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Posts Tagged ‘N.F.L.’

Marijuana and the NFL

One of our very first Freakonomics Radio podcasts focused on brain trauma among NFL players. Writing for Vice, David Bienenstock argues that NFL players might benefit hugely from medical marijuana. He points to an editorial in the Washington Post earlier this year, describing research indicating that marijuana could protect player’s brains from the long-term effects of traumatic brain injuries:

As it turns out, recent studies are starting to contradict the notion that marijuana kills brain cells. Last year, researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel gave low doses of THC, one of marijuana’s primary cannabinoids, to mice either before or after exposing them to brain trauma. They found that THC produced heightened amounts of chemicals in the brain that actually protected cells. Weeks later, the mice performed better on learning and memory tests, compared with a control group. The researchers concluded that THC could prevent long-term damage associated with brain injuries. Though preliminary, this is just one of many promising studies exploring marijuana’s benefits for the brain.


Football Freakonomics: How Do Players' Body Clocks Affect Their Performance?

I have been lucky enough to visit the secret lair at the NFL’s headquarters where each year a crew of industrious people try to come up with an NFL schedule that pleases every team, player, TV network, fan, mayor, police department, religious official, and sports pundit in America.

This is of course impossible.

But they do try their best, and in today’s Times there’s a nice article by Judy Battista about how this year’s schedule was made by the NFL’s Howard Katz and his team.

After you look over the 2012-13 schedule, you might also want to take a look at the latest Football Freakonomics video we’ve done for the NFL Network. It considers the “body clock” factor on teams’ schedules:


Questions That Come to Mind After Yesterday's Football Games

1. Who is more in need of a witness-protection program today: Billy Cundiff or Kyle Williams? (I’d pick Cundiff even though Williams is guiltier.)

2. Looks like defense really doesn’t win championships. Here’s the regular-season defensive ranking (yards per game) of the four teams who played yesterday: Ravens (3rd); 49ers (4th); Giants (27th); Patriots (31st). Giants will play Patriots in the Super Bowl.

3. At least the Harbaugh parents won’t spend Feb. 5 in a Sophie’s Choice situation — but I’m guessing they would have preferred to.


Let's Hear About Your Favorite Football Books

On Tuesday, we shot the latest batch of our “Football Freakonomics” videos for the NFL Network.

This project has been a blast. There are a lot of people involved on the production, research, and digital sides, and they are all high-caliber and fun to work with. Our first two batches of videos were shot in Brooklyn warehouses. But on Tuesday we stepped it up, and got to work in the New York Jets’ indoor practice field out in Florham Park, N.J. (It was an off-day for the team, although there were plenty of players around doing individual workouts.)

I also ran into my old friend Nicky Dawidoff, a wonderful writer whose previous subjects range from ballplayer-spy Moe Berg to country music. He has been embedded with the Jets since summer and is writing a season-long account of the Jets that will, more broadly, be a book about the modern NFL.


What Do the NFL and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Have in Common?

Answer:

They are both reliant on the talents of the Rooney and Mara dynasties.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are majority-owned by the Rooney family. The late Art Rooney (“the Chief”) ran the club for many years, ultimately giving way to son Dan, who has since given way to son Art Rooney II.

The New York Giants are 50 percent owned by John Mara. The late Tim Mara ran the club for many years, ultimately giving way to his son (and John’s father) Wellington; there have been a variety of other Maras involved in the team.


A New Way to Think About Sports Injuries?

In a recent essay about NFL injuries for our “Football Freakonomics” series on NFL.com, I concluded:

If I were an NFL owner, GM, or coach, I’d set aside a little pot of money to try to answer some of these questions empirically. There is a lot of advantage to be gained by keeping even a few more players per season off the injured reserve list — to say nothing of the fact that it’s the right thing to do.

This prompted an interesting e-mail from Ryan Comeau:

Dynamic Athletics is a biomechanics company focused on athletes and people recovering from orthopedic injuries. Our technology has been in development for 8 years but we’ve only had our doors open for 7 months now. We process 3D motion-capture files in a way that deliver the full palate of kinematic & kinetic data (without force plates). This immense amount of data collected about an athlete’s ability to move & how exactly they produce their movement, if managed properly, becomes a valuable time capsule for the athlete or those managing a team.


"Football Freakonomics": How Much Do Injuries Hurt?

The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.

It doesn’t take a genius to argue that injuries can have a massive effect on an NFL team’s fortunes. This season, we may be living through the most heightened example in history of that fact. The Indianapolis Colts, with Peyton Manning sidelined since Week 1 with a neck injury, currently stand winless at 0-12. Over the previous five seasons with Manning in charge, the Colts have gone 61-19 during the regular season.

