyone with a mom or with kids.
But Nintendo resisted that vision and held fast to an outdated view of what their business could be. This also leaves out the huge potential revenue stream of their back catalog. Nintendo released tons of great games in the 80's (just as my mom, they're all in the attic), but no one is buying new NES consoles or cartridges these days. And refusing to put them on smartphones is equivalent of the Beatles not allowing digital album sales because their music was meant to be heard on a record player.
However, as I said, logic has finally prevailed...and what was the response from the investment community?
A 30% increase in the stock price.
It's amazing, I'm hard-pressed to think of another corporation who has committed such malpractice by NOT pursuing such a no-brainer business line (the one exception is probably Chick-Fil-A and the whole Sunday thing, but at least theirs has some more reasonable logic). I feel like if Nintendo had been American, they'd have been under siege by activists for the way they've been behaving.
But at least they're making progress, and although technically the announcement states they'll only make NEW games with their characters (not re-release old ones), once the flood gates have opened, I have to imagine they'll choose to accept my (and millions of others) money.
Every few months I would think about a fun Nintendo game I used to be obsessed with and wonder why I couldn't buy it for my phone.
It was never the technology - I'm pretty sure smartphones have way more sophisticated hardware than my old 8-bit NES system.
And it was never willingness to pay - I have at least a little discretionary income
And it was never because there were better options out there - Most of the super addictive iPhone games out there still can't hold a candle to the greatness of some of the best NES games.
But every time I would wonder, then I would look it up, and would read another recent statement from a Nintendo executive about how they refuse to release their games on smartphones.
The execs would invariably toe the same party line - moving to a smartphone platform would damage them in unspeakable and unrecoverable ways. Nintendo is a console company after all.
I would read those statement, pretty dumbfounded. It was like the entire organization put its collective head up its collective ass.
But finally, it appears, some semblance of logic and rationality has prevailed:
"Until now, Nintendo had refused to bring its games to platforms outside its own consoles. On Tuesday, it announced a partnership with a Japanese mobile gaming company called DeNA to start developing new smartphone and tablet games featuring Nintendo characters."
Finally, they're at least acknowledging that there may be a future in these smart-phone things.
I get that Nintendo wants to keep its core business focused around building/selling new consoles and games for those consoles. I get it, that's their history. But unfortunately for Nintendo traditionalists, that's not what their customers want.
Nintendo has never been great at making the most hardcore gaming systems out there - the ones that allow for hyper-realistic action sequences and zombie head-busting gore. Nintendo has been great at making games that are approachable and enjoyable (i.e., your mom and your kids can play).
Well - to me the future of those games is NOT married to a console, it's on a tablet or a phone. And that should be pretty obvious to anyone with a mom or with kids.
But Nintendo resisted that vision and held fast to an outdated view of what their business could be. This also leaves out the huge potential revenue stream of their back catalog. Nintendo released tons of great games in the 80's (just as my mom, they're all in the attic), but no one is buying new NES consoles or cartridges these days. And refusing to put them on smartphones is equivalent of the Beatles not allowing digital album sales because their music was meant to be heard on a record player.
However, as I said, logic has finally prevailed...and what was the response from the investment community?
A 30% increase in the stock price.
It's amazing, I'm hard-pressed to think of another corporation who has committed such malpractice by NOT pursuing such a no-brainer business line (the one exception is probably Chick-Fil-A and the whole Sunday thing, but at least theirs has some more reasonable logic). I feel like if Nintendo had been American, they'd have been under siege by activists for the way they've been behaving.
But at least they're making progress, and although technically the announcement states they'll only make NEW games with their characters (not re-release old ones), once the flood gates have opened, I have to imagine they'll choose to accept my (and millions of others) money.
Friday, March 6, 2015
History of Spreadsheets
I came across a fantastic article today - detailing the backstory and history of the spreadsheet.
It's an article from an 1984 issue of Harper's and was reprinted on Medium - and it's ridiculously interesting on a couple different levels.
1 - It's completely insane to imagine a world without spreadsheets. From my first internship (which I got because I told my future boss that I knew all about VLOOKUPs, although I'd never heard of them), to the slightly more complex models I built as a consultant - the spreadsheet is literally the most significant file format from my entire career (some consultants might argue for PowerPoint - but let's be honest, all the real work gets done in spreadsheets).
It's hard to imagine doing any of my jobs without spreadsheets, and even when my Dad would tell me about the days before the spreadsheet program, I couldn't believe him. He told me they did all these sheets BY HAND!!! And other much more experienced consultants used to tell me about the days of model building sessions that would take place on enormous sheets of paper.
The concept is so alien to me that even now it's hard to process. But the article really gives a great sense for not only what that was like but also how mind-blowing it was for the people actually impacted by the new tools (VisiCale, Lotus - which itself is amazing, this is all PRE-Excel).
"In the first days of electronic spreadsheets — that is, two or three years ago — those who used them got things done so quickly that, despite the evidence of finished reports, bosses and co-workers often had trouble believing the tasks had been completed. Gottheil told me of an accountant who got “a rush task, sat down with his micro and his spreadsheet, finished it in an hour or two, and left it on his desk for two days. Then he Fed Ex-ed it to the client and got all sorts of accolades for working overtime.”
What a complete mindblowing experience this must have been. And one that, were you in management, you'd have been completely unprepared for. I'm trying to think of a reasonable comparison in today's world that would be such an impact to my professional life and I can't really think of one (maybe if google's search engine could somehow become self-aware and anticipate what I would search for...shortly before it destroys all humans).
2 - What wasn't completely insane at all, what made a lot of sense actually, was the talk of people who become attached to their models. The real spreadsheet geeks.
Spreadsheet models have become a form of expression, and the very act of creating them seem to yield a pleasure unrelated to their utility. Unusual models are duplicated and passed around; these templates are sometimes used by other modelers and sometimes only admired for their elegance.
Guilty.
3 - The last element I thought was very interesting was how the author noted that spreadsheets allow you to model all kinds of permutations - but that they can also disconnect you from the real tangible business you're evaluating or working with. It seems a bit quaint to think of people feeling that way in the 1980's - because it's become increasingly turbo-charged.
