Yoyodyne: The Future Begins Tomorrow!

Everybody can probably remember what it was like to be a small child waiting for Christmas morning.  Time moves much more slowly when you are young, and it slows down even more on Christmas Eve.  Now, imagine what it would be like if you ran downstairs to the Christmas tree and unwrapped the brand new bicycle that you had wished for, only to find that it was completely disassembled.  Your father, a man with no mechanical skills, promises to "get right to it", meaning that it should only take about three months for him to put it all together.  To be fair, my father did lose both of his hands in a bizarre meatloaf related accident, and had to have hams sewn onto the ends of his arms to take their place.  Of course, this also doesn't take into account the additional months of waiting, when your cautious mother ships the assembled bicycle off to the Underwriters Laboratory for safety testing, to ensure that her precious baby boy won't be killed on this mechanical death-trap.

Under these circumstances, you would probably start to have very mixed feelings about Christmas.  A more deprived life in an orphanage might even start to seem like an appealing option.  I don't know.  I guess I was a fairly impatient kid.  Maybe it all balances out in the end, when you get to put your parents in a nursing home (Who's going to be laughing then, Mom and Dad?).

Now, I'm not a child anymore (supposedly), and perhaps I have exaggerated the way in which my parents operate.  Either way, I am older now, and I have hair growing out of my nose, and my expectations for immediate gratification have been somewhat subdued.  I know that the world doesn't move as quickly as I would like, or else we would already have jet-packs (or Japanese robot butts).  You have to learn to be patient, even if waiting can be extremely frustrating at times.

One of the most annoying aspects of speculating about NFL Draft (football Christmas) prospects is the endless waiting.  It's particularly bad when you have a hunch that a late round draft pick might be pretty good, but nobody else really seems to care.  It's even worse when your interests are drawn to some of the less glamorous positions like that of the NFL center.  Try having a serious discussion about NFL centers with a friend, and watch how quickly people begin to fall asleep.  Yet, for some reason, I find this subject endlessly fascinating.  I am...how should I put this...a bit of a dork about such things.  Unfortunately, once the draft is over, all I can really do is sit around and wait...and wait...and wait...just to see if the players I am interested in will ever get an opportunity to play.  Sometimes it takes years for all of this to play out, and even then we sometimes don't get a real chance to judge a player's skills, simply because they may never be given an opportunity.

Normally, I have somewhat mixed feelings about Pro Football Focus, and their methods for grading players.  Sometimes I ignore what they have to say....and sometimes they agree with me and I make sure to mention it here.  Yes, I can be a bit of an inconsistent ass in that way.  Either way, I do find what they are attempting to do quite interesting, even if I sometimes have some differences of opinion with them.  This morning, however, they posted an article that had me howling in delight.

When they posted their grades for the top performers in the 2014 NFL preseason, a stupid smile began to spread across my face.  According to their numbers, the top rated center in the preseason has been Eric Kush of the Chiefs, with a grade of +4.7 cheeseburgers.  Okay, they don't really grade people on a 'cheeseburger scale', but the methods by which they evaluate people can sometimes be a bit mysterious, so I sometimes make up meanings for their numbers.  Either way, Eric Kush scored more cheeseburgers than any other center, at least so far, in the 2014 preseason.

This is particularly funny because PFF has been busy trashing the rest of the Chiefs offensive line, so it doesn't appear as if Kush is likely to be benefiting from an abundance of surrounding talent.  This is all very exciting to me, because Eric Kush was our favorite center prospect from the 2013 draft, although he wasn't selected until the 6th round.  Seeing some signs that things might actually work out for this strange little prospect of ours is sending me into a bit of a tizzy, especially since he is somebody we selected in our ongoing battle versus Ozzie Newsome.  I have to admit that I have the horrible feeling that even mentioning any of this will end up jinxing things for Kush.

Then, things got even weirder...

