Mike Vrabel: Beyond the Numbers

August 27, 2006

KEEPING SCORE
Numbers Often Lie When It Comes to Football

By MARTIN B. SCHMIDT

In 2001, after four seasons in the N.F.L. and with little success, linebacker Mike Vrabel was frustrated. Drafted in the third round in 1997, it seemed that the Steelers could not find a use for him. Maybe it was time for law school, he figured.

But thinking about law school is about as close as he came to leaving the N.F.L. Someone did find a use for him: Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, who, as Sports Illustrated reported, was impressed with the way he played the power block and with his understanding of the game. It was not Vrabel’s time in the 40-yard dash, or his vertical leap, or his total number of tackles.

Since then, Vrabel has been one of the Patriots’ most productive players, helping them win three Super Bowls, and scoring touchdowns in Super Bowl XXXVIII and Super Bowl XXXIX. Not once has he made the Pro Bowl.
He is a good example of how little an individual’s statistics mean in football. Numbers like the quarterback rating, yards per rush and total tackles are so closely tied to the performance of others that they become almost meaningless.

If Vrabel does not break through the offensive team’s blockers, the running back may gain 15 yards instead of being thrown for a loss of 2. Yet the running back gets the statistics. If Vrabel fails to break through the pass defense, the quarterback completes the pass 30 yards downfield rather than taking a sack. In this case, the quarterback gets the statistics.

In the N.F.L., if your teammate fails to perform, if the defense happens to be in the wrong place or if the coaching staff makes a bad call, your statistics will be affected.

Take the quarterback ratings for Joe Montana. In each of the 13 seasons he played regularly, his rating was above average. But in eight of those seasons, his rating averaged 86, not much better than the league’s average. In the five others, it was significantly higher, near 100, among the league’s best. Why such variance?

Obviously, some was due to variability in his performance. Athletes can have bad days. But one would expect more of this variability from game to game rather than from season to season.

The rest is due to factors beyond his control. A quarterback can control the direction and speed of the ball, but he cannot block his blind side, nor can he compel a receiver or a running back to run the correct route. A quarterback’s statistics are an outgrowth of the his actions, as well as the actions of his 10 teammates, the quality of his opponent’s defense and the quality of plays called by his coaching staff.

How much of a quarterback’s rating is predictable? Not much. If we look at six seasons of quarterbacks who threw at least 224 passes in successive seasons — the minimum to be ranked in the N.F.L.’s quarterback rating — a past rating has a poor predictive value.
Take Peyton Manning. He produced a quarterback rating of 104.1 last season. This season, based on the six seasons of ratings, there is a 95 percent chance that his rating will be between 73 and 111. In other words, he is going to be either pretty bad or pretty good.

Maybe the problem is with the quarterback rating itself. After all, it captures only what a quarterback does with his arm. The rating is complicated, but in the end, it does not provide a full picture of a quarterback’s production. Few would doubt Michael Vick’s impact on a game, but his rating has hovered around the low 80’s for much of his career. In 2002, when he was so dazzling in passing for 2,936 yards and running for 777, his rating was a moderate 81.6.

A better measure for a quarterback would incorporate passing attempts, sacks, rushing attempts and turnovers. But even with these improvements, there are too many variables to create a reliable rating.

So beware, fantasy football players. Last season, three former Pro Bowl quarterbacks changed teams. Daunte Culpepper moved to the Dolphins, Steve McNair to the Ravens and Drew Brees to the Saints.
What kind of seasons will they have? My guess is that one will be great, one will be average and the third will struggle.

Who will be great? I have no idea. On second thought, I’ll take McNair or Brees; neither plays Belichick’s team.

Martin B. Schmidt is an associate professor at the College of William & Mary and the co-author of “The Wages of Wins.”

Busy Days for Neil Cornrich, NC Sports

August 20, 2006

These have been busy – and heady – days lately for Beachwood-based football agent Neil Cornrich and his firm, NC Sports. In the last two weeks alone, Cornrich has:

• Flown to Boston to attend both a New England Patriots practice and a birthday celebration for his client, Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel (who starred at Ohio State and Walsh Jesuit High).
  
  
• Attended practices and given full-squad presentations at Oklahoma, Arizona, South Florida and Virginia (coaches Bob Stoops, Mike Stoops, Jim Leavitt and Al Groh, respectively, are Cornrich clients).
  
  
• Seen his firm succesfully negotiate one of the top contracts for a 2006 first-round pick: an estimated $29 million deal for Buffalo Bills defensive back Donte Whitner (a former OSU and Glenville High star).
  

Zastudil Solidifies Punting Game

By Steve King, Staff Writer

August 20, 2006

Few fans at Browns training camp pay attention to them.

They’re off on another field, sometimes working and other times just standing and watching the rest of the team practice.