How can the absence of one player, even a star quarterback, have such an impact? As Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders contends in the latest episode of Football Freakonomics: “Not only were they built around him offensively, but the defense was generally built around them getting the lead and then having defensive ends just tee off on the opposing QB while the other team has to pass to try to catch up.”

The Manning-less Colts are losing off the field too – attendance is down, Manning jersey sales are down, and some Colts fans have jumped on the “Suck for Luck” campaign, figuring that if the Colts are going to be bad they might as well be bad enough to snare Andrew Luck with the top pick in the draft.


Why the NBA Players Keep Losing to the Owners

The following is a guest post by David Berri, a Professor of Economics at Southern Utah University. He is also the lead author of Stumbling on Wins, the general manager of the sports-economics blog Wages of Wins, and is a frequent contributor to the Freakonomics blog.

In the past couple weeks I have written about labor negotiations in the NBA and the recent labor agreement in Major League Baseball. Now that we have agreements in both sports, thanks to the new NBA deal, I would like to address why the two unions involved in these negotiations have historically achieved such different outcomes.

Let’s begin with how the outcomes are different.


What Happens When You Ice Your Own Kicker?

In our Freakonomics Football episode “Why Even Ice a Kicker?”, Stephen Dubner explores the NFL fad of calling a timeout just before the opposing team’s kicker attempts a crucial field goal. The idea is to get into the kicker’s head, and make him think about all that pressure he’s under to make a big kick. The practice has become all but routine in the NFL, even though, according to the data, it doesn’t work, and in some cases even backfires.

But what about when a coach ices his own kicker?

That’s essentially what Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett did on Sunday during a game against the Arizona Cardinals. With the score tied at 13, and just seven seconds left in regulation, Dallas rookie kicker Dan Bailey lined up for a potential game-winning 49-yard field goal. Right before the snap, Garrett called timeout. Bailey kicked it anyway, and nailed it. His second attempt? Not so good— he shanked it, wide left. The game went into overtime, and Dallas ended up losing 19-13 to the Arizona Cardinals.


"Football Freakonomics": Is the N.F.L. a Quarterback-Driven League?

We launched the Football Freakonomics series in the spring with an episode called “The Quarterback Quandary.” It examined the difficulty of drafting QB’s since they tend to be a) vital to a team’s success; and b) relatively expensive; but c) hard to assess coming out of college even if they have a substantial track record.

One thing we can all agree on, however: the NFL today is a quarterback’s league — isn’t it?

That’s the question we ask in our latest Football Freakonomics segment.

The numbers certainly line up in support of the quarterback’s dominance. As you can see in the accompanying graphic, there has been a sea change in the pass/run ratio over the past few decades. In the 1970’s, NFL offenses averaged roughly 26 passes and 35 runs per game. By the 2000’s, those numbers had essentially flip-flopped, with about 32 passes and 28 runs per game.


Welcome to the N.F.L.

The “first minority to be a controlling owner of an NFL team” isn’t an African-American.

I find this story interesting and am surprised it has been so lightly commented upon.

The team is the Jacksonville Jaguars (that may be one reason why it’s so lightly commented upon), and the new owner is Shahid Khan.


"Football Freakonomics": When Good Stats Go Bad

The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.

What do Dan Marino, Jerry Rice, and MarTay Jenkins have in common?

Yes, wise guy, they all played in the NFL. But beyond that? They all hold all-time single-season records.

+ Marino (among his other records) passed for 5,084 yards in 1984.

+ Rice (among his many other records) gained 1,848 receiving yards in 1995.

+ Jenkins had 2,186 kickoff-return yards in 2000 for the Arizona Cardinals.

But Jenkins, unlike the other two, won’t be getting a call from Canton any time soon, even though he set a second record that season – for the number of kickoff returns, with 82. Eighty-two kickoff returns! That’s an average of more than 5 a game.

Care to guess the Cardinals’ record in 2000? They were 3-13. Yes, it’s great to be a kickoff returner when your team is getting kicked off to over and over and over again.

And so it is that MarTay Jenkins is the poster boy for our latest Freakonomics Football video, “When Good Stats Go Bad.”


"Football Freakonomics": Is Momentum a Myth?

The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.

Is momentum a myth? That’s the question we ask in our latest installment of Football Freakonomics. It’s the kind of topic that academic researchers are increasingly interested in – and the kind of topic that makes a lot of sports fans hate academic researchers.

Why?

Because they take all the fun out of our arguments! Do we really want to haul out a spreadsheet to talk about whether Mike Smith was a bonehead for gambling on 4th down? Or whether icing the kicker is a good idea?

As someone who has one foot in both camps (fandom and academic research), I can see both sides of the argument. In the case of momentum, however, I really want to know the truth – perhaps because it’s the kind of phenomenon that is harder to prove than most.


"Football Freakonomics": Why Even Ice a Kicker?

The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.

