East, West, and Everywhere Between: You Can Find NFL Players Anywhere With Data
By Dave Anderson & Steve Gera
As the NFL descends upon Indianapolis this week, talent evaluators will be armed with scouting reports on certain prospects that reveal much deeper insights than any of the old-school combine drills—40s, three-cones, bench presses, take your pick—ever could.
Among the hopefuls performing in the annual Underwear Olympics, these select prospects also happened to be among the 140 players who participated in this year’s East-West Shrine Bowl at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas last month.
The longest-running college football All-Star game is meant to be a showcase for mostly middle-of-the-draft players, so much so that NFL coaches run the teams to get a look. Unlike years past, the 97th installment of the Shrine Bowl gave NFL teams a much deeper look by having players step into our technology spotlight over multiple days of practice.
In Vegas, BreakAway put the players through Field Labs, our next-gen testing that measures how well they execute position-specific moves on the field—where athletes must define themselves as football players and not just tenths of a second on a stopwatch.
Position groups were measured using state-of-the-art portable cameras and markerless motion capture technology, allowing players to zip through the kind of biomechanics testing (without disrupting the flow of practice) that once required long days in actual labs where game-like scenarios couldn’t be replicated.
A question no one really asks in football until you really need it answered: How, exactly, are you evaluating offensive linemen? Endless film review and cross-referenced eye tests? Hoping strength and technique and intangibles like instinct can make the leap to the next level . . . because you think so? Because you stand-on-the-table believe so?
What if no one had to stand on a table anymore?
Our goal at BreakAway: We want objective data to take the place of subjective opinions.
(Seriously, can we all stop standing on tables?)
We measure and rank offensive linemen’s get-off speed, get-off angle, pad level, block forces and elbow width at block—and describe results in terms that coaches and scouts understand. Put another way: There are now meaningful metrics to rank players who produce virtually no meaningful stats (we say “virtually” because we’re always suckers for random big-guy touchdowns).
On the other side of the trenches there are sacks and hurries. But even those stats are subjective in the sense that they’re often influenced by matchups and schemes. Who’s better, the guy with all the sacks or the other guy drawing a double-team and a chip block all day? We measure and rank defensive linemen’s get-off speed, get-off angle, pad level, pass-rush force, lower- and upper-body bend, and max speed, among other attributes to measure disruption.
Objective data can take the place of subjective opinions in NFL scouting. With leading-edge technology, we measure true ability by determining how well players move where it matters most: on the field.
Deep insights are waiting to be discovered at all positions.
One Shrine Bowl quarterback learned from his data that he can quicken his release time and have a smoother delivery by improving the external rotation of his shoulder—an enhancement he set to work on with his QB coach and personal trainer. (How else would he or they have known?)
Such insights coming out of college—multiple Power 5 programs utilize BreakAway—and showcase events like the Shrine Bowl are meeting the moment for the NFL.
Look around Indianapolis this week and count how many Los Angeles Rams logos you see.
Not fans, but team personnel. You’ll probably be able to keep track.
The Super Bowl champs have been open about their data-first approach in the front office, which The Athletic covered last April: Inside the Rams’ major changes to their draft process, and why they won’t go back to ‘normal.’ The Rams want their scouts and analysts to maximize their time in ways that cover new ground rather than simply showing up at events like the combine and watching what everyone else is watching without any sort of real context.
A player’s data is that context, and that portfolio of work is becoming more important to understanding talent levels and ceilings than anything else—combine and pro days included.
At BreakAway, we meet that need for players and teams alike.
NFL scouts weren’t the only ones who got reports on players at the Shrine Bowl. The players also received the data, which they’ll be able to keep in the BreakAway mobile app and reference as a baseline throughout their careers. Players were also armed with their stats from the game as well as their Pro Football Focus stats. And they’ll also be able to upload GPS data in the app—from college and the pros.
Just how much is data and technology transforming the game? (Here’s more from The Athletic on the Rams’ approach to unearthing talent via data: DT Bobby Brown III, CB Robert Rochell and TE Jacob Harris.) But perhaps new Denver Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett summed it up best when he was quoted in Peter King’s Football Morning in America column: “You’d better be able to engage this generation of players. This is the YouTube generation.”
At the pro level, BreakAway solves a problem that goes to the heart of the engagement factor.
By right, NFL players own their performance data. It’s written plainly and clearly in the CBA. It’s also written that teams must have access to player data. The disconnect: teams have it, and players who are supposed to own it don’t have access.
Our software and athlete testing builds a bridge with teams to put players’ data in their hands, giving them access to deep insights about their own performance and keeping them engaged with the metrics they care most about. (And because the question will be asked: No, players don’t get access to a team’s analytics—a word that means how the Rams’ now famous Nerds Nest interprets and weights data to make draft-day decisions.)
The diamonds being prepped for the Rams’ Super Bowl rings couldn’t be more crystal clear: This isn’t one of those tug-of-war issues between players and teams or the league. Bottom line: Everyone wins with data—unless, of course, you’re one of the teams that refuses to embrace it and still prefers three-cones and an outlier 40 that gets people standing on the table.
To quote the Hall of Fame philosopher Bill Parcells: “You are what your record says you are.” The best way to control that is to embrace the daily scoreboard that is player data.
It’s synonymous with performance.
It says everything about you.
— Dave and Steve
P.S., We’re in Indianapolis this week. We’ve sent OL, DL and QB reports from the Shrine Bowl to NFL teams. If you’re a scout and want a copy, shoot Dave or Steve an email.