And so it is that spreadsheets help in the drive for paper profits, and are a prime tool of takeover architects. An executive in a acquisition-hungry company might spend his time spreadsheeting in order to find a company ripe for takeover. If his spreadsheet projections were to produce a likely candidate- if the numbers looked good- he would naturally recommend making a takeover bid. Even a hostile takeover seems cut and dried, perfectly logical, in the world of spreadsheets.
Compare that to a hedge fund using derivatives or algorithmic trading - it's detachment on steroids relative to just some spreadsheets. It's particularly interesting to think about in the context of an offhand thought from the author:
The flexibility of spreadsheets can encourage other heartless moves from headquarters. It is no great drain on an executive’s time to experiment with all sorts of odd, even insidious. He might ask “What if we dropped our pension plan?” Then he might run his idea through a spreadsheet and find a huge gain in capital- and there would be an unthinkable, in hard figures.
You think any corporation views that as unthinkable in this day and age? What's telling about our business environment is that what the author refers to as 'unthinkable', now seems almost automatic.
It's an article from an 1984 issue of Harper's and was reprinted on Medium - and it's ridiculously interesting on a couple different levels.
1 - It's completely insane to imagine a world without spreadsheets. From my first internship (which I got because I told my future boss that I knew all about VLOOKUPs, although I'd never heard of them), to the slightly more complex models I built as a consultant - the spreadsheet is literally the most significant file format from my entire career (some consultants might argue for PowerPoint - but let's be honest, all the real work gets done in spreadsheets).
It's hard to imagine doing any of my jobs without spreadsheets, and even when my Dad would tell me about the days before the spreadsheet program, I couldn't believe him. He told me they did all these sheets BY HAND!!! And other much more experienced consultants used to tell me about the days of model building sessions that would take place on enormous sheets of paper.
The concept is so alien to me that even now it's hard to process. But the article really gives a great sense for not only what that was like but also how mind-blowing it was for the people actually impacted by the new tools (VisiCale, Lotus - which itself is amazing, this is all PRE-Excel).
"In the first days of electronic spreadsheets — that is, two or three years ago — those who used them got things done so quickly that, despite the evidence of finished reports, bosses and co-workers often had trouble believing the tasks had been completed. Gottheil told me of an accountant who got “a rush task, sat down with his micro and his spreadsheet, finished it in an hour or two, and left it on his desk for two days. Then he Fed Ex-ed it to the client and got all sorts of accolades for working overtime.”
What a complete mindblowing experience this must have been. And one that, were you in management, you'd have been completely unprepared for. I'm trying to think of a reasonable comparison in today's world that would be such an impact to my professional life and I can't really think of one (maybe if google's search engine could somehow become self-aware and anticipate what I would search for...shortly before it destroys all humans).
2 - What wasn't completely insane at all, what made a lot of sense actually, was the talk of people who become attached to their models. The real spreadsheet geeks.
Spreadsheet models have become a form of expression, and the very act of creating them seem to yield a pleasure unrelated to their utility. Unusual models are duplicated and passed around; these templates are sometimes used by other modelers and sometimes only admired for their elegance.
Guilty.
3 - The last element I thought was very interesting was how the author noted that spreadsheets allow you to model all kinds of permutations - but that they can also disconnect you from the real tangible business you're evaluating or working with. It seems a bit quaint to think of people feeling that way in the 1980's - because it's become increasingly turbo-charged.
And so it is that spreadsheets help in the drive for paper profits, and are a prime tool of takeover architects. An executive in a acquisition-hungry company might spend his time spreadsheeting in order to find a company ripe for takeover. If his spreadsheet projections were to produce a likely candidate- if the numbers looked good- he would naturally recommend making a takeover bid. Even a hostile takeover seems cut and dried, perfectly logical, in the world of spreadsheets.
Compare that to a hedge fund using derivatives or algorithmic trading - it's detachment on steroids relative to just some spreadsheets. It's particularly interesting to think about in the context of an offhand thought from the author:
The flexibility of spreadsheets can encourage other heartless moves from headquarters. It is no great drain on an executive’s time to experiment with all sorts of odd, even insidious. He might ask “What if we dropped our pension plan?” Then he might run his idea through a spreadsheet and find a huge gain in capital- and there would be an unthinkable, in hard figures.
You think any corporation views that as unthinkable in this day and age? What's telling about our business environment is that what the author refers to as 'unthinkable', now seems almost automatic.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Skill-based betting, coming to NJ
Very exciting news coming out of Atlantic City today...I know, normally that means there's a serial killer on the loose, but today it's for an entirely legitimate reason.
A casino there is finally opening the door to skill-based wagering...specifically, physical skill-based wagering.
Skill-based wagering is different from your standard casino games. Whereas those games are ones of mathematical certainty and based in no way on a player's ability (e.g., a roulette table where the fall of the ball is random), skill-based wagers come in games where the players can actually control the outcome.
Poker is the most popular example in casino gaming today, but what's interesting is a casino testing out a different, more physical, wagering opportunity:
Executives at The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa told The Associated Press on Friday that they've gotten permission from New Jersey gambling regulators to host a basketball contest next month in which players shoot free throws for money.
"This is a first step, something we've never been able to do until now," said Joe Lupo, the casino's senior vice president. "A year from now, you'll probably see a lot more of these skill-based tournaments or even games on the casino floor."
That's right, free throw shooting contests for money!
Now it's not surprising to see an Atlantic City casino try some new angles to drum up business. Ever since other states realized they could get some quick cash by putting up casinos, and ever since people realized AC is a pit, the city has been bleeding gambling dollars like crazy.
So it's nice to see an experiment, especially one where players actually can control their outcome. Players mostly take each others money, and the casino gets a small rake for its trouble.
Now, while I love the idea of a free throw shooting contest for money, I'd never EVER actually pay to play in one. But I'd certainly watch it...and it got me thinking, what other games of physical skill could we put in casinos???
Skeeball - Yes, just rip the machines straight out of the boardwalk arcades down in Ocean City and haul them into the AC casinos. I would absolutely play against other people in Skeeball. The trick is to forget about the 100 point circles. Avoid their siren song at all costs! Just play nice and easy and bang out 50 point throws. Only downside of this is that my wife would routinely beat me.
Super Chexx Hockey - Again, if this could be played for real money, they'd eventually have to stage an intervention for me. An important caveat, the only true version of this game is the US vs. USSR edition. It's the only one where there feels like real geopolitical consequences. None of this Canada vs. US crap. Americans and Soviets is the only one to play.