Icing the kicker: Even casual football fans have come to expect that when a game is on the line and the kicker is brought out to try a crucial field goal, the opposing coach might call a timeout just as the kicker approaches the ball.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? The coach can “ice” the kicker — mess with his mind, throw off his routine, make him stand around like an awkward guy at a cocktail party for all the world to see.

But does it work?


"Football Freakonomics": Tradeoffs Are Everywhere

The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.

Economics is all about tradeoffs. If you want to buy a top-tier performance car, it’ll cost you a lot more than a Camry. If you’re looking for an investment that’ll set you up for life, you have to be willing to take on more risk.

NFL personnel decisions involve the same kind of tradeoffs. Better players generally cost more. Bigger players are generally slower. Just look at the NFL Draft, and how hard it is to balance all these tradeoffs when making your picks – especially when you’re spending huge money on a team leader whose future is impossible to predict. (We explored this puzzle earlier in “The Quarterback Quandary.”)

In this installment of “Football Freakonomics,” we look at a different kind of tradeoff – the decision of how to handle a player who’s gotten in trouble off the field. Unfortunately, you don’t have to think very hard to come up with a lot of big names from the recent past: Michael Vick, Ben Roethlisberger, and Plaxico Burress, to name just a few.

With guys like these, the tradeoff is pretty clear. The player has already proven his value on the field, so that’s the upside. But will his off-the-field trouble follow him back into the game? And then you’ve got to wonder how his physical performance will be affected by his time off for bad behavior.

It would be nice to be able to give a purely scientific answer to the following question: After getting into big off-the-field trouble, do players tend to perform better, the same, or worse?


"Football Freakonomics": Controversy

In this segment of “Football Freakonomics,” Dubner looks at how players perform after returning from controversial suspensions and jail-time.


"Football Freakonomics": When Good Stats Go Bad

In the third segment of “Football Freakonomics,” Dubner examines how impressive stats in the NFL are often indicative of bad results. For example, we all want a quarterback who throws for big yardage. But for all the times a quarterback threw for 400 yards or more last season, how many of those games did his team actually win?


"Football Freakonomics": Icing the Kicker

In the second segment of “Football Freakonomics,” Dubner examines the strategy of “icing the kicker,” a fairly recent trend in the NFL where an opposing coach will call a timeout just before a placekicker tries a field goal. The idea is to get inside the kicker’s head, make him nervous by giving him a few extra minutes to think about all the pressure he’s under. But does it work? Are kickers more likely to miss after being iced? The answer might surprise you.


"Football Freakonomics:" Is Momentum a Myth?

In the first segment of “Football Freakonomics,” Dubner examines the phenomenon of momentum and whether we can actually prove its existence in football games. Here’s a taste of what he found in the data: since 2007, immediately after a long kickoff or punt return, NFL teams are nearly four times as likely to score a touchdown on the next play than they are on a given play from scrimmage.


Video: Introducing "Football Freakonomics"

Last week, we told you about our new project with the NFL Network called “Football Freakonomics.” We’ll be posting segments here as they air throughout the season. “Football Freakonomics” will explore the hidden side of the NFL with original research and insight from brilliant minds from sport, academia, and beyond. We’ll look at data, stats, performance, salaries, and much more. Here’s the first segment to clue you in on what “Football Freakonomics” is all about.

You can also check out the “The Quarterback Quandary,” a segment Dubner did prior to the NFL Draft.


How Will Sean Payton's Injury Affect the Saints' Offense?

On Sunday, in a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton tore his MCL and fractured his knee when one of his own players was tackled out of bounds and crashed into him on the sideline. You can watch the replay here if you have a thing for gruesome knee injuries.

Payton is the rare NFL head coach who still calls the offensive plays, so the injury presented a pretty big problem for the Saints, especially since it happened early in the first quarter. Rather than going to the training room, Payton gutted it out on the sideline and kept calling plays while trainers tended to his knee. By halftime though, with the Saints trailing 20-10, Payton had had enough and passed play-calling duties over to his offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael.

It’s tough to say what effect the injury had on the Saints’ offense Sunday; they lost 26-20. By the numbers, the Saints’ output was fairly even through the first to second half.


Can You Copyright a Football Play? Ask Bill Belichick

Just about a year ago we posted about the incredibly innovative game of football. As we described, all of the innovation we’ve seen in football – the spread offense, the zone blitz, the wildcat, and dozens of other offensive and defensive formations, strategies, and counter-strategies – occurs without anyone ever asserting ownership. Rival teams are free to copy new plays, and they do.
It’s not as if ownership would be impossible – existing intellectual property rules might cover at least some football innovations as copyrightable “choreographic works,” or as patentable processes. The fact remains, however, that no one has ever tried to copyright or patent a new play or formation.


