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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 14, 2019 11:49:16 GMT -6
You have to model it, but you can use a trivial model. Just using distance is going to get you a 90/10 solution (90% perfect, 10% effort). You can get much fancier.
You can then adjust for selection/desperation bias at longer distances, but it’s tricky. The crux is that longer FGs in ordinary situations are only attempted by better kickers, inflating the true average. But late in the halves they’re attempted by teams with no other options, depressing the average. There’s an interplay here where selection bias dominates, then they sort of cancel out, then desperation bias takes over.
If you want to get real cute you can incorporate lots of other factors - distance, wind, altitude... but then you need a more sophisticated model. Some are very “interpretable,” which is a fancy way of saying that I could explain how it works such that you’d understand and be able to recreate a small version on pen and paper, and some are less straightforward. The fanciest ones we call “black boxes,” because stuff goes in and stuff goes out and you have no idea what’s happening inside. But my research showed that you can use a simple kNN model and get excellent results. That stands for k-Nearest Neighbours, so you’re just averaging the results of the k most similar kicks in your dataset.
Adding features also creates problems. Imagine an NFL model that considers altitude. It seems like a good idea, but only one stadium is at high altitude and second place is in the same division. So I’m trying to factor in altitude you end up massively over representing the Broncos kicker. If you want to consider weather you need to think about what constitutes “weather,” and find a way to get good weather information, because the NFL data only gives approximate weather at kickoff. Are you going to split wind into headwind and crosswind? You’ll need to know which way the field is oriented and what direction teams are kicking.
Every decision has consequences and you need to know what the question is before you try to answer it. Since we’re looking at a 12 year sample of a team based at low altitude, I’d just use straight distance and assume the rest will average out.
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 14, 2019 10:21:55 GMT -6
Or there are fewer short FG attempts. Distance is the biggest predictor of FG success.
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 14, 2019 0:01:02 GMT -6
Probability. P(FG) is the probability of a making a field goal.
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 12, 2019 14:21:09 GMT -6
Anything above 0 is above average but yeah. Evaluating kickers isn’t that hard. Evaluating punters is a nightmare though.
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 12, 2019 0:34:21 GMT -6
Depending how fancy you wanted to get you’d set up a model of expectation. Simple version we just figure out P(FG) based on distance (setting aside selection/desperation bias at longer distances). Then as a metric I’d probably use: Sum (1-P(FG)_makes) + sum(-P(FG)_misses)/ Sum(1-P(FG)_all) An average kicker would score a 0, better kickers would score higher, worse kickers would be negative. It’s normalized so there’s no sample size issues, and I’d bootstrap a distribution to get some confidence intervals - I’m also going to ignore the uncertainty in my initial model because it makes things vvv messy. Do this for all qualifying kickers and look at the distribution. There’s about 15 years of data, probably close to 500 kickers with > 100 kicks including PATs, so you can look at the distribution of all kickers and where the Alabama kickers fit into percentiles. This is now a bit outdated but it’s a primer on where we were a couple years ago: passesandpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/12/three-point-plays-analytics-of-field.htmlOr for a deeper look into the making of the sausage: passesandpatterns.blogspot.com/2019/07/its-up-and-its-good-field-goals-in-u.html
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 3, 2019 13:30:06 GMT -6
Ironically, there's probably more teachers dying of OVER-consumption.
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 3, 2019 12:49:07 GMT -6
It's measuring total FG attempts missed, without considering anything else. But consider that Alabama is a very good team, and their offense is very good, so they're going to drive into FG range a lot more often than most teams, and thus attempt a lot of FGs, because even if the drive doesn't score a TD it's more likely for Alabama than for other teams that they're in position to kick a FG. And if they're recruiting great kickers, which I assume they are, then it extends their definition of FG range even more, so they take even more FG attempts, and from longer. Alabama is also the only team to have been at the top of college football the whole 12 years, everyone else has had some ups and downs. Without knowing, at a bare minimum, how many attempts they've had compared to other teams this isn't a useful stat.
