If fully healthy, this could be the greatest offense we've ever watched

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Megatron96

I just remembered; yesterday I was watching some show, and they said that Andy tended to open up the playbook in the last week or two of the season, to force DCs to have to account for what could be run from those concepts. In common language, Andy likes to eff with people.

The increased use of stats in analysis has been really interesting if only because of how teams counter it.

'Tendency breakers' are more than just something of an interesting turn of phrase. I mean sometimes they're used to run against type and actually produce. But oftentimes it truly is something that coaches call just to **** with the spreadsheets.

If anyone's doing that right now, I don't think it's Andy - I think it's Spags.

Think of how much less often we've been blitzing, especially on 3rd downs. And why? I think Spags is trying to drive down those blitz rates. Sure, just keep making your spreadsheet more involved and you can pare out more and more white noise, but the more involved the numbers are, the more prone guys get to paralysis by analysis.

I think there are coaches - and we have a few of them - who calls plays ESPECIALLY to screw with trends that analytics departments are trying to use to establish an edge. You run those things out there to dick up the ratios and the pocket protector brigade doesn't really recognize it, IMO. Next thing you know they're feeding the DC raw numbers of what someone does in a similar situation and those numbers are flawed because the coaching staff actively dicked with them during the regular season.

[dlphg9]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

The increased use of stats in analysis has been really interesting if only because of how teams counter it.

'Tendency breakers' are more than just something of an interesting turn of phrase. I mean sometimes they're used to run against type and actually produce. But oftentimes it truly is something that coaches call just to **** with the spreadsheets.

If anyone's doing that right now, I don't think it's Andy - I think it's Spags.

Think of how much less often we've been blitzing, especially on 3rd downs. And why? I think Spags is trying to drive down those blitz rates. Sure, just keep making your spreadsheet more involved and you can pare out more and more white noise, but the more involved the numbers are, the more prone guys get to paralysis by analysis.

I think there are coaches - and we have a few of them - who calls plays ESPECIALLY to screw with trends that analytics departments are trying to use to establish an edge. You run those things out there to dick up the ratios and the pocket protector brigade doesn't really recognize it, IMO. Next thing you know they're feeding the DC raw numbers of what someone does in a similar situation and those numbers are flawed because the coaching staff actively dicked with them during the regular season.

This is a really interesting concept that I never even thought about.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by dlphg9

This is a really interesting concept that I never even thought about.

I can't prove a damn bit of it.

But I know how numbers work and I absolutely believe it to be true. The savvy coaches in this league are no different than someone like Greg Maddux. Maddux used to go out there and with 2 outs and nobody on, give up a base hit on purpose. He'd get ahead in the count and groove one to the guy.

And if that dude came up 3 weeks later with 2 runners on a tie ballgame, he'd get ahead and the count again and throw the nastiest pitch he had because he knows that guy remembers the last AB when he got a cement mixer and it's in the back of his mind.

Supercharge that and apply it to the data revolution and I just cannot imagine coaches aren't doing it.

It's more than just sandbagging - it's actively suppressing your tendencies to throw off the analytics.

[Megatron96]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

The increased use of stats in analysis has been really interesting if only because of how teams counter it.

'Tendency breakers' are more than just something of an interesting turn of phrase. I mean sometimes they're used to run against type and actually produce. But oftentimes it truly is something that coaches call just to **** with the spreadsheets.

If anyone's doing that right now, I don't think it's Andy - I think it's Spags.

Think of how much less often we've been blitzing, especially on 3rd downs. And why? I think Spags is trying to drive down those blitz rates. Sure, just keep making your spreadsheet more involved and you can pare out more and more white noise, but the more involved the numbers are, the more prone guys get to paralysis by analysis.

I think there are coaches - and we have a few of them - who calls plays ESPECIALLY to screw with trends that analytics departments are trying to use to establish an edge. You run those things out there to dick up the ratios and the pocket protector brigade doesn't really recognize it, IMO. Next thing you know they're feeding the DC raw numbers of what someone does in a similar situation and those numbers are flawed because the coaching staff actively dicked with them during the regular season.

Don't know how I missed this the first time through. Really interesting stuff. Never thought about it from a stats/probability perspective. Makes a lot of sense though.

From what I remember of the show, those guys thought that Andy was throwing a big eye candy play at the defense, to mess with the teams KC will play in the playoffs.

Basically, "here, I've run a couple plays in the past from this formation (kind of), with a TE, a WR, and an RB in the backfield, with Mahomes as the tailback or whatever, before, but now I'm going to show you something you've never seen before, deal with that!" Because now those DCs in the playoffs are going to have to try and figure out how to counter not only that play, but whatever else Andy might dream up from that formation/position group.

And it worked to perfection, the phantom holding call notwithstanding. When you watch the NextGen Stats animation of the play, the defense is standing there flat-footed at the snap; the safeties and the LBs in particular have no idea what's coming. Even after the snap at least one of the safeties doesn't move for several seconds. And most of the defense just looks confused.

Anyway, the RGR guys tracked all the plays, and said that we saw more 'new' plays in that game than we had in a long time. They weren't as flashy as the snowglobe play, mostly they were plays from formations Andy uses a lot, but completely different motion, routes, or whatever. Apparently, there's permutations Andy's come up with that, as a fan watching on TV, we don't really see but that the players on defense do see, that constitute the eye candy. Kind of showing you his 'tell,' then doing something unexpected from it.