What tape shows

A nice ‘scout’s primer’ about what you can and can’t see on TV game tape.

We’re veering into another lane to a point with the player value stuff, but I’m not of the opinion that Win Shares for NFL players are possible — or necessary. I don’t want Nick Mangold‘s “value” reduced to one decimal point. Not just because I don’t believe it can be done within the dynamics of this particular sport, but because of the extent to which such a method precludes the kind of dialogue we’re talking about. And this is not what football analysis is about to me. To me, the ideal analysis of the game mixes scouting and stats in a holistic manner. “Here’s what I saw, or here’s what a trusted source saw. Now let’s see how whether the numbers confirm or refute what we think happened”. (Or, “Here’s an interesting stat, I wonder what is happening with the play calling to create that stat.”)

Step 1 is getting better and more comprehensive angles to see these things. Step 2 is sharpening our own knives — reading and learning and better understanding what we see and how to explain it. Putting it all together in a way that makes sense is the hard part. There is a growing cottage industry of guys who watch film in conjunction with stat lines and post their observations, and I’ve seen everything from the ridiculous to the sublime. Watching X hours of film every week isn’t impressive in and of itself. The whole point is to learn what you’re missing and misinterpreting as quickly as possible so you’re not wasting time.