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Post by Chris Clement on Dec 2, 2019 15:18:57 GMT -6
This is something I've seen as well. One district has a ridiculously high turn-0ver rate for teachers and administration, they struggle academically and I've heard horror stories about working there. Their application: 1. The initial app is online and takes hours upon hours to complete. It's ten solid pages and wants three different essays detailing your teaching style, what you think defines a quality educator, etc..etc.. They throw out the application if there's any grammar errors in the essays. This isn't unreasonable except for the fact that their spell check doesn't recognize words like "differentiation". 2. In that online app, they want you to upload a minimum of five letters of recommendation, official transcripts from every college you've been at, a resume, a copy of your teaching cert, documentation of your CEUs for renewal and a letter of interest. 3. They also want you to record yourself teaching for twenty minutes and upload it to the application. 4. Most schools ask that you fill out paperwork asking for permission to run a background check. This district asks that you do that by yourself; get the paperwork, pay to get your finger prints done and then submit it to the school. Then they'll run the background check. 5. You also have to get their tb test paperwork, have the test done and mail it. Tuberculosis??
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 23, 2019 9:14:44 GMT -6
I think trying to connect those two things is tenuous at best.
How long have you been working multiple snap counts? And are you heavily focussed on said snap counts? Maybe you should focus on NOT listening to the snap count, just watching your key.
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 19, 2019 17:05:01 GMT -6
It’s annoying to have to cut it up but it’s not that big a deal, you scrub fast forward and split the clip at every huddle. A lot better than missed plays!
Scoreboard shots are good to figure out what’s going on, just glue to them to the next clip.
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 16, 2019 19:44:49 GMT -6
Technically this wasn’t a youth football practice but a women’s rugby practice but since it was all players who’d never played before and they were all super-excited to be there despite having no clue what was going on.
We had a wet and gross practice today and we were going to practice tackling. Usually it’s a pain because nobody wants to get wet so they try to avoid going down and it’s a waste of time until they finally get wet enough not to care. Instead, this time I said “before we start tackling we’re all going to roll around on the grass and get good and wet so there’s nothing to gain from not tackling properly.” Problem solved, we did fifteen minutes of great tackling.
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 4, 2019 15:03:51 GMT -6
There was an old legendary “mad scientist” coach at my HS who allegedly went into a game with 14 players on a miserable day and won by punting the ball back as soon as it was caught. The returner would catch the ball, take what he could, and boot it back, so he kept their same 12 guys on the field all game while their D slowly froze to death on the sideline until the 4th quarter. Wait, what? In the pouring rain and freezing cold the field turned to mud and he gambled that his starting 12 were good enough, with the help of the weather, to bring the game to a standstill for three quarters.
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 4, 2019 7:33:31 GMT -6
There was an old legendary “mad scientist” coach at my HS who allegedly went into a game with 14 players on a miserable day and won by punting the ball back as soon as it was caught. The returner would catch the ball, take what he could, and boot it back, so he kept their same 12 guys on the field all game while their D slowly froze to death on the sideline until the 4th quarter.
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 3, 2019 13:17:17 GMT -6
And if you’re up to the line quickly they can’t sub on D, lest they be caught with their pants down.
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Post by Chris Clement on Sept 1, 2019 11:23:06 GMT -6
The season has started, there’s nothing you can do for their conditioning at this point. Slow the pace as much as possible using all the little tricks and try to maintain possession as long as possible to keep their D on the field. That means going for it a lot more. When it doesn’t work you might lose by a lot but it’s your best chance at winning.
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Post by Chris Clement on Aug 26, 2019 16:20:04 GMT -6
If you use an 11x17 you can use half for O/D and half for ST. Just arrange the formatting in a consistent way, like having 1&1 plays always in the same spot for O/D , then 2&10, etc.
