Football Outsiders' 2009 Football Almanac

by rolub on Jul 9, 2009 7:10 PM EDT Comment 7 comments

Today, the 2009 Football Almanac was released for purchase by the boys at Football Outsiders. I know that some don't care for their writing or feel that their player ratings are not as desirable as their Sabremetric counterparts, but I'll be damned if there's any comprehensive outlook/projection system on the market that's better than this. After the jump, a few tidbits on the Browns.

2008: F**k you. Sincerely, Phil Savage.

2009: The Browns start their third straight rebuilding cycle with another trip to the Ozzie Newsome Cloning Vat.

2009 Mean Projection: 6.6 wins

The Browns are twice as likely to be a Playoff Contender (9-10 wins) at 18% than they are to be "On the Clock" (0-3 wins) at 9%. The most likely result is Loserville (4-6 wins) at 40%.

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Comments

I like Football Outsiders. It’s not as accurate as some of the sabermetrical analysis for baseball, but that is just the nature of the game. It’s a different look at the upcoming football season and that’s reason enough for me to be interested in it.

by gahnki on Jul 9, 2009 8:24 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

i’m with you. i dig FO, and what they try to do. it certainly isn’t perfect, but i appreciate the opportunity to look at the game through a different lens.

i’d be interested to know how much the great coaches/tacticians (e.g. belichick, dungy) use “advanced” football statistics.

by DontCallMeJoey on Jul 10, 2009 3:45 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I definitely appreciate that they understand how “normal” stats don’t do the job and are attempting to do better.

I do still think that they have a long ways to go to approach baseball (and probably even basketball), and that a lot of their stats still require some level of subjectivity, but that’s probably the nature of the beast.

by rufio on Jul 11, 2009 4:32 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It will be tough for basketball and football to ever really get there. Baseball works so well because every play is in isolation

by Roger Dorn on Jul 11, 2009 8:52 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

True, but they can still do things for the team as a whole. I tend to not care what their numbers say about specific players, but it’s always interesting to see their DVOA statistic.

by gahnki on Jul 11, 2009 9:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Does anyone have the story on why it’s no longer called Pro Football Prospectus?

by gahnki on Jul 9, 2009 8:26 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Short answer is the publisher didn’t want to take it to bookstores, but they couldn’t shop it around because they were still under contract. This is somewhat of a “self-publishing”.