Speed Pitch - I'm not sure this is actually a good idea, I'm just putting it out there for my friend who's a sports orthopedist. He could use a pool at his summer house.
There's a whole litany of carnival games which should also be included here. Ring toss, dart throw, milk bottle throw. You could put them all in the casino and have us compete against each other...which means you could finally stop rigging all the games! It would also be extremely easy to replace the shady carnies with shady dealers...it would just be a new shirt.
But they'd all be fun to bet money on. Finally, I've saved the best for last...
Tell me you wouldn't put $20 down on a best of three...tell me you wouldn't....if you say you wouldn't, you're a liar. I would play this in a casino...hell, I would pay to watch this in a casino.
Atlantic City, you've already gotten us started, just take it a little further. Please?
A casino there is finally opening the door to skill-based wagering...specifically, physical skill-based wagering.
Skill-based wagering is different from your standard casino games. Whereas those games are ones of mathematical certainty and based in no way on a player's ability (e.g., a roulette table where the fall of the ball is random), skill-based wagers come in games where the players can actually control the outcome.
Poker is the most popular example in casino gaming today, but what's interesting is a casino testing out a different, more physical, wagering opportunity:
Executives at The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa told The Associated Press on Friday that they've gotten permission from New Jersey gambling regulators to host a basketball contest next month in which players shoot free throws for money.
"This is a first step, something we've never been able to do until now," said Joe Lupo, the casino's senior vice president. "A year from now, you'll probably see a lot more of these skill-based tournaments or even games on the casino floor."
That's right, free throw shooting contests for money!
Now it's not surprising to see an Atlantic City casino try some new angles to drum up business. Ever since other states realized they could get some quick cash by putting up casinos, and ever since people realized AC is a pit, the city has been bleeding gambling dollars like crazy.
So it's nice to see an experiment, especially one where players actually can control their outcome. Players mostly take each others money, and the casino gets a small rake for its trouble.
Now, while I love the idea of a free throw shooting contest for money, I'd never EVER actually pay to play in one. But I'd certainly watch it...and it got me thinking, what other games of physical skill could we put in casinos???
Skeeball - Yes, just rip the machines straight out of the boardwalk arcades down in Ocean City and haul them into the AC casinos. I would absolutely play against other people in Skeeball. The trick is to forget about the 100 point circles. Avoid their siren song at all costs! Just play nice and easy and bang out 50 point throws. Only downside of this is that my wife would routinely beat me.
Super Chexx Hockey - Again, if this could be played for real money, they'd eventually have to stage an intervention for me. An important caveat, the only true version of this game is the US vs. USSR edition. It's the only one where there feels like real geopolitical consequences. None of this Canada vs. US crap. Americans and Soviets is the only one to play.
Speed Pitch - I'm not sure this is actually a good idea, I'm just putting it out there for my friend who's a sports orthopedist. He could use a pool at his summer house.
There's a whole litany of carnival games which should also be included here. Ring toss, dart throw, milk bottle throw. You could put them all in the casino and have us compete against each other...which means you could finally stop rigging all the games! It would also be extremely easy to replace the shady carnies with shady dealers...it would just be a new shirt.
But they'd all be fun to bet money on. Finally, I've saved the best for last...
Tell me you wouldn't put $20 down on a best of three...tell me you wouldn't....if you say you wouldn't, you're a liar. I would play this in a casino...hell, I would pay to watch this in a casino.
Atlantic City, you've already gotten us started, just take it a little further. Please?
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Are NFL Teams Faking Injuries? - 2013 Follow-up
After I finished looking into NFL injuries during the 2014 regular season, we saw a couple distinct insights:
- Defenses appear to suffer more in-game injuries than offenses
- Injury stoppages occur more as the game goes on, with the fourth quarter having the greatest frequency of injury stoppage
- There is a positive correlation between offenses which run more plays and opposing defenses suffering injuries - but no such correlation between play frequency and injury in any other game situation
To me, this at least suggests the possibility that defensive players fake injuries against high-tempo offenses. It certainly doesn't prove it, but when I finished looking at 2014, I wondered, did this hold across other seasons as well?
I had 16 weeks of play by play data from 2013, so I decided to look at that as well and see if what I saw in 2014 was an anomaly.
You can be the judge.
Below is an image from my last post, the frequency of injury stoppages by offense/defense and quarter:
Now, here's the same chart, but for my 16 weeks of the 2013 regular season
I'd say those are similar! We observe the same pattern, injuries increase as the game goes on, and almost entirely on the defensive side of the ball.
Now, below is the scatter plot that illustrates an offense's plays per game against its opponent's rate of injury. This had by far the most significant correlation of all the game situations we examined - and it's the only situation where teams would benefit from faking injuries.
So we saw a correlation of 0.39 - whereas other game situations didn't have anything close to that high.
How about 2013?
Once again, a pretty interesting positive correlation.
And, as in the 2014 analysis, there was nothing close to a similar correlation in the other game scenarios.
So now we have two years of analysis, both of which show the same patterns in the data.
When teams run more offensive plays, the defenses they face need injury stoppages more frequently.
Either you attribute this to defenses being out of shape/unprepared and thus more likely to get fatigued and hurt...or you're like me and assume on the margins some players fake an injury occasionally to get a breather.
I'm willing to listen to arguments for the former, but I'd say if you think Bill Belichick hasn't thought about it, that seems unlikely
- Defenses appear to suffer more in-game injuries than offenses
- Injury stoppages occur more as the game goes on, with the fourth quarter having the greatest frequency of injury stoppage
- There is a positive correlation between offenses which run more plays and opposing defenses suffering injuries - but no such correlation between play frequency and injury in any other game situation
To me, this at least suggests the possibility that defensive players fake injuries against high-tempo offenses. It certainly doesn't prove it, but when I finished looking at 2014, I wondered, did this hold across other seasons as well?
I had 16 weeks of play by play data from 2013, so I decided to look at that as well and see if what I saw in 2014 was an anomaly.
You can be the judge.
Below is an image from my last post, the frequency of injury stoppages by offense/defense and quarter:
Now, here's the same chart, but for my 16 weeks of the 2013 regular season
I'd say those are similar! We observe the same pattern, injuries increase as the game goes on, and almost entirely on the defensive side of the ball.
Now, below is the scatter plot that illustrates an offense's plays per game against its opponent's rate of injury. This had by far the most significant correlation of all the game situations we examined - and it's the only situation where teams would benefit from faking injuries.