In terms of providing excitement, the two punters, two kickers and long snapper Ryan Pontbriand aren’t exactly riveting.

But that’s OK, for those specialists all know that what they do on Sundays has as much – if not more, in some cases – to do in terms of determining whether the Browns win or lose the game than the efforts of the offense and defense.

Pontbriand is right on target with his snaps. Place kicker Phil Dawson is the second-most accurate field-goal kicker in NFL history.

And now the Browns have a difference maker at punter again in Dave Zastudil. Listed last on the veterans alphabetical roster because of his last name, the product of Bay Village (Ohio) High School and Ohio University will nonetheless have a front-and-center role as he looks to solidify a part of the team that’s been shaky ever since the reliable Chris Gardocki was let go following the 2003 season.

And though camp isn’t over until next Thursday, Zastudil has proven the Browns did the right thing when they signed him as a free agent from the Baltimore Ravens in the offseason.

His kicking has been extremely crisp. The kicks are high and long, and he’s been able to place them in the coffin corner. Yes, there have been some shanks – you can’t avoid it – but they are few and far between.

The last two years, Browns punters – even in practice – struggled to find any kind of consistency. There never seemed to be even as few as three good punts in a row. Shanks were ever present.

That was a sizeable problem. Trying to rebuild the team, the Browns needed every yard they could get. Winning the field-position battle was crucial to them having a chance to win the game.

Zastudil will help them do both. He is coming off a career-best average of 43.5 yards per punt in 2005. In his final game as a Raven – their 20-16 loss to the Browns at Cleveland last Jan. 1. in the regular-season finale – he averaged 44.9 yards a kick on eight attempts. The Browns also punted eight times but averaged just 40.6. That difference of 4.3 yards per kick can really have an impact, especially on a day such as that one when the game was so close and the punters were so busy.

Now it’s the Browns who should be enjoying that advantage.

Zastudil did a good job in the preseason opener last Thursday night in Philadelphia. Being busier than he wanted to be because of the struggling offense, he punted five times, averaging 43.2 per kick.

That’s all well and good, but he knows that for him to have a real impact, he will have to keep turning in numbers like that – or better – on a continual basis.

“I’m hitting the ball well so far, striking it solid,” Zastudil said following Wednesday’s practice. “I’m confident, and I’m healthy.

“But the most important thing for me is to be consistent.”

He said special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg has helped him with that consistency.

“He’s been great,” said Zatudil, who also holds for Dawson on field goals. “Plus the coverage of the special teams has been solid. I’m in a good situation here.”

Zastudil’s mind-set about punting is that the past is in the past, so to speak. You can’t do anything about something that has already happened – even if it’s something negative that you really want to change.

“You have to have a short memory if you’re a punter,” he said. “You just have to let it go and move on.

“There was this one punter I studied – I can’t remember his name – who, every time he hit a bad one, went to the sideline, grabbed a cup of water, took one sip and then threw the rest away. I laughed every time I saw it, but that was his routine. That is what helped him to clear his head.

“If I have a bad punt, I want it to be a good bad punt, if that makes any sense. I still want to get it high and at least 35 yards.”

The Browns’ training facility in Berea is no more than a couple of nice high punts away from where Zastudil grew up in Cleveland’s western suburbs. It was a big part of the reason why he signed here – to play for the team he rooted for as a kid, and to be close to home.

“Let’s be honest, training camp is training camp, no matter where you hold it,” he said. “But being that I’m in camp here, it’s nice. My wife’s family is from Columbus, so we’re closer to them, and I’m just a 20-minute drive from home. I can hop into the car and go visit my grandmother and other family members and friends I haven’t seen much in recent years.”

He denies there’s extra pressure on him in coming back to Cleveland, where he’ll be kicking in front of those family members and friends.

“There’s no pressure,” he said. “I just want to kick well and, more importantly, help the team win.”

To make sure he can do that, Zastudil is careful to monitor his kicks. Though he will have made about 800 punts by the time camp breaks next Thursday, he spreads them out so as to keep from doing too much and wearing his leg out.

“I over-kicked in camp my first couple of years in the league, and I learned from it,” said Zastudil, a fourth-round selection of the Ravens in the 2002 NFL Draft, when Browns general manager Phil Savage was assistant GM of the Ravens. “Now I kick smart, especially early in camp.”

That’s why Zastudil, Dawson and the two other kickers in camp, punter Kyle Basler and place kicker Jeff Chandler, are sometimes seen doing nothing. Just as a pitcher in baseball doesn’t throw a lot between starts, kickers bide their time. They have a specific routine they go through.

After all, the most important thing for them is not to be a camp wonder, but to be fresh and ready to go for the start of the regular season on Sept. 10.

That’s when the fans will really start paying attention to everything Dave Zastudil and the Browns specialists do.