You can make ST a lot easier by using the same players in the same spots across P, FG, and KO. It’s a drum I keep beating because it’s such a life changing way to simplify your life.
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Post by Chris Clement on Aug 26, 2019 15:58:33 GMT -6
It’s not just watching a game in toto that’s useful. That’s really long and unfocused. If you’re showing them opponent film then it should be specific things relevant to your game plan, and ideally relevant to that day’s practice plan. If Monday is your 1-10 day then you should spend Monday’s meeting looking at 1-10 film of the opponent.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 27, 2019 1:04:34 GMT -6
You were making solid points and your last paragraph kind of went off the rails, it’s a loose collection of personal anecdote, conjecture, and tenuous links between them.
It’s hard to use raw participation numbers to draw too many conclusions. How do we control for demographic population growth, or the increased access to football? Football may have been huge 40 years ago for schools that had it but a lot of schools may simply not have had teams. The failure to include participation in non-scholastic sports is another problem.
Participation rates would definitely have been higher fifteen years ago because there were more teenagers at the time. For a simple explanation of why and how there can be more total population but fewer teenagers, imagine the baby boomers who were the product of an explosion of baby making after the war. Then do the quick math and figure out when they would have been having kids. After the baby boom was the “bust,” because babymaking st that rate was always unsustainable and was also the result of many people’s family planning being postponed. “Millennials” are often called the “echo” of the boom, so now we’re seeing the echo of the bust.
Still, there’s not necessarily cause for panic in football, the numbers look pretty good if you ballpark the adjustments, and there’s not much non-scholastic football being played. It looks like kids are just generally involved in a lot more activities than they were, which is anecdotally supported.
This doesn’t mean that football should sit on its laurels. There are problems with the game, some are very sensational and require careful consideration, others are more fundamental - the rule book is a nightmare, for one, and a lot of it is from people trying to legislate edge cases into a platonic ideal of the game they feel it should be, instead of laying out a framework and letting the game be played within it. Just read through the rules section here to get a sense of how the rule book eliminates edge cases and in doing so creates corner cases, where exceptions to rules interact in weird ways. Poor technical writing, the politicization of rule changes, and constantly tweaking small parts of the rule book without ever taking a global view are big parts of the problem. This makes the game way harder to understand than it really should be. Football is hardly alone in this, many sports try to patch over their problems with one-off rules, but when your sport is already complex you shouldn’t make it complicated.
Professionalizing the game is another problem but it’s part of an arms race. It make all sports less fun, and I don’t see any politically acceptable solution here, I don’t exactly see the Norwegian Solution being implemented, grownups are far too emotionally invested in the, ultimately irrelevant, accomplishments of children. It’s something many coaches exacerbate by pushing for more liberal rules about offseason activities, because 90% of coaches think they’re in the top 10% of coaches and if they had unlimited practice time they could turn their players into perfect little toy soldiers. Unfortunately solving it is going to require a lot of adults to start acting like the grownups in the room, will and will probably require the collective collaboration of every other major sport at the same time.
