Jacksonville Jaguars’ Gus Bradley leading an analytics boom in NFL
By Jason Marcum
With the new NFL Collective bargaining Agreement lowering the amount of salary rookies are able to get, while attempting to reward veteran players with bigger contracts, owners and GMs are now trying harder than ever to find ways to better evaluate prospects. They do this in hopes that they’ll be able to build their team with their own draftees, then eventually sign them to long-term deals once they’ve proven their worth.
It’s the best way to build an NFL team, but only if you have a solid scouting department. The Jacksonville Jaguars haven’t had the fortunes of such over the past decade, and now they, along with other NFL teams, are trying different forms of advanced statistical analysis to break down prospects and have a better grasp of who will make an impact in the NFL.
New Jags Head Coach Gus Bradley has several advanced methods of evaluating players, including his way of projecting rookie cornerback Dwayne Gratz as an eventual starting CB:
"To help evaluate defensive backs, Khan created a metric he calls Passes Touched per Target: the number of throws a player intercepted and deflected divided by the number of passes thrown his way. The formula helped confirm that the Jags had found a potential starting cornerback, Connecticut’s Dwayne Gratz, in the third round — absurdly late for a starter at that position."