Projecting Lawrence Sidbury and Everette Brown
by orang3b on Jul 10, 2009 4:03 PM EDT
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PrintAndre WareAreTheyNow? of the "Goodbye, Ladies" Draft Report blog has devised a statistical regression model that attempts to identify the possible stars and the likely busts from the rookie crop of pass rushers (4-3 DE’s and 3-4 OLB’s). It includes Short Shuttle time, Vertical Leap, and college production (sacks per game). He gives a projection for DE’s and OLB’s listed as a Top 100 prospect (pre-draft) that would be their expected sack total for the first seven years of their career. For instance, he has Aaron Maybin and Connor Barwin as the possible stars of the group, and Robert Ayers as an out-and-out bust. I’ll let you follow the link for the detailed methodology and the entire list of projections, but I wanted to focus on two in particular – Lawrence Sidbury and Everette Brown.
First, the bad news: the projection for Sidbury is poor. He is only projected for an average of 3 sacks per year – strictly backup material. He has slightly below average numbers on the measurables included in the metric, plus he didn’t really dominate the Football Championship Subdivision (Division 1-AA) until his senior year. One reason to be hopeful, though, is that he notes the model is far less accurate projecting prospects from non-BCS schools. I certainly have no problem with a "boom or bust" type player being drafted more than halfway through the 4th Round (#125 overall).
Which brings me to the good news: the projection says that Everette Brown will "suck out loud" in the NFL. Actually, the original projection has him slightly ahead of Sidbury, but an updated projection has him behind Sidbury, with an average of 2.5 sacks per year. Brown had pretty decent production in college, but he was terrible for his Short Shuttle time and his Vertical Leap. So, not only did Carolina draft a player in the 2nd Round (#43 overall) that is not expected to amount to much – they also gave away next year’s 1st Round Pick to San Fran to be able to grab him. Oh, happy day!
Sorry this wasn’t posted around NFL Draft time, but I just found the story myself. I think the projections are so fascinating and the research so compelling that I had to share.
This FanPost was written by one of The Falcoholic's talented readers. It does not necessarily reflect the views of The Falcoholic.
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EB had 13 sacks last year...
He is the real deal rushing the passer. He’s gonna need to add some size to be better at stopping the run. I’m glad we have a good running game, because 3rd and long is when he is at his most dangerous.
I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I only lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.
Elayne Boosler
Well,
He did note that he had good (not great) sack numbers in college. That wasnt’ the problem, it was his terrible numbers at the combine. In the 8 years of data in his research, nobody with a Vertical that low or a Shuttle speed that high has emerged to become a star. Maybe it’s because a lot of the guys he listed got hurt once they got into the NFL and never had a real chance. Maybe Everette Brown just had a bad day on those 2 particular drills. Maybe he (and/or Sidbury) really will turn out to be pretty good. Or maybe these numbers indicate that Brown doesn’t have the elite explosiveness on his “first step” to be able to dominate in the NFL. Either way, it’s going to be interesting to watch these two seemingly similar (size, speed) guys who cost their teams a very dissimilar investment (next year’s 1st vs. a late 4th) to see how they produce once they’re on the field…
They are also products of their's defensive schemes.
Joey Porter’s first year in Miami was horrible, then last year he became good again? Everette Brown has the benefit in Carolina of having the DC from Indy. If he uses him like he did Freeney, he’ll be all right.
I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I only lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.
Elayne Boosler
On the combine notes
This is purely anectdotal, but I seem to remember seeing slightly lower numbers across the board at this year’s combine, on account of moving venues and surfaces from years past.
Has anyone looked at the numbers to see if there’s an adjustment in place to better correlate this year’s measurables with years past? (Or, to find out if I’m totally wrong?)
I thought
That the RB numbers were way down, but just because it was a crappy class for RB’s (especially compared to last year). What I remember reading was that overall the numbers were pretty similar to in the past (maybe slightly down, though).
As you pointed out
Sidbury was a 4th rounder, no great shakes if he doesnt pan out. i personally have him as a potential steal of the draft
go hard or go home
meh
If these projection guys knew what the hell they were talkin about they would be in war rooms. As an FSU fan I have seen Brown flash great pass rushing. I don’t think he will ever compare to Abe but he will hold his own in the NFL. And even if Sidbury gives us 3 sacks a year it should take him about 11-12 games to match Mr. Andersons 2 year career totals
by FLA_Falcon on Jul 11, 2009 2:55 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
TY orang3b for posting this
This is some interesting stuff, but I can’t help but wonder how statistical analysis in football will evolve with time. Unlike sabermetrics in baseball, a lot of this stuff is brand-spanking-new. In other words, you’d have to think that new and improved varieties of DE, etc. projections will emerge as statistical analysis (at this level) gains more recognition in football.