So we saw a correlation of 0.39 - whereas other game situations didn't have anything close to that high.
How about 2013?
Once again, a pretty interesting positive correlation.
And, as in the 2014 analysis, there was nothing close to a similar correlation in the other game scenarios.
So now we have two years of analysis, both of which show the same patterns in the data.
When teams run more offensive plays, the defenses they face need injury stoppages more frequently.
Either you attribute this to defenses being out of shape/unprepared and thus more likely to get fatigued and hurt...or you're like me and assume on the margins some players fake an injury occasionally to get a breather.
I'm willing to listen to arguments for the former, but I'd say if you think Bill Belichick hasn't thought about it, that seems unlikely
Thursday, January 22, 2015
BS Journalism Watch: WSJ Edition
Just had to quickly note an absurd piece from the Wall Street Journal today, shockingly, it's not from the editorial page.
But I saw an article titled "Generation Y Prefers Suburban Home Over City Condo," and immediately alarm bells started going off in my head.
:::DOES NOT COMPUTE:::
So I had to actually go read the article (which I guess was the point for WSJ.com) - because I 100% didn't believe that headline. It just went against all my understanding of that generation...which I'm technically a part of.
Now, if it had been a study on a different age group I wasn't a part of, say, 'Study finds Boomers prefer Fat Chicks' - maybe I'd be a little skeptical, but give them more of a benefit of the doubt.
But this seemed highly unlikely, so I read, and yeah, turns out it's absurd on it's face. From the article...
LAS VEGAS—One of the hottest debates among housing economists these days isn’t the trajectory of home sales, but whether millennials, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, want to remain urbanites or eventually relocate to the suburbs.
Some demographers and economists argue that the preference of millennials, also called Generation Y, for city living will remain long lasting. And surveys of these young urban residents have tended to show that they don’t mind small living quarters as long as they have access to mass transit and are close to entertainment, dining and their workplaces.
But a survey released Wednesday by the National Association of Home Builders, a trade group, suggested otherwise. The survey, based on responses from 1,506 people born since 1977, found that most want to live in single-family homes outside of the urban center, even if they now reside in the city.
“While you are more likely to attract this generation than other generations to buy a condo or a house downtown, that is a relative term,” said Rose Quint, the association’s assistant vice president of survey research. “The majority of them will still want to buy the house out there in the suburbs.”
The survey, which was released at the association’s convention in Las Vegas, found that 66% want to live in the suburbs, 24% want to live in rural areas and 10% want to live in a city center. One of the main reasons people want to relocate from the city center, she said, is that they “want to live in more space than they have now.” The survey showed 81% want three or more bedrooms in their home.
I read that and was flabbergasted. Only 10% of people born after 1977 want to live in a city? And 66% want to live in the suburbs?
Think of all the people you know under 35...do only 10% of them currently live in a city? Do two-thirds of them say, "You know what would be better than all these restaurants, bars, and museums? A finished basement and a two car garage."
Sure - now that lots of us have kids - people are making the switch, but two-thirds??? Still doesn't make sense...until you read one of the later paragraphs...
"The survey results, though, could be skewed because they included only millennials who first answered that they bought a home within the past three years or intended to do so in the next three years."
So, in other words, this survey is total bullsh*t.
If you self select only people who have already bought homes or are planning on it soon...and you target a group of people that generally won't have the wealth to buy single family homes in urban centers, you can't be surprised when they all say they want to live in suburb or rural areas. Hell I'm surprised you found 10% that want to live in cities (must've been the reluctant soon-to-be-suburbanites)
The whole premise of the article is built on some BS data from a survey that is misrepresented and by the way, is conducted by a homebuilders trade group (who you think may have some incentive to convince people the suburbs is the place to be???)
That's some grade A crappy journalism -
But I saw an article titled "Generation Y Prefers Suburban Home Over City Condo," and immediately alarm bells started going off in my head.
:::DOES NOT COMPUTE:::
So I had to actually go read the article (which I guess was the point for WSJ.com) - because I 100% didn't believe that headline. It just went against all my understanding of that generation...which I'm technically a part of.
Now, if it had been a study on a different age group I wasn't a part of, say, 'Study finds Boomers prefer Fat Chicks' - maybe I'd be a little skeptical, but give them more of a benefit of the doubt.
But this seemed highly unlikely, so I read, and yeah, turns out it's absurd on it's face. From the article...
LAS VEGAS—One of the hottest debates among housing economists these days isn’t the trajectory of home sales, but whether millennials, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, want to remain urbanites or eventually relocate to the suburbs.
Some demographers and economists argue that the preference of millennials, also called Generation Y, for city living will remain long lasting. And surveys of these young urban residents have tended to show that they don’t mind small living quarters as long as they have access to mass transit and are close to entertainment, dining and their workplaces.
But a survey released Wednesday by the National Association of Home Builders, a trade group, suggested otherwise. The survey, based on responses from 1,506 people born since 1977, found that most want to live in single-family homes outside of the urban center, even if they now reside in the city.
“While you are more likely to attract this generation than other generations to buy a condo or a house downtown, that is a relative term,” said Rose Quint, the association’s assistant vice president of survey research. “The majority of them will still want to buy the house out there in the suburbs.”
The survey, which was released at the association’s convention in Las Vegas, found that 66% want to live in the suburbs, 24% want to live in rural areas and 10% want to live in a city center. One of the main reasons people want to relocate from the city center, she said, is that they “want to live in more space than they have now.” The survey showed 81% want three or more bedrooms in their home.
I read that and was flabbergasted. Only 10% of people born after 1977 want to live in a city? And 66% want to live in the suburbs?
Think of all the people you know under 35...do only 10% of them currently live in a city? Do two-thirds of them say, "You know what would be better than all these restaurants, bars, and museums? A finished basement and a two car garage."
Sure - now that lots of us have kids - people are making the switch, but two-thirds??? Still doesn't make sense...until you read one of the later paragraphs...
"The survey results, though, could be skewed because they included only millennials who first answered that they bought a home within the past three years or intended to do so in the next three years."
So, in other words, this survey is total bullsh*t.
