SABRmetrics invades the NFL?
It's opening weekend of the 2015 NFL season, so it's as good a time as any to talk about a statistical model that allows a defensive coordinator to know with about 90% accuracy what play the opposing offensive is going to call. This could change football as much as SABRmetrics has changed baseball. Of course, offensive coordinators can use the model to understand the tendencies of his own team and call plays outside their team's propensities. The one coach that this probably wouldn't have effected was Vince Lombardi. During the Packers run in the sixties, he called a limited number of plays. It was going to be student body right or student body left, usually to the right. In practice, Lombardi ran plays until they were thoroughly ingrained in his players. Every other defensive coordinator, coach and player knew what the Packers were going to call on any given play. Bart Starr would take the snap, Jerry Kramer and Fuzzy Thurston would pull and ...