Michael Vick: The $100 Million Man (Again)

So two years after getting out of jail and being cleared to play football, three years after filing for Chapter 11, and four years after pleading guilty to federal felony conspiracy charges, Michael Vick has signed a new $100 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles; six years, $40 million guaranteed. Back in 2008 when his lawyers told a bankruptcy judge that Vick would likely be able to “earn a substantial living” again, they weren’t kidding.
In terms of sheer size, this one isn’t quite the $130 million, 10-year contract he signed with the Atlanta Falcons back in 2004, which made him the highest paid player in the NFL. But the new deal actually comes with more guaranteed money, and a higher yearly salary. As far as I can tell, this makes Vick the rare pro athlete to sign two contacts worth $100 million or more, and perhaps the only NFL player ever to do so.
Two weeks until the regular season opens, the Eagles better hope that shaky offensive line jells sooner rather than later. That’s an awfully expensive 31 year-old asset they have behind it.


ESPN's New QB Rating System: Who Benefits?

This season, ESPN has decided to challenge the NFL and roll out its own system for rating the play of quarterbacks. Its Total Quarterback Rating (QBR) is meant to be an improvement on the NFL’s official quarterback passer rating system, which was designed in the early 1970s and grades QB’s on four basic metrics: completion percentage, passing yards, touchdowns and interceptions.
The idea behind the QBR is to offer a more nuanced approach that teases out how a quarterback contributes to the success (or failure) of a particular play, and ultimately how he impacts the outcome of a game. For example, under the passer rating system, a ten-yard throw that a receiver turns into a 50-yard touchdown, rewards the quarterback exactly the same had he thrown the ball 50 yards into the endzone for a touchdown. The new system differentiates the two by taking into account the run after the catch, a familiar stat known as RAC to fantasy football players. The QBR also accounts for dropped passes, QB rushing yards, avoiding sacks, giving up fumbles, and something called a Clutch Index — which gives extra weight to plays when the game is on the line.


With the NFL Lockout Just About Over, a Sports Economist Weighs In

If there was any doubt as to how valuable the NFL is, all you had to do was flip to ESPN on Thursday night. The cable network ran an hours-long, special lockout edition of SportsCenter following news that the owners approved a proposed collective-bargaining agreement. From a ratings standpoint, it probably wasn’t that hard a call: the prime-time program the network broke into was a softball game between the U.S. and Czech Republic, which got bumped to ESPN2.
The NFL players still have to ratify the deal, and have until next Tuesday to do so. If they sign, free agency and training camp would begin on July 27, not soon enough to salvage the Hall of Fame game. One clear loser in this whole lockout situation is the city of Canton, Ohio, which according to Fox Sports Midwest, will lose out on millions of dollars of economic impact. As I thought about the broader implications that the four-month lockout has had on the country’s most lucrative professional sports league (the NFL brings in $9 billion of annual revenue), I fired off some questions to sports economist Dave Berri, who was kind enough to offer some quick responses.


How Is Law School Like the NFL Draft?

Here’s a smart take on the current state of law schools from Jonathan Tjarks over at Policymic.com. It’s a rather depressing look at how the odds are similarly stacked against law school grads and college football players. After opening with a nice reference to Sudhir Venkatesh‘s study of the economics of crack from Chapter 3 of Freakonomics, Tjarks’ piece boils down to the following analysis:

Admittance into a top-14 law school, like a scholarship from a top-10 college football program, is the culmination of a lifetime of striving. Of the over 100,000 high school seniors who play football, fewer than 3,000 sign Division I letters of intent. Similarly, the top 25% in Harvard Law’s 2009 class had an average GPA of 3.95 and a LSAT score of 175, which puts them in the 99th percentile of the over 100,000 test takers each year.
Yet, despite overcoming nearly impossible odds, each group still has the toughest test of their lives ahead of them — each other. NFL teams rarely draft players not at the top of the depth chart, even at powerhouses like Texas or Oklahoma. And even at Harvard or Columbia Law, “Big Law” firms — those with the coveted $160,000 starting salaries — don’t reach too far below the median class rank when selecting first-year associate.


Will the NFL Lockout Lead to Increase in Crime?

In an interview with ESPN that aired over the weekend, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis said that if the NFL lockout results in a lost season, crime rates will increase. “Watch how much crime picks up if you take away our game,” Lewis told ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio.
Are Americans really so addicted to professional football that its absence will lead people to go on some kind of crime rampage? Or, is Lewis saying that it’s more of a distraction that keeps us occupied, and our violent tendencies sated? Better to watch Troy Polamalu knock a guy unconscious than doing it yourself. And if so, then why don’t crime rates increase once the season’s over?


"The Quarterback Quandary"

Selecting a player in the NFL draft is essentially trying to predict the future, and human beings are simply not very good at it. Things get even harder when trying to pick the most important position in all of sports: the quarterback.