GREEN BAY—The movie “Moneyball” brought analytics in sports to prominence, but Tony Villiotti has been crunching the numbers for years.
What is analytics? It’s the accumulation of meaningful patterns in data, for the purpose of using that data to predict future results.
Villiotti is the creator of draftmetrics.com, a football website dedicated to information on all things NFL, especially those things pertaining to the draft and free agency. At this time of the year, Villiotti is as busy as an NFL scout. The following is a snapshot of some of the information Villiotti is providing on the draft, free agency and the impact of both on success or failure in the NFL.
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How important is free agency?
Players acquired as
veteran free agents accounted for nearly 27 percent of all games started in the 2012 NFL season,
as opposed to 59 percent for teams’ own draft choices. The 2,992 games started by veteran free agents marks the second consecutive year of increased starts, following a steady decline in preceding years.
The real seven rounds of the draft
They’re different than the NFL’s version. Villiotti maintains that in terms of levels of prospect quality, the real seven rounds of the draft are as follows: selections 1-13, 14-40, 41-66, 67-86, 87-149, 150-189, 190 and later.
Villiotti’s data suggests that each level results in a drop in the quality of the talent available in the draft. Players selected in the 1-13 range, for example, have a 99.5 percent rate of having played three-plus years, and 95.1 percent rate of having played five-plus years. Players selected 14-40 are 92.8 and 82.5 percent. In the final group, the averages are 43.0 and 26.8 percent. For all of the groups, the averages are 67.6 and 51.6 percent.
Where do the Packers rank?
The Packers were ninth in the league last year in starts by retained players, 280. The Seahawks led the league with 319, followed by the 49ers with 309 and Redskins with 296.