Reporter: How will you address all of the dropped passes?
Mike Smith: I don’t think that we were as sharp as we have been catching the football. It’s something that is very fixable. It’s VERY fixable.
Yeah,
Most of the guys freely admit that it is a very early attempt to supplement (certainly not replace) the scouting process. I just love thinking about the possibilities… Football Outsiders has a QB Projection system, an Adjusted Speed Score for RB’s, and last year they introduced something for WR’s that didn’t use any college stats or combine numbers at all – just height and weight. It will be interesting to see which (if any) of these pan out, and actually become useful in the Draft Process…
The more glaring difference
The thing with baseball isn’t so much that that sabermetrics aren’t new – in fact, relatviely speaking, it’s all new, but more specifically there have been a slew of new equations and formulas introduced in the last two decades – but instead that everything is static. The positions are played the same across all teams, whereas in football, teams play so many different schemes, and not just on one side of the ball, which has a much greater impact on players stats.
In baseball, moving a player to a different position does nothing to affect his batting stats. Moving a player in the lineup slightly affects them, but not to a large degree because pitching is highly dependent on that batters tendencies moreso than the players around him in the lineup. In football, this is completely opposite. If you move a player from DE to OLB, it greatly changes how he plays the game and his stats are affected thusly. Changing from a 3-4 to a 4-3 defense, or from a Run & Shoot to a Power I style offense, and again every player and their stats are greatly affected.
To me, that’s what makes designing specific sabermetric type formulas and stats so difficult for football. Maybe in time we’ll see specific scheme-based stats and equations, but goodness, that’s a lot of work I want no part of, haha. I’ll sure use it though once it’s available!
by Jesse28 on Jul 13, 2009 7:40 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I don't know about all this statistical voodoo
heck, I don’t even know what a short shuttle is. The way I see, though, if a guy drafted in the 4th round turns out to be a solid back up for 3-4 years, anything else is gravy
The 20-yard shuttle is designed to test lateral speed and coordination. The player starts in a three-point stance. When the whistle blows, the players run five yards to one side, touching the yard line. They then sprints 10 yards in the other direction and again touch the yard line, at which point they sprint back to the yard line they started from.
Glad that you found the piece interesting!
Hello,
I’m the author of the piece. Thanks for the link and the positive feedback! I actually don’t get too many hits on my blog nowadays, so I happened to notice when orang3b linked to me so I thought I would come and say “hello” and enter the fray here. There’s a lot of good points in this thread and, in the slow off-season, I’m really jonesin’ for a good football discussion. So here’s a couple of random thoughts:
Anyway, I think the point that the value of “sabermetric-type” analysis is up in the air is a great one. I would never say that my projections are infallible and I’m excited to see how accurate they will end up being. I would in fact be surprised if there wasn’t a DE in this class that over or under performed their projection by 15 or more sacks. Where teams take players in the first two rounds only explains about 15% in the variation between their sack numbers, and the model does what I think is a pretty decent job of accounting for 40% of the variation. That means that there is still 60% that includes all sorts of things like injuries, playing time, technique, work ethic (I’m looking at you, Vernon Gholston) and all of the other “intangibles” that make a good pass rusher. 4-3 DE/3-4 OLB’s are notoriously hard to scout (they actually bust out more often than QB’s) so hopefully this is a step in the right direction as far as weeding out some of the busts. A good example (since I’m in Falconland) I think is Jamaal Anderson. Jamaal Anderson was drafted very highly to rush the passer, and while my model certainly didn’t hate him, it projected him to have less than 40 sacks by year 7—indicating that he may not have been quite worth the number 9 pick overall.
Also, there was a great point made in this thread about players switching positions from college to pro. I don’t think I mentioned this in my blog post (I can’t put everything in because then it would be too long and boring), but I had to make a methodological decision about how to deal with college 4-3 DE/3-4 OLB’s who were changed to something other than a 4-3 DE/3-4 OLB. I made the decision to just throw out guys like David Pollack (who was moved to outside linebacker in a 4-3) and Tyson Jackson (who was moved to 3-4 DE) because those guys never had any opportunity to be a true “edge rusher.” I kept guys in like Mathias Kiwanuka and Justin Tuck who play “hybrid” positions where they sometimes play DT or 4-3 OLB but then are moved to 4-3 DE/3-4 OLB in various game situations, because the projections seemed to actually be pretty accurate for them. There are some interesting guys like the aforementioned Pollack and Chris Gocong who were permanently moved despite looking like they would be very good professional pass rushers.