So while the game is doing well, it needs to be careful to stay relevant. For a good example see cricket’s recent changes.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 24, 2019 8:15:40 GMT -6
At the beginning of practice (especially first day of full pads) the kids that attended summer workouts should be mildly uncomfortable, and the ones who didn't should be suffering. I like the sound of that, it sounds great, and it's noble and rewards effort and all that, I just wonder if it's true? I don't know if it's the best practice or not. There seems to be parallel discussions happening here about when to start conditioning, and there's really two ways to do it based on two different goals. 1. You can start at training camp and keep the conditioning pretty light or just program practice appropriately, and by the time game 1 comes around they'll be in as good a "football shape" as they are in shape. 2. You can start at the beginning of summer and work on it all offseason (following a coherent plan, not just running like crazy people) if you want them to improve their underlying fundamental fitness in a football-useful way (i.e. considering the balance of energy systems used and balanced against other training needs). If you're not going to do option 2, which is tedious and unenjoyable and time-consuming, then you might as well just do 1. You may well find that you're better off working on other things, or simply doing nothing because the juice isn't worth the squeeze for whatever reason. Maybe you find it makes the kids burnt out on football and hurts numbers, or that your coaches are fed up, or that you don't really notice that 4th quarter fatigue is a problem so severe as to chew up 3 hours a week all summer to some deleterious effect on team morale, or getting the facilities would strain the budget. But if you haven't worked it slowly but surely all summer long then once camp comes it's too late to make any significant improvement unless you want to cancel football practice in favour of cross-country training. Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 22, 2019 21:51:22 GMT -6
So I know there has been a number of posts on here about 'how much is too much' etc. etc. But I read this story on ESPN today www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27125793/these-kids-ticking-bombs-threat-youth-basketballTo sum up, its about how yearlong AAU basketball has worn out a lot of the top athletes, so by the time they reach college/NBA their bodies are falling apart and they are seeing an increase in injuries. Now I recognize this article is about basketball, and that the injuries are really impacting athletes who are at a level many will never come close to reaching. Still, I felt it was relevant to us in athletics, and to possibly discuss how much is too much from a physiological standpoint. On average how much work can you ask from a kid before you are harming his performance, and possibly his health? This may not be a "scientific answer" but I know from MY EXPERIENCES that I can tell when it's too much by morale, body language and decline in performance during practice. If that kid that used to explode off the ball seems much less so now, it's not usually b/c everyone else go so much better. It's b/c he doesn't feel his best. Also, I base when too much is happening based on how I feel. If I'm not "feeling it", then...they sure aren't. That's just my experience / opinion. That’s actually a pretty good heuristic.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 21, 2019 17:24:59 GMT -6
How can you copyright a block letter? Like maybe of you created a whole specific font called Rutgers sure, but a block R with no specific coloring pattern on the inside, seems a little nonspecific to me. I don’t know all the details of the case and I’m far from being an IP lawyer, but as I understand it you could probably fight Rutgers because they don’t have much to their R, as you said the colouring isn’t even consistent, vs Michigan’s block M which is a more stylized font and is always maize on blue, or Ohio State with the octagon O. But you’d have to pay a lot in legal fees over a literal letter. So is it really worth it?
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 19, 2019 14:44:12 GMT -6
When I would run scout O I would draw the plays and put in notations everywhere to put it in our terminology, like the blocking scheme or the pass concept. If the play was exactly something we ran, in every possible detail, I might consider just putting the playcall on the card. But harsh experience taught me that you couldn’t consistently call stuff like “XXX except YYY” without having a visual. It only takes one kid to make a mess of things.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 17, 2019 11:19:04 GMT -6
FWIW I have heard of two separate studies, one from Ohio State back in '70s and one from Nebraska within last 20 years, both of which said you could get kids in condition for the start of football practice in three weeks. Football practice has to get kids into "football shape" as far as playing the actual contests themselves. Yes, I’m three weeks you’ll be as much in football shape as you can be. Improving your baseline requires many weeks and can’t really be done in-season, it’s also not going to happen by running miles a day. This brings to mind an anecdote. We had a legit PhD strength coach who had vastly more sophisticated means of doing testing for this sort of thing to determine how many full-speed plays guys had in them (keeping a long story short here). Side note: legitimately qualified human performance staff makes an unbelievable difference vs Johnny gym-rat. One player was begrudgingly slotted in as our third DT. He could have been our sixth OL but he was insistent on DL so he rode the pine for a few years before flunking out. So as we’re beginning to get ready for training camp and we’re looking at the final depth charts after offseason wastage and such this guy simply hasn’t done the work and he’s grossly out of shape. The strength coach is going through the roster with HC and he says “based on where he stands right now in testing and training, and with the data we’ve collected, he’s got two plays in him before his heart goes into the ‘red’ zone and his performance drops off dramatically.” And he shows the data that looks sort of like timed repeat forties and how it’s bad for the first two and then quickly gets horrible. HC muses for a moment and remarks “yeah, and you didn’t even factor in him running out into the field.” The strength coach was absolutely mortified.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jul 3, 2019 8:07:37 GMT -6
Most of it is pretty introductory, and aimed at the serious-casual fan. My dad, basically. He’s enjoyed watching football for decades and in the past decade has wanted to understand it a bit better than he used to. He doesn’t want to get into arguments about robot technique, he just wants a clear understanding of basic run concepts and coverages. These books do a good job at explaining stuff he wants to learn.
