Analytics on trial

What are analytics and why have they become important to the Browns?

One dictionary defines analytics as the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. Another dictionary simplifies analytics as the method of logical analysis.

What that has to do with football is unknown at best to the ordinary fan, puzzling at worst.

So why are analytics so important to the Browns? Probably because nothing else has worked for the last two decades on the field, so they might as well try something else.

And because analytics have become the semi-rage in the National Football League, Paul DePodesta has risen in the flow chart in Berea. He was given the title of chief strategy officer probably because they couldn’t come up with anything more original.

He has become powerful enough to chair the team’s selection committee for a head coach and general manager. Everything it seems flows through him. He is one of the main reasons Kevin Stefanski is the new head coach.

DePodesta has the ears of Jimmy Haslam III, who loves what his CSO has contributed. “He’s been a good thought partner for us,” the Browns’ owner said recently.

His respect for DePodesta was the one of causal factors that led to the dismissal of General Manager John Dorsey a couple of weeks ago. Haslam called it a mutual parting of the ways.

In reality, it was DePodesta winning what amounted to a power struggle between an analytics nerd and long-time football man who wanted no part of DePodesta’s world and exited after refusing to accept what amounted to a demotion.

Dorsey won the first round against DePodesta last year, choosing Freddie Kitchens over Stefanski, the CSO’s choice.

DePodesta has one of the best, if not the best, jobs in the sports world. He commutes to Cleveland once a week from his home in La Jolla, Calif., in the San Diego area and is rewarded handsomely for what amounts to a part-time job.

He is a baseball man – he started with the Indians in 1996 as an advance scout – who has journeyed through the football world the last several years with the Browns. attempting to apply the same theories that brought him fame in the hit movie and book “Moneyball.”

His main job, it would seem, is to crunch numbers and make sure they align with the avowed goal of fielding a smart, winning football team through strategic means. Make certain the team is prepared for any and all possibilities and probabilities within the game.

He called the process “having frameworks to make decisions under uncertainty.” I can’t begin to understand what that means and how it applies to playing a game of football.

How that’s going to translate through the players is nothing more than a guess at this point. That aspect of the process most likely will run through the head coach, who then will game plan based on the analytics he receives.

In the past, coaches relied on tendencies when game planning. What will this team do in this situation? Down and distance often dictate strategy on both sides of the football.

Analytics – and this is another guess – breaks the game down even further than that and help dictate what the head coach does in a given situation.

For example, analytics contributed to the shocking home loss the heavily favored Baltimore Ravens suffered in the division playoff against the Tennessee Titans last weekend.

The Ravens twice attempted to run the football on fourth-and-1 and were stuffed, once at their 45-yard line, the second at the Tennessee 18. On the first, the Titans scored on the very next play to take a 14-0 lead. On the second, they marched 81 yards to score again to take a 21-6 lead. Ball game.

Analytics dictated Ravens coach John Harbaugh to gamble in both cases for one of the best offenses in the entire NFL. Instead of punting on the first and kicking a field goal on the second, the failed gambles resulted in turnovers on downs and the Titans capitalized on both.

The key for the Browns next season will be the connection, or alignment as Haslam likes to call it, between DePodesta’s department and Stefanski’s coaching staff. Both men called it a “shared vision.”

“My role first and foremost is to not only help us create, but almost implement that shared vision and ultimately make sure we stick to it really relentlessly,” the CSO emphasized. “That is really my role.”

Then there is the human factor. Are humans becoming slaves to analytics? Do they obey what a computer spits out every time? Not in my world. In my world, decisions made by humans based on common sense trump analytics every time.

Bottom line here: This one is on DePodesta. He finally got his man in Stefanski. Time will tell if the baseball man got the football decision right. Kitchens was Dorsey’s blunder and it cost him his job. The hot seat is now occupied by DePodesta.