Among the other centers that PFF had ranked in their top 5, along with established names like Alex Mack and Nick Mangold, was another somewhat peculiar fellow.  Tied for 3rd place on their list, with a score of +3.7 cheeseburgers, was Corey Linsley who the Packers drafted this year in the 5th round.  While there were a handful of people that we considered to be interesting center prospects in the 2014 draft, we finally settled on Linsley as our favorite overall center candidate.  All things considered, I think that projection is starting to look fairly good, considering that we probably spent a whopping 2-3 minutes actually watching him play, and based this hunch almost entirely on his physical measurables.  Our deranged fascination with the short shuttle times of center prospects seems to again be paying some dividends, even if it is a remarkably simple-minded way of doing things.  Yes, Reilly and I do factor in other results besides short shuttle times, when judging centers, but it still remains our favorite score for that position.

Obviously, none of this necessarily means that much.  There's still plenty of time for these players to turn around and make our little projections look incredibly stupid.  For the moment, however, I just want to savor the possibility that maybe...just maybe...we don't have our heads firmly lodged in our buttocks.  In no way am I claiming that these two players are Canton bound, but for the moment, there do appear to be some promising signs of competence.  Even if they were to merely become average/serviceable players, I think that would still be a rather positive outcome, considering how little was invested in them.  My fingers are crossed.

Of course, there is a bit of a catch in all of this.  Eric Kush is still listed as a backup, and I suspect there is a good chance he won't really see the field until 2015, when starting center Rodney Hudson's contract runs out.  I may personally believe that Kush is a much better prospect than Hudson ever was, but that's where PETARD comes back into play.  Hudson was a 2nd round draft pick.  Short of a complete and undeniable failure on his part, the team is likely to give him the starting job, instead of Kush.  Since the same questionable "trust your eyeballs, and not the numbers" type of evaluation goes into assessing NFL players, that also goes into choosing who to draft, it's entirely possible that the Chiefs will squander another year of Kush's career, having him sit on the bench.  How annoyed am I with this situation?  Extremely.

Linsley, on the other hand, appears poised to become a starter this year, even though I don't personally think he is as exciting a prospect as Kush probably is.  Don't get me wrong.  I do think Linsley could be quite good, but I just that think Kush could be really exceptional.  I'm sure Linsley will struggle at times, and there will be ample opportunities to question his abilities, but that is sort of to be expected with all inexperienced offensive linemen.  Still, I generally support the sink or swim approach, of tossing players into games early, and figuring that a few screw-ups will be more educational than they will be harmful.  Hopefully it all works out for the Packers.  Again, I'll have my fingers crossed for a positive outcome here.

Because I haven't said anything negative about the Ravens yet (a requirement), I figured I should tack this on at the end.  In the past year, the Ravens have traded for two veteran centers (Shipley and Zuttah), while starting one of the league's most abysmally poor centers in Gino Gradkowski, in 2013 (who was selected in the 4th round in 2012).  While I suspect Zuttah will inevitably turn out to be an improvement over the performance we saw from Gradkowski (with a fairly pleasing 4.54 second short shuttle time coming from Zuttah), you still have to wonder if all of this scrambling around to address the center position was really necessary or economically sound.  Anytime you sign a veteran player, you are getting somebody who is both older and more costly than what you could have acquired in the draft.  It's still too early to say whether Kush or Linsley will pan out, but if they do, and if the signs that pointed to success were relatively apparent to our Banana 6000 data thresher, then why weren't they apparent to the Ravens?

However this all plays out, I'll just be sitting here waiting.  Like the slogan of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems says,"The Future Begins Tomorrow", and the NFL has taught me just how true this statement is.  I just find it a bit frustrating how often I see teams with well known areas of weakness spending their preseason games trotting out the same tired players on the field, while giving fewer opportunities to some of the lesser known guys who are buried on their rosters.  The idea of shaking things up, and trying to reevaluate some of the lesser known talents in the league, seems to always take a back seat to simply making decisions based on where someone was drafted.  So I keep waiting...and waiting...and waiting...

Bigger & Stronger

I feel compelled to do something that I don't really want to do, which is to defend Gino Gradkowski.  It's not that I think he is a good center.  He probably isn't, and most likely never will be.  In fact, all the signs were there to suggest it was a mistake for the Ravens to draft him.  Hmm, this probably doesn't sound like the opening statement of a defense of Gradkowski, but I'm building to that.

Still, despite Gino's obvious shortcomings, at some point people started making peculiar claims about him that were...well...kind of bullshit.  For some reason I keep seeing people trying to describe Gino's failures as a product of his being "undersized" or "not strong enough".  I assume that most of the people making these claims are driving Hummers to their local Sam's Club, while sucking down a Big Gulp.  Bigger isn't necessarily better, though this desire for sheer bulk seems to also be invading the minds of people who should be more sophisticated than your average internet commentators.