If you’re a serious coach then the notion of looking at play doodles is sort of useless. I’m not some sort of ubermensch but I can still look at just about any diagram and figure out how to install it to within a reasonable degree of the original. I understand spacing and timing in a football context and I can figure out that the post is going to come open before the 15-yard dig, or that both edge defenders can’t take wide, looping paths. I need a much more technical explanation that contextualizes plays within a system and discusses specific techniques where relevant, but at the same time doesn’t spend five pages discussing techniques that are already pretty universal.
The provenance of the books is probably an indicator of their intended audience. If it’s written by a media personality or ex-player it’s probably written as a pop book, if it’s marketed to the general public it’s almost certainly not meant for you.
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 14, 2019 11:45:09 GMT -6
I coached a couple seasons of 9-man. I agree with what’s above. Offenses mostly convert but defense is kind of a mess, you’re better off working from first principles than trying to adapt something. I don’t think I have any materials left but I can explain our schemes if you want.
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 13, 2019 6:51:39 GMT -6
Because of the snapper, it was horrible conditions and we were on to our five-hundredth string snapper. We wanted to concede the safety, but a bad snap risked giving up a TD if he tried to pick it up, so the clear instruction would have been “IF the snap is bad THEN just kick it out of the end zone.
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 9, 2019 11:25:31 GMT -6
Schedule a stop about an hour before the halfway point. Let them get out and rest their legs. Make sure you schedule time for meals. On Friday night have them do something like go to a movie from 8 to 10. Make sure you get them in the rooms by 11. Don't let them sleep too late. Get them up around 7:30 and have them all eat breakfast. Under no circumstances should they swim in the hotel pool. this basically like we have done, but we'd serve breakfast at the school then hit the road and have a rest stop lunch where the kids could get out and move around.... might even do a quick walk thru at lunch just to keep them focused. arrive do the the walk thru/before day prep then hit a buffet and back to the hotel for a team meeting and then get to your rooms.... i'm a firm believer in letting them just relax, it they are mature enough to understand it is a work trip. we've done the keep them busy every minute of the day, and that gets tedious and wears them down... nothing wrong with a movie or sight seeing trip if might be a unique experience for them. Have a clearly defined plan on what you expect on the bus, at the stop overs, and at the hotel and be ready to enforce it.... one year had a kid slip about 1/2 mile down the street to where the cheerleaders where staying-- when we caught him coming back in around 0200 he ran gassers in the parking lot until breakfast Yeah but was it worth it?
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 2, 2019 13:09:29 GMT -6
Having done this many times, do the walkthrough at home at 8 or 9 am, hit the road for 11, get into town to eat and get to bed.
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Post by Chris Clement on Mar 14, 2019 18:33:49 GMT -6
What’s a snap attack vs Juggs?
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Post by Chris Clement on Mar 14, 2019 15:12:42 GMT -6
There’s a weak secondary market in minor teams, like men’s senior or semipro leagues, who will take anything with a couple years left. Those same teams may put you in contact with individual players. Players in such leagues often buy outdated helmets and wear them at their own risk, and the team indemnifies themselves by making sure they didn’t touch the transaction and by clearly documenting that the player provides his own gear.
Failing in that, poor teams may take mismatched helmets with a couple years left in them to flesh out their JV inventory.
Expect to get a fair bit less than the functional life left in the helmet, but otherwise it’s just clutter.
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