I know many of you are not interested in GA work at the college level or QC work at the NFL level, but you should definitely understand a huge part of their job.
I know football gets a bad rap in terms of the implementation of data in their decision making, but the NFL was actually one of the first leagues to leverage data for gameday. Many of you have purchased or read ‘Football Scouting Methods’ by Steve Belichick. I’m sure many were hoping for insight into how to evaluate players and found yourself looking at a dense read about spotting tendencies and charting how teams play the game.
That data gets stored, analyzed, and leveraged each week as coaching staffs look to create gameplans. Belichick’s methods have been enhanced and refined over the years and I am now happy to share with you the new and improved book ‘Football Game Analysis’. Mike Stoebber worked for the University of Florida for years and is now the Director of Football Systems for the Jacksonville Jaguars. You can learn more about him here.
Mike has literally written the book on how to collect data off the film and what teams can do with it. This book was brought to my attention by Alex Kirby in his post.
So now, via Alex and Mike, The Scouting Academy is happy to share a copy of the book for anyone who wants to learn more about these processes. Pay particular attention to Appendix B and the theories there.