If you self select only people who have already bought homes or are planning on it soon...and you target a group of people that generally won't have the wealth to buy single family homes in urban centers, you can't be surprised when they all say they want to live in suburb or rural areas. Hell I'm surprised you found 10% that want to live in cities (must've been the reluctant soon-to-be-suburbanites)
The whole premise of the article is built on some BS data from a survey that is misrepresented and by the way, is conducted by a homebuilders trade group (who you think may have some incentive to convince people the suburbs is the place to be???)
That's some grade A crappy journalism -
Friday, January 16, 2015
Are NFL Teams Faking Injuries?
Given all the animated discussion over the Patriots tactics against the Ravens in their divisional round playoff game, I thought it would be as good a time as any to post some gamesmanship research.
If you read about the game – you know the Ravens were a bit upset with the Patriots usage of receiver eligibility to disguise their offense. The response from the Patriots was, well, Patriots-like. If it’s not against the letter of the law, it’s all good (unless it’s videotaping other teams, in which case even the law doesn’t matter).
Clearly, the NFL is a league where teams will look for any edge, even if it means pushing the bounds of fair competition.
So it’s with that issue in mind that I started digging into the possibility that players are faking injuries.
As a Philadelphia sports fan, I’m generally inclined to assume that my teams will ultimately lose, and so once the Eagles started running Chip Kelly’s offense, I was quick to accuse every injured defender a liar and a cheat (not to their faces of course).
The Eagles run a very high-tempo offense, one that doesn’t allow opposing defenses to leisurely make substitutions or get a full play clock to catch their breath. It’s a major feature of their strategy, and one that opposing teams would love to minimize, particularly if they aren’t well prepared for it.
One way to slow down the pace of the Eagles offense would be for an opponent to use their timeouts while the Eagles offense is in full-swing. But since a team only has three timeouts per half, they’re a little too valuable to burn. An injury however, is an official’s timeout – these are unlimited – and there’s no cost to the injured team outside of the last two minutes of a half, except that the injured player must sit out for the next play.
So in the current NFL world where fake injuries don’t have a cost (apart from having the ‘injured’ defender miss a play) and can help defenses maintain an easier pace – you could see why an Eagles fan might look at an opposing defender’s injury with suspicion.
Could the Eagles opponents be faking injuries to slow them down? The idea is one that makes the rounds in Eagles bars, but one that’s hard to actually evaluate. So this is my attempt to try.
Others have analyzed NFL injuries via metrics like games lost (i.e., players who aren’t active on game day because they’re injured), but to my knowledge, this is the first attempt to use play-by-play data to look at in-game injuries for trends and whether teams might be faking against the Eagles or other high-tempo teams.
The analysis is a bit long, so below are some quick takeaways:
- The Eagles suffered (or inflicted depending on your point of view) the most defensive injuries against the in league in 2014, and are 2nd in the league when adjusted for a per-play basis
- Across the league, there is a significant positive correlation between running more offensive plays and a higher per-play rate of defensive injury
- Such a correlation could be attributed to fatigue, but this correlation does not hold for the three other possible game situations (own offense, own defense, offense against) – these show no strong relationship between running more plays and a higher per-play rate of injury
- Taken together, these last two points support my hypothesis that players fake injuries against higher tempo offenses
Data Collection and Methodology:
I gathered play-by-play data from all the regular season games this year, and identified all the in-game injuries noted in the descriptions. In case you haven’t read play-by-play before, each play has its own line and explanation, and any play that resulted in an injury timeout is noted. Below is an example:
2-10-DET 40 (14:05) (Shotgun) 10-E.Manning pass incomplete deep middle to 80-V.Cruz (27-G.Quin). DET-27-G.Quin was injured during the play.
If an injury was noted as a stoppage, it was recorded. In an ideal world, we’d eliminate injuries that are serious and clearly not fakes, but there’s no detail on the injuries in the game data, so we have to take the major with the minor.
The play-by-play injuries were then coded as to whether they occurred to the offense, defense, or on special teams (e.g., kick coverage). There were approximately 700 total observations, and while it’s possible that not all injuries were noted in the play-by-play data, this is the only comprehensive source for such information. Given that there are ~700 injury stoppages in our set, that works out to 2-3 injury timeouts per game, which sounds possible but could also be low. It’s possible that whoever officially creates the play-by-play gets lazy and misses some, my assumption here is that if any injuries are somehow missed, they aren’t biased towards one particular side of the ball.
After gathering the data, one additional adjustment is for play frequency. Simply put, the more snaps a player gets, the more likely they are to sustain an injury. Therefore, any team that runs more plays is more likely to see a higher absolute number of injuries. To account for this, I also looked up the total number of plays for each team’s offense and defense during the course of the year – to understand the rate of injury rather than the total number.
Output:
Let’s start with the absolutes. I found 692 injuries in the play by play data, 66 of which were special teams plays. I took these out, because they aren’t central to the question of are teams faking injuries to slow down offenses. Of the remaining injuries, I looked at whether they happened to an offensive player or a defensive player and which team they occurred against, below is the data from this season:
Not a shocker to see the Eagles at the very top of that list, and indeed they led the league in defensive injuries against this season.
However, as I already noted, this metric can be misleading. The Eagles offense runs more plays per game than any other team, so we would expect them to be near the top of this list. We need to adjust our data for the number of offensive plays – and we can examine the rate at which opposing defensive players get injured against the Eagles and whether they are still an outlier.
So as we see when we look at it on a rate basis (number of injuries/number of total offensive plays), the Eagles are still close to the top of the league, and roughly 50% above the league average. Houston is just above them, and while no one would consider their offense up-tempo, the fact that the Eagles are so high would be consistent with the theory that opposing teams might be faking injuries to slow them down.
Now, before we get any further down the faking rabbit hole, what if there’s a simpler explanation that doesn’t involve fake injuries? There’s another obvious possibility to explain why the Eagles are so high in defensive injuries against. What about the idea that as you run more plays, players get more physically exhausted, and therefore are naturally more susceptible to injury?
That seems possible, right? So let’s examine that idea a bit.
The first thing we can do is very simple, does injury frequency vary by quarter? If teams get physically tired during the course of the game and that leads to more fatigue and more injury, there should be more injuries as the game goes on:
Interesting. This sort of muddies our waters a bit.
In absolute terms, the number of injures rises dramatically as the game goes on. Injury stoppages in the fourth quarter occur at 2x the rate they do in the first quarter. Part of that can be explained by the fact that the clock stops more frequently in the fourth quarter than the others (and thus more plays), but that wouldn’t explain a 2x difference. I would want to check against the sheer number of plays run by quarter, but I don’t have that data without a bunch of more work.
