According to an early sentiment analysis of reactions to the Jeff Okudah trade, Detroit Lions fans aren’t happy about the deal.
On Tuesday, when Jeff Okudah was traded to the Atlanta Falcons from the Detroit Lions, there were understandably sad reactions from the Lions’ side. After all, just a few years ago this franchise expensed a third overall pick to land Okudah, only to now trade him for just a fifth-round pick.
Ultimately, you can’t get every pick right, but getting a pick that high up wrong sure does sting.
But exactly how sad are Lions fans over the trade? An early sentiment analysis helps us understand that.
The report of the trade from Field Yates was quickly posted to both the Lions and Falcons subreddit. About an hour after the report went on each page, we analyzed the comments in each of the two threads and took a sentiment analysis using the QDAP dictionary.
If you’re not with the nerdy stuff, basically, we used a systematic scoring system that associates certain words as “positive” and others as “negative” to arrive on an ultimate positive or negative sentiment for each comment on the Falcons and Lions pages.
Lions fans are bummed over Jeff Okudah trade, Falcons fans are happy
When we graded the deal based on the incoming and outgoing pieces alone, we gave the Falcons a slight edge. Turns out, if we graded the deal based on sentiment analysis of the respective fanbase reactions on Reddit, we would have had a similar conclusion.
A sentiment analysis resulted in an average score per comment of 0.072 for Falcons fans (136 comments) and 0.066 for Lions fans (172 comments). To scale this, a score of 1 would mean the sentiment was entirely positive. A score of -1 would mean the sentiment was entirely negative.
So, while Falcons fans make out happier, Lions fans are actually somewhat optimistic, too, not treading entirely into the negative territory. That said, 23 percent of the comments on the Lions reddit scored negatively, vs just 21 percent on the Falcons page.
Most Lions fans understand that this just hasn’t worked out and are moving on.
Here was one of the comments that scored more negative on the Lions subreddit:
"Hmmmmmm. I don’t think we were going to get anything more him, but it pretty much forces us to go get a CB in the draft"
And here was one of the comments that scored more positively:
"I mean why pay your CB4 potentially 5 10 million dollars just makes no sense why not save money."
All of this was a nerdy way to say if you’re a Lions fan, you’re probably not quite as happy as a Falcons fan today. In fact, you might be about 9 percent more bummed. Cheer up!