"We've got to get bigger in the interior of our offensive line.  That's one of the areas that I think we need to improve on."- Ozzie Newsome, at the 2014 'State of the Ravens' press conference.

While Ozzie doesn't specifically mention Gradkowski in this comment, it doesn't take a detective to figure out that the team is probably a bit concerned with how he performed last year.  Still, you have to wonder if throwing bulk at the problem will really get you the result you desire.  The Steelers have been infatuated with drafting Texas-sized offensive linemen for the last few years, and the results of this pursuit have been fairly poor.

There is also the nagging problem that referring to Gradkowski as "undersized" is probably just untrue.  Just for the hell of it, let's compare Gino to 32 other players who started a significant number of games at the center position in the 2013 season, based on how they measured up at the NFL Combine.

	Height (in inches)	Weight	Bench Press
Gino Gradkowski	74.6	300	29
Average of 32 Starting Centers	75.2	303.8	28.6

Yes, Gradkowski was a whopping 0.6 inches shorter than the average center in 2013, and a ridiculous 3.8 pounds lighter.  It's amazing that he managed to survive at all, being so helplessly undersized.  While his height makes him the 10th shortest starting center, only 9 centers (28.12%) were more than an inch taller than Gradkowski.  Similarly, as the twelfth lightest center, only 14 centers (43.75%) weighed at least 5 pounds more than Gradkowski.  The only reason I also threw in their bench press results is because of the "he isn't strong enough" argument, though this is sort of an odd issue, since I don't personally believe the bench press really matters that much, or says a lot about a player's strength.  Still, some people seem to place value in that trait, so I thought I would just toss it in there to once again show that he was also within the average range there too.

Of course, the argument could be made that this is only comparing Gradkowski to league-wide averages, and that we should really compare him to the more accomplished and celebrated centers in the league.  Okay, we can do that too.  This time we will only include players who have been selected to All-Pro/Pro Bowl teams, or have had rather long and productive careers as centers.

Player	Height (in inches)	Weight	Bench Press	HT Diff.	WT Diff.
Gino Gradkowski	74.6	300	29
Mike Pouncey	77	303	24	2.4	3
Nick Mangold	75.5	300	24	0.9	0
Maurkice Pouncey	76.4	304	25	1.8	4
Alex Mack	75.7	307	20	1.1	7
Chris Myers	76.5	300	25	1.9	0
Brad Meester	75.3	298	25	0.7	-2
Manny Ramirez	75	326	40	0.4	26
Nick Hardwick	75.4	295	27	0.8	-5
Jason Kelce	74.5	280	N/A	-0.1	-20
Ryan Kalil	74.6	299	34	0	-1
Roberto Garza	74.1	303	37	-0.5	3
John Sullivan	75.4	301	21	0.8	1
Dominic Raiola	74	307	29	-0.6	7
Max Unger	76.5	309	22	1.9	9
Scott Wells	73.7	300	31	-0.9	0
Jonathan Goodwin	75.2	318	N/A	0.6	18
AVERAGE	75.3	303.1	27.4
MEDIAN	75.35	302	25

Even amongst this rather select group of 16 centers, only 4 (25%) are more than one inch taller than Gradkowski, and only 5 (31.25%) are more than 5 pounds heavier than him.  In fact, only Manny Ramirez and Jonathan Goodwin appear to be significantly bulkier than the average, with a weight difference relative to Gradkowski of 26 and 18 pounds respectively.  While Gradkowski may indeed suck, trying to explain his issues as merely a matter of insufficient mass seems a bit overly simplistic.

Instead, let's consider another possibility.  The Ravens selected a short-armed center (31.75"), from a lower level college football program (Delaware), who had rather poor physical measurables (-0.509 Kangaroo Score, and a -0.034 Agility Score).  If you just want power, I would look to the Kangaroo Score, as I think it is an adequate predictor of such things.  More importantly, I would look to Gino's short shuttle time of 4.78 seconds, which is -0.164 standard deviations below average for an offensive lineman, and possibly the most important drill for prospective centers.  You can click here, if you crave some extensive and deranged ranting about short shuttle times and centers.  Basically, Gino Gradkowski was 5 pounds of talent in a 10 pound sack, but it wasn't his physical size that was the most likely limiting factor.