Still – it looks like that thinking may be reasonable, injuries increase as the game goes on. But it’s also interesting to note that the increase is much more pronounced on the defensive side of the ball. We’ll come back to that later.
For the time being, let’s move on to looking for evidence of fake injuries.
As a general framework for this analysis, I’ve split the types of injury stoppages into four buckets:
1. While on defense, your own team suffers an injury (Own-Defense)
2. While on defense, your opponent suffers an injury (Opponent-Offense)
3. While on offense, your own team suffers an injury (Own-Offense)
4. While on offense, your opponent suffers an injury (Opponent-Defense)
We’ve been focused on bucket #4 thus far, and saw that on a per-play basis the Eagles are close to the top of the league in terms of defensive injuries against on a per-play basis. We also saw that overall injuries increase as the game goes on – but it seems much more prevalent on the defense, which is the side that would be interested in faking injuries.
So can we look a bit deeper to see if play frequency increases injury risk across each type of injury stoppage? The idea that running more plays increases the rate of injury should not be exclusive to offense or defense – although it appears that way at first glance – it’s hard for me to believe that defensive players are in any worse shape or take any harder hits than offensive players.
To take a look at the issue, I ran some basic correlations across each of those four injury types, looking at the number of plays run and the rate of injury. Just to clarify, I summarized the four below:
1. Your defense runs more plays and gets injured more often (this would be a bad defense)
2. Your defense runs more plays and your opponent gets injured more often
3. Your offense runs more plays and gets injured more often (this would be a good offense)
4. Your offense runs more plays and your opponent gets injured more often
Again, if the rate of injury increases with more plays, we should see relationships in each of these situations. So what do we see?
#1 – So earlier we saw defenses suffering more injuries as the game goes on…and yet, when we look at number of defensive plays per game and the rate of defensive injury, there really doesn’t seem to be any relationship. Teams with defenses that are on the field a lot don’t seem to get injured at a higher rate than those who execute fewer plays.
#2 – Our next picture shows a similar lack of correlation, this time between defensive plays per game and the rate of opponent offensive injury. This idea would be that if an opposing defense is really bad, your offense gets more plays, and might get hurt more frequently. But the data shows nothing that looks like a relationship
#3 – Now we’re on the offensive side of the ball, looking at whether an offense that runs a lot of plays suffers a higher rate of injury. There’s actually a relatively weak negative correlation between running lots of offensive plays and suffering offensive injuries. If you want to believe in things like Chip Kelly’s Sport Science program, you would expect a negative relationship as teams that employ high tempo offenses are more adequately prepared to stay healthy while running it. While a very slight relationship exists, it doesn’t look to be that large, if it even exists at all.
#4 – Hmmm…now it’s officially interesting. When we look at the rate of defensive injury against offensive plays per game, there is our most significant positive relationship. A correlation of 0.39 is significantly more than we’ve seen in the other three instances, and it’s also the only one where there is a clear incentive to fake injuries.
Taken alone, this relationship might be explained by the fatigue theory, but I think it’s tougher to make that argument when you don’t see anywhere close to the same relationship in all other situations. When a defense is bad and on the field a lot, they don’t get hurt more often, when an offense is good and runs lots of plays, they don’t get hurt more often, and when a defense is bad and their opponent runs a lot of plays, they don’t get hurt more often. The only ones who show a substantial increase in injury stoppages as plays increase are opposing defenses.
To me, that’s pretty freaking suspicious. Either opposing defenses are the only ones who suffer from fatigue-related injuries…or maybe some of the injuries aren’t injuries at all.
Now, this is far from 100% conclusive. It may be that defensive players naturally get more fatigued than offensive players due to their roles (i.e., offensive players can take more plays off because they know the play calls)…but I don’t really buy that. I think there’s at least a little bit of shenanigans.
It’s also an entirely different question as to how much this even matters. Any fake injury will happen on the margins, as you see the number of total injury stoppages remain relatively small (2-3 total per game). But for an Eagles team that narrowly missed the playoffs, the marginal differences matter.
Solutions
So is there a way to address teams that fake injuries? There are certainly options, but some of them are just impractical. The NHL has a penalty for diving, but you really can’t ask the officials to diagnose injuries and try to penalize fakers. You could charge a team a timeout, which the NFL already does if an injury occurs in the last two minutes. That’s much easier than trying to penalize teams, but also provides incentive for coaches and players to hide injuries (also, what do you do in the case of a ‘Body Bag Game’?)
One idea I think might actually be workable, is to tweak the NFL’s current rule for injured players. As it stands today, an injured player who causes a stoppage has to miss at least one play. Well, if you want to eliminate fake injuries, you should raise the cost to those players for faking, and you can do that simply by making them sit out longer. What if, when a player is injured and causes an official stoppage, they must sit out not for just one play, but for the remainder of that series or until a change of possession?
Missing the rest of a series is a bit more significant than missing just one play, and is something that could balance the equation on faking injuries. It also dovetails nicely with the NFL’s stated emphasis on player safety (interpret my use of the term ‘stated’ as you will, based on your own level of cynicism)
If there are fake injuries happening, such an increase in missed time might be enough to keep anyone from acting hurt. Requiring a player to miss the remainder of a series also isn’t as significant as forcing them out for the rest of a quarter or a game.
Some would argue that this isn’t even a problem worth focusing on. But if fast-paced offenses gain greater acceptance in the NFL (which will happen if more of them succeed), the issue will only become more prominent (beyond the realm of the paranoid Eagles fan) and could materially impact the game.
Summary Data
Below is a table of all the raw data I used here, as a reference:
Bonus – Jevon Kearse All-Stars
One last thing I did with this data, after pulling it together, was dig through and sum up all the specific players who sustained injuries in a game this season.
I wanted to look into it because I was really interested in what I’ve termed the ‘Jevon Kearse All-Stars.’ It may just be a bad memory on my part, but one of the things I really remember about Jevon Kearse’s tenure with the Eagles was his tendency to hurt himself and fall to the ground like he got shot. I feel like his injuries always looked more serious than they actually were. It’s possible I’m misremembering, and if so I apologize to the Freak. But with that said, here were the league leaders in injury stoppages in the NFL this year:
Now I’m not accusing these guys of faking injuries, these just happened to be the guys with the most injury stoppages in the play-by-play data (excluding special teams, which most of these guys don’t play anyway).
