Football in recent years has started, in fits and starts, to go through its own analytics revolution, similar to the one that overtook baseball in the early to mid 2000s. While the rise of sites like Football Outsiders, Pro Football Focus, and the introduction of the NFL's own house analytics page Next Gen stats, heralds a new and more informed way for fans to take in the game of football, it is clear that this revolution will not be as complete as baseball's. Football's requirement for teamwork more than individual excellence means that numbers alone will never tell anything close to the full stories. Quarterbacks are amplified or hindered by schemes, offensive lines, or butter fingered receivers. Cornerbacks benefit from elite pass rushers causing panicked and hurried throws or suffer from tepid pass rushes that allow QBs ample time to wait for the coverage to breakdown. While a number of new metrics try and break football down piece by piece to determine individual responsibility and performance on every play, it is clear there will always be a gray area when it comes to the story stats are telling about a football players performance, and how to project future performance from those stats. This is especially true when it comes to translating college performance to future NFL success.
No debate demonstrated the conflict between the rising tide of football analytics and the traditional methods of football scouting than the debate in the 2018 draft between quarterbacks Josh Rosen and Josh Allen. As previously noted on this blog there was zero, and I mean zero, statistical argument for drafting Josh Allen. Statistically he may have been the single worst QB taken in the first round in the last 20 years, at least since Kyle Boller. Scouts loved him, however, citing his underrated mobility, his zeus-hurling-thunderbolts level arm strength (he most definitely has what long-time readers of this blog will remember I once coined an "armcock"), his "leadership" and intangibles. Mel Kiper declared of course that "stats are for losers" and that Allen, most definitely, is a winner.
This avalanche of counterfactual, cliche-leaden, antiquated nonsense regarding what was clearly an unusually flawed prospect understandably appalled the more analytical minds of football media. In response they, too, found a cause to champion: Josh Rosen of UCLA. Rosen was himself a controversial prospect in the eyes of scouts, not because of his on field performance, but because off the field he was an outspoken liberal, a guy who appeared to value life outside of football, a unique personality willing to speak his mind and criticize coaches and teammates when he deemed it necessary. On the field Rosen was clearly Allen's statistical better in every category.
And so the stage was set: the grizzly old scouts, mouths full of chewing tobacco, car filled with old takeout containers from lifetimes spent traveling constantly to various backfields, evaluating players with gut instincts and finely honed senses locked into a culture war with basement-dwelling nerds who'd never picked up a ball thinking the entire game can be determined by spreadsheets. Whose Josh would win?