In some ways, this reminds me of the situation with Danny Watkins, though I suppose the similarities might not be obvious.  Watkins was a guard for the Eagles, selected with the 23rd overall pick in 2011.  When he was released from the team, in 2013, the Eagles' GM Howie Roseman questioned what had happened to Watkins' "innate toughness", and suggested that Watkins failed due to the pressure of being a 1st round pick, rather than admit that:

A.) Drafting a 26 year old in the first round is just a bad idea
B.) Taking this gamble for a less valuable position, such as a guard, is an even worse idea
C.) While Watkins demonstrated moderately above average agility (0.605 Agility Score), expecting him to be a powerful "enforcer" with a cripplingly low -1.306 Kangaroo Score, was a bit insane.

So, rather than just admit that the team had incorrectly evaluated Watkins' abilities, they instead suggested that Watkins failed to live up to the vast potential that they saw in him.  Potential that certainly must still exist.  They had seen it.  Therefore, it was somehow Watkins' fault, for being too psychologically frail to become the player that the team was confident Watkins was capable of becoming.   

Every draft pick is a calculated risk, but occasionally the writing is on the wall that teams are pursuing fairly outlandish hunches.  Do Gradkowski and Watkins suck?  Probably.  Should they be derided and labelled as busts?  Probably not.  They are what they are, and it isn't their fault that unreasonable expectations were placed on them.  Instead, you might as well turn your jeering attention to the men who selected them, and ask upon what evidence they based their belief in these players.  And pray.  Pray with all you heart, that when these fallible men (fallible like us all) try to correct their mistakes, they don't simply say,"We need to get bigger."

Or, perhaps these comments about size are just innocuous statements, which I shouldn't pay so much attention to.

Short Shuttle Times and NFL Centers

As the name of this blog would suggest, I believe that the simplest answers to a problem tend to be the best ones.  Among these simple (and potentially stupid) answers that I believe in, is the possibility that if you are looking for a center for your team's offensive line, you might not need to go any further than examining the player's short shuttle time.  Strange and magical things seem to happen when a player's short shuttle time approaches the 4.50 second mark. 

Yes, I realize that this is probably going to sound incredibly foolish.  Yes, I realize that this doesn't involve film study.  Yes, character, hard work, motivation, proper blocking technique, blah, blah, blah...that stuff matters I guess (Does it?  I'm really not sure.).  I will admit that this seems a bit crazy, and yes, I do consider other factors.  I just suspect that, in the end, the short shuttle time probably is the main deciding factor in a player's success at the center position.  So, let's proceed with my attempt at demonstrating this lunacy, and you can laugh at me afterwards.

What I'm going to do, is to list every single player who was the intended starting center at the beginning of the 2012 season.  While some of these players ended up getting hurt, and not finishing the season, I think it is best to just include the players that the team wanted to start, not the ones they were forced to play.  I will make one exception to this rule though, and that is for the Green Bay Packers.  I'll explain why I'm making that exception in a little bit.  For the most part, I believe this list is accurate, though in a couple cases it was a bit unclear who the intended center was.  Overall, this should be pretty reliable though.

The 32 starting centers will be divided into 3 tiers.  Along with their short shuttle time, I will also show their Kangaroo Score, and their Agility Score (half of which also comes from the short shuttle drill), which are shown in the form of how many standard deviations they are away from the average results for a player in their position group.  I'll also show how many games they have started in their career (GS), their number of Pro Bowl selections (PB), and their number of All Pro selections.  I should also mention that the average short shuttle time for all offensive linemen is approximately 4.74 seconds.

Group 1
The Average and the Unknown- Starting centers with short shuttle times of 4.60 seconds or worse.

Player	Year	Pick#	Sh. Sht.	Kangaroo	Agility	GS	PB	All Pro
Rodney Hudson	2011	55	4.96	-1.545	-0.971	4
Maurkice Pouncey	2010	18	4.92	-1.149	-0.359	45	3	3
Brian De La Puente	2008	U	4.77	-1.915	0.220	28
Alex Mack	2009	21	4