The point by the fanposter on Sidbury is well taken. I was not high on Sidbury at all going into the draft (for all of the reasons that orang3b listed), but even I have to admit that he is good value in the fourth round. I honestly thought that he would go late 2nd round as PFW and Gosselin seemed to indicate. I think that his projection might be a little too bullish now, because fourth round picks generally do not get the playing time to get that many sacks. However, it is definitely good value to get a guy in the fourth round who could end up getting forty sacks for you in seven years if everything breaks right.
I think the point that orang3b made about Carolina is spot on. Irrespective of what I think about Everette Brown, the Panthers has recently made a habit of trading away future first-round picks. This almost never works out well. It is clear that John Fox is worried that he is going to be on the chopping block each year so he’s crippling the future of the franchise in order to “win now.” If I was the owner I would put a stop to the madness and just let him go.
I have to say that I thought that the Falcons had a solid draft. I like Peria Jerry a lot. I tried to evaluate DT’s in the same way I did DE’s, and the only thing that I found correlated was broad jump, and Peria Jerry had a pretty good broad jump. Hopefully he can stay healthy and dominate like he did in the SEC. I liked William Moore a lot too.
Anyway, I’ll check back here a few times so let me know if anybody has any questions/comments.
Jamaal Anderson
Thanks for stopping by, and great work on your blog…
You sort of answered my main question already in your comment – “What did the system say about Jamaal Anderson?” I tried to dig (but not very deep) for info on him after I first read about your projections. The best I could tell, his Shuttle Speed and Vertical were average-ish, and his college production was decent (I kept finding stuff saying he didn’t start until halfway through his final college season, but I couldn’t find a specific total of games started – does that make any difference?). But as you said in the Cliff Avril post, “By far, the most predictive measure of a pass rusher’s sacks in his second season is the number of sacks that he had in his first.” We now have seasons of zero and two sacks from him. One of the few reasons I’m still holding out hope is Football Outsiders charting data: in ‘07 his hit/hurry numbers were decent, even though he didn’t get any sacks. I haven’t seen his numbers for ‘08 yet, but if they’re good, maybe we can finally start to see some real production (if he got anywhere close to your original projection, and had 38 sacks over the next 5 years, I’d be overjoyed).
Slightly off-topic, but still related to rookie projections: I’m assuming you weren’t too happy with the Lions’ draft. 1) Wait for the QB next year. 2) Don’t draft a 1st Round TE. I think your assesment of Jevan Snead applies well to Matt Stafford.
From what I have seen of Snead, he is one of those guys who looks like Peyton Manning for two and a half quarters and looks like Ryan Leaf for the rest of the game. He is exactly the kind of player that NFL teams overdraft.
I don’t really have anything to say about Stafford that you don’t already know – sometimes he looks great, sometimes you just say, “What was he thinking??!” I’m a Georgia Tech fan, so I don’t have anything good to say about him (and most Dawg fans I know just make excuses for his college play). It will be fun to see him hooking up with Calvin Johnson, though. Hopefully (for your sanity) he turns out to be a decent pro QB.
More on Jamaal Anderson and the Detroit Lions' Draft
I’m glad that you’ve enjoyed the stuff on my blog! Here’s a little more on Jamaal Anderson. I have him down as having a 32.5 inch vertical leap, a 4.22 second short shuttle, and a 72% adjusted sack rate. The 32.5 vertical leap is bad for a first round pick and his short shuttle and adjusted sack rate scores are good but not quite enough to make up for his vertical. His “adjusted sack rate” also had a big boost because it eliminated a pretty barren freshman season where he got some playing time and couldn’t record a sack (eliminating the freshman season does make the model more accurate, but it does have the drawback in eliminating what could be useful data). Overall he had a projection of 38.57 sacks by year 7.
This is a good projection for a guy in the latter half of the first rounds, but not for a guy taken top ten overall . Needless to say, he’s underperforming his projection and actually is one of the biggest underperformers. I have him on pace to have 16.12 sacks by year 7. I haven’t taken a hard look at his FO numbers, but if he’s getting a lot of hits and hurries, maybe he’s not a lost cause and he can get a little closer to his projection.
Here’s another point that only I seem to find interesting. Guess who the model missed the most on? The answer is DeMarcus Ware. And the model actually identified him as the second best 4-3 DE/3-4 OLB prospect from 2001 to the present with over 50 sacks by year 7! How is this possible? DeMarcus Ware is on pace for a ridiculous 86.71 sacks by year 7, which is more than ten sacks more than any other 4-3 DE/3-4 OLB drafted since 2001. THAT’s how good DeMarcus Ware has been.