Enjoy your spot on the Kearse All-Stars guys – the trophy (it’s an ace bandage) is in the mail!
If you read about the game – you know the Ravens were a bit upset with the Patriots usage of receiver eligibility to disguise their offense. The response from the Patriots was, well, Patriots-like. If it’s not against the letter of the law, it’s all good (unless it’s videotaping other teams, in which case even the law doesn’t matter).
Clearly, the NFL is a league where teams will look for any edge, even if it means pushing the bounds of fair competition.
So it’s with that issue in mind that I started digging into the possibility that players are faking injuries.
As a Philadelphia sports fan, I’m generally inclined to assume that my teams will ultimately lose, and so once the Eagles started running Chip Kelly’s offense, I was quick to accuse every injured defender a liar and a cheat (not to their faces of course).
The Eagles run a very high-tempo offense, one that doesn’t allow opposing defenses to leisurely make substitutions or get a full play clock to catch their breath. It’s a major feature of their strategy, and one that opposing teams would love to minimize, particularly if they aren’t well prepared for it.
One way to slow down the pace of the Eagles offense would be for an opponent to use their timeouts while the Eagles offense is in full-swing. But since a team only has three timeouts per half, they’re a little too valuable to burn. An injury however, is an official’s timeout – these are unlimited – and there’s no cost to the injured team outside of the last two minutes of a half, except that the injured player must sit out for the next play.
So in the current NFL world where fake injuries don’t have a cost (apart from having the ‘injured’ defender miss a play) and can help defenses maintain an easier pace – you could see why an Eagles fan might look at an opposing defender’s injury with suspicion.
Could the Eagles opponents be faking injuries to slow them down? The idea is one that makes the rounds in Eagles bars, but one that’s hard to actually evaluate. So this is my attempt to try.
Others have analyzed NFL injuries via metrics like games lost (i.e., players who aren’t active on game day because they’re injured), but to my knowledge, this is the first attempt to use play-by-play data to look at in-game injuries for trends and whether teams might be faking against the Eagles or other high-tempo teams.
The analysis is a bit long, so below are some quick takeaways:
- The Eagles suffered (or inflicted depending on your point of view) the most defensive injuries against the in league in 2014, and are 2nd in the league when adjusted for a per-play basis
- Across the league, there is a significant positive correlation between running more offensive plays and a higher per-play rate of defensive injury
- Such a correlation could be attributed to fatigue, but this correlation does not hold for the three other possible game situations (own offense, own defense, offense against) – these show no strong relationship between running more plays and a higher per-play rate of injury
- Taken together, these last two points support my hypothesis that players fake injuries against higher tempo offenses
Data Collection and Methodology:
I gathered play-by-play data from all the regular season games this year, and identified all the in-game injuries noted in the descriptions. In case you haven’t read play-by-play before, each play has its own line and explanation, and any play that resulted in an injury timeout is noted. Below is an example:
2-10-DET 40 (14:05) (Shotgun) 10-E.Manning pass incomplete deep middle to 80-V.Cruz (27-G.Quin). DET-27-G.Quin was injured during the play.
If an injury was noted as a stoppage, it was recorded. In an ideal world, we’d eliminate injuries that are serious and clearly not fakes, but there’s no detail on the injuries in the game data, so we have to take the major with the minor.
The play-by-play injuries were then coded as to whether they occurred to the offense, defense, or on special teams (e.g., kick coverage). There were approximately 700 total observations, and while it’s possible that not all injuries were noted in the play-by-play data, this is the only comprehensive source for such information. Given that there are ~700 injury stoppages in our set, that works out to 2-3 injury timeouts per game, which sounds possible but could also be low. It’s possible that whoever officially creates the play-by-play gets lazy and misses some, my assumption here is that if any injuries are somehow missed, they aren’t biased towards one particular side of the ball.
After gathering the data, one additional adjustment is for play frequency. Simply put, the more snaps a player gets, the more likely they are to sustain an injury. Therefore, any team that runs more plays is more likely to see a higher absolute number of injuries. To account for this, I also looked up the total number of plays for each team’s offense and defense during the course of the year – to understand the rate of injury rather than the total number.
Output:
Let’s start with the absolutes. I found 692 injuries in the play by play data, 66 of which were special teams plays. I took these out, because they aren’t central to the question of are teams faking injuries to slow down offenses. Of the remaining injuries, I looked at whether they happened to an offensive player or a defensive player and which team they occurred against, below is the data from this season:
Not a shocker to see the Eagles at the very top of that list, and indeed they led the league in defensive injuries against this season.
However, as I already noted, this metric can be misleading. The Eagles offense runs more plays per game than any other team, so we would expect them to be near the top of this list. We need to adjust our data for the number of offensive plays – and we can examine the rate at which opposing defensive players get injured against the Eagles and whether they are still an outlier.
So as we see when we look at it on a rate basis (number of injuries/number of total offensive plays), the Eagles are still close to the top of the league, and roughly 50% above the league average. Houston is just above them, and while no one would consider their offense up-tempo, the fact that the Eagles are so high would be consistent with the theory that opposing teams might be faking injuries to slow them down.
Now, before we get any further down the faking rabbit hole, what if there’s a simpler explanation that doesn’t involve fake injuries? There’s another obvious possibility to explain why the Eagles are so high in defensive injuries against. What about the idea that as you run more plays, players get more physically exhausted, and therefore are naturally more susceptible to injury?
That seems possible, right? So let’s examine that idea a bit.
The first thing we can do is very simple, does injury frequency vary by quarter? If teams get physically tired during the course of the game and that leads to more fatigue and more injury, there should be more injuries as the game goes on:
Interesting. This sort of muddies our waters a bit.
In absolute terms, the number of injures rises dramatically as the game goes on. Injury stoppages in the fourth quarter occur at 2x the rate they do in the first quarter. Part of that can be explained by the fact that the clock stops more frequently in the fourth quarter than the others (and thus more plays), but that wouldn’t explain a 2x difference. I would want to check against the sheer number of plays run by quarter, but I don’t have that data without a bunch of more work.
Still – it looks like that thinking may be reasonable, injuries increase as the game goes on. But it’s also interesting to note that the increase is much more pronounced on the defensive side of the ball. We’ll come back to that later.
