This year’s class of players entering the NFL draft lacks real star power at the Wide Receiver position. At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be a cant-miss player like a Julio Jones or Calvin Jonson. However, it’s important to remember that the most dominant receiver in the game today, Antonio Brown, was considered a below average prospect prior to the 2010 draft, and wasn’t picked until the 6th round, after 21 (!) wide receivers already went off the board. It is certainly possible there is another hidden gem hiding in this years crop of Wide Receivers.

Continue reading My Model Monday: Wide Receiver Draft Model →

To use the Combine Tool, enter the name of a player and click go. The charts display that player’s scores in the 6 main NFL Combine drills: 40-yard dash, Broad Jump, Vertical Jump, Shuttle Run, 3 Cone Run, and Bench Press. The Yellow distribution curves show the distribution of other players’ scores from the selected player’s position. The numbers above each chart are the given player’s score for the drill and the percentile that that score falls in relative to other players at that position. The data comes from www.pro-football-reference.com and nflcombineresults.com. Our sample consists of all NFL Combine Invitees from 2005 – 2018. Look up some current and former players, or some players that will be coming off the board in this year’s draft!
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Ever since the first Olympic games were recorded in 760 B.C., sports have had an important social component in society. Whether its Baseball in Japan, Soccer in England, or Hockey in Canada, it’s almost impossible to live in a major sports market without being somehow affected by the local sports. While these celebrations of competition and the strive for excellence have brought neighbors together for centuries, there is another tradition that bonds us in a way that is much stronger: the tradition of complaining about our teams. It doesn’t matter if your team is a dominant force, or a bottom-feeding afterthought; we will always find something to complain about. But is it all warranted? Surely there are teams whose suffering has afforded their fans the right to complain more than all the others. In this week’s My Model Monday, I attempt to quantify the factors that lead to this allowance of complaining for each NFL team, and rank each fan base on their comparative level of what I like to call “complain-ability.”
Continue reading My Model Monday: NFL Team Complain-Ability →

In this week’s installment of My Model Monday, I take a shot at quantifying home-field advantage for NFL teams and unpacking exactly what goes into that advantage.
Continue reading My Model Monday: NFL Home-Field Advantage →