I’m not thrilled with the Detroit Lions’ draft, but I’m not quite ready to pass judgment either. I think you’ve read my Stafford post, but let me just say that when I wrote that I was careful to couch my feelings for Stafford in somewhat nuanced terms. I am not at all convinced that he will be a bust, but my position was that I thought as a matter of calculated risk it would be better to take what will probably be a better prospect (at least from a number crunching perspective) in 2010 or 2011. Lewin is very down on Stafford but I think adding those factors that I identifed in my post (freshman completion percentage and pro-style offense) reflects more accurately that there is a significant chance that he could succeed.
I also think that it is possible that we may be seeing the end of completion percentage as a significant factor in QB analysis. Recent data points suggest a possible trend in the opposite direction. Jay Cutler and Matt Ryan had a low completion percentages, while Matt Leinart, Vince Young, JaMarcus Russell, etc. all had good completion percentages. With the rise of the spread, the factor may disappear, which leaves you with starts. It is feasible that Stafford may turn out to be quite good and the narrative could be: hey he had enough starts and he was easy to evaluate because he was a pro-style offense. He has reportedly performed well in practices thus far, which is an encouraging sign. Although there are some “gamers” who play better in games than in practice, by and large guys who look good in practice perform well in games.
I am so glad, however, that the Lions passed on Sanchez, who is the favorite of the talking heads, but who I feel is likely to fail. Lewin is high-ish on him for some reason that I cannot understand. His starts are WAY too low. The list of first round QB’s with less than 25 starts is really, really sad.
You’re right about how I feel about Pettigrew. Nothing personal to Pettigrew, but I just feel that a tight end is a bad use of resources when we’re looking at the first round.
I do actually like Stafford more than Snead. Snead will have less starts than Stafford and I also feel like he is in a better situation in Ole Miss than Stafford was in Georgia (no offensive line, etc.). Snead had Oher.
by Goodbye Ladies on Jul 16, 2009 10:56 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah
I think I like (ugh) Stafford more than Snead, too – I guess he could change my mind if he has a big year, though.
I did see in your blog about DeMarcus Ware. A lot of the guys on FO were pushing him as Defensive Player of the Year, and I can’t say I disagree. On top of those sacks, he is also great vs the run. If he’s not the best Defensive player in the NFL right now, he’s certainly in the top handful…
That’s a great point about Cutler and Ryan with the Completion Percentage. I guess the spread offense/completion % problem is why the Lewin Forecast (almost certainly) over-rated Kolb. Plus, he was drafted in the 2nd, so that’s a problem too…
You said you liked William Moore a lot – do you have a Safety projection that I didn’t find, or is that just from watching him play? (Crazy, I know). I’ve got pretty high hopes for him, too…
Sorry, I have no special insight on William Moore. I just sort of liked him in a “amateur internet draftnick” kind of way.
I think how Stafford performs in his rookie year will control Snead’s value if he comes out early next year, or at least the dialogue amongst fans. They are similar quarterbacks (inconsitency issues, all of the tools, experience against SEC defenses, etc.). We’ll have to see how it plays out! At least the Falcons are now set at that position for pretty much forever.
by Goodbye Ladies on Jul 20, 2009 11:29 PM EDT up reply actions
Wow, thanks for stopping by
I wish this kind of thing happened more often. Kudos!
Sign up for a free account today to join the discussion about all things Atlanta Falcons!
My pleasure. Plus, we Lions fans have the Falcons to thank for letting us know nice and early how the 2008 season was going to go! ;)
by Goodbye Ladies on Jul 16, 2009 10:57 PM EDT up reply actions
One more question
I saw you also had a LB projection (tackles per game). I was wondering what a realistic expectation should be for Stephen Nicholas. He was a 4th Round draft pick, and his Combine vertical is listed as 33.5", so I’m assuming he wouldn’t be too highly regarded. We’ve been hearing good things about him, and he should get a chance to start this year…
Don't know about Nicholas...
Sure. The linebacker projections actually only work for the first two rounds. After that vertical leap doesn’t really make much of a difference. So I certainly wouldn’t lose faith in Nicholas. It also bears mentioning that the linebacker projections are not as strong as the DE projections (draft position dominates the projection to some extent). I’m sort of on the fence if I will even do linebacker projections next year.
However, I will say that productivity for linebackers correlates highly with draft position, and you should never expect too much from a linebacker drafted as low as the fourth round. IMHO, if he turns out to be good depth / good on special teams that should be considered a great return on the investment.
by Goodbye Ladies on Jul 16, 2009 11:04 PM EDT up reply actions
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