For the time being, let’s move on to looking for evidence of fake injuries.
As a general framework for this analysis, I’ve split the types of injury stoppages into four buckets:
1. While on defense, your own team suffers an injury (Own-Defense)
2. While on defense, your opponent suffers an injury (Opponent-Offense)
3. While on offense, your own team suffers an injury (Own-Offense)
4. While on offense, your opponent suffers an injury (Opponent-Defense)
We’ve been focused on bucket #4 thus far, and saw that on a per-play basis the Eagles are close to the top of the league in terms of defensive injuries against on a per-play basis. We also saw that overall injuries increase as the game goes on – but it seems much more prevalent on the defense, which is the side that would be interested in faking injuries.
So can we look a bit deeper to see if play frequency increases injury risk across each type of injury stoppage? The idea that running more plays increases the rate of injury should not be exclusive to offense or defense – although it appears that way at first glance – it’s hard for me to believe that defensive players are in any worse shape or take any harder hits than offensive players.
To take a look at the issue, I ran some basic correlations across each of those four injury types, looking at the number of plays run and the rate of injury. Just to clarify, I summarized the four below:
1. Your defense runs more plays and gets injured more often (this would be a bad defense)
2. Your defense runs more plays and your opponent gets injured more often
3. Your offense runs more plays and gets injured more often (this would be a good offense)
4. Your offense runs more plays and your opponent gets injured more often
Again, if the rate of injury increases with more plays, we should see relationships in each of these situations. So what do we see?
#1 – So earlier we saw defenses suffering more injuries as the game goes on…and yet, when we look at number of defensive plays per game and the rate of defensive injury, there really doesn’t seem to be any relationship. Teams with defenses that are on the field a lot don’t seem to get injured at a higher rate than those who execute fewer plays.
#2 – Our next picture shows a similar lack of correlation, this time between defensive plays per game and the rate of opponent offensive injury. This idea would be that if an opposing defense is really bad, your offense gets more plays, and might get hurt more frequently. But the data shows nothing that looks like a relationship
#3 – Now we’re on the offensive side of the ball, looking at whether an offense that runs a lot of plays suffers a higher rate of injury. There’s actually a relatively weak negative correlation between running lots of offensive plays and suffering offensive injuries. If you want to believe in things like Chip Kelly’s Sport Science program, you would expect a negative relationship as teams that employ high tempo offenses are more adequately prepared to stay healthy while running it. While a very slight relationship exists, it doesn’t look to be that large, if it even exists at all.
#4 – Hmmm…now it’s officially interesting. When we look at the rate of defensive injury against offensive plays per game, there is our most significant positive relationship. A correlation of 0.39 is significantly more than we’ve seen in the other three instances, and it’s also the only one where there is a clear incentive to fake injuries.
Taken alone, this relationship might be explained by the fatigue theory, but I think it’s tougher to make that argument when you don’t see anywhere close to the same relationship in all other situations. When a defense is bad and on the field a lot, they don’t get hurt more often, when an offense is good and runs lots of plays, they don’t get hurt more often, and when a defense is bad and their opponent runs a lot of plays, they don’t get hurt more often. The only ones who show a substantial increase in injury stoppages as plays increase are opposing defenses.
To me, that’s pretty freaking suspicious. Either opposing defenses are the only ones who suffer from fatigue-related injuries…or maybe some of the injuries aren’t injuries at all.
Now, this is far from 100% conclusive. It may be that defensive players naturally get more fatigued than offensive players due to their roles (i.e., offensive players can take more plays off because they know the play calls)…but I don’t really buy that. I think there’s at least a little bit of shenanigans.
It’s also an entirely different question as to how much this even matters. Any fake injury will happen on the margins, as you see the number of total injury stoppages remain relatively small (2-3 total per game). But for an Eagles team that narrowly missed the playoffs, the marginal differences matter.
Solutions
So is there a way to address teams that fake injuries? There are certainly options, but some of them are just impractical. The NHL has a penalty for diving, but you really can’t ask the officials to diagnose injuries and try to penalize fakers. You could charge a team a timeout, which the NFL already does if an injury occurs in the last two minutes. That’s much easier than trying to penalize teams, but also provides incentive for coaches and players to hide injuries (also, what do you do in the case of a ‘Body Bag Game’?)
One idea I think might actually be workable, is to tweak the NFL’s current rule for injured players. As it stands today, an injured player who causes a stoppage has to miss at least one play. Well, if you want to eliminate fake injuries, you should raise the cost to those players for faking, and you can do that simply by making them sit out longer. What if, when a player is injured and causes an official stoppage, they must sit out not for just one play, but for the remainder of that series or until a change of possession?
Missing the rest of a series is a bit more significant than missing just one play, and is something that could balance the equation on faking injuries. It also dovetails nicely with the NFL’s stated emphasis on player safety (interpret my use of the term ‘stated’ as you will, based on your own level of cynicism)
If there are fake injuries happening, such an increase in missed time might be enough to keep anyone from acting hurt. Requiring a player to miss the remainder of a series also isn’t as significant as forcing them out for the rest of a quarter or a game.
Some would argue that this isn’t even a problem worth focusing on. But if fast-paced offenses gain greater acceptance in the NFL (which will happen if more of them succeed), the issue will only become more prominent (beyond the realm of the paranoid Eagles fan) and could materially impact the game.
Summary Data
Below is a table of all the raw data I used here, as a reference:
Bonus – Jevon Kearse All-Stars
One last thing I did with this data, after pulling it together, was dig through and sum up all the specific players who sustained injuries in a game this season.
I wanted to look into it because I was really interested in what I’ve termed the ‘Jevon Kearse All-Stars.’ It may just be a bad memory on my part, but one of the things I really remember about Jevon Kearse’s tenure with the Eagles was his tendency to hurt himself and fall to the ground like he got shot. I feel like his injuries always looked more serious than they actually were. It’s possible I’m misremembering, and if so I apologize to the Freak. But with that said, here were the league leaders in injury stoppages in the NFL this year:
Now I’m not accusing these guys of faking injuries, these just happened to be the guys with the most injury stoppages in the play-by-play data (excluding special teams, which most of these guys don’t play anyway).
Enjoy your spot on the Kearse All-Stars guys – the trophy (it’s an ace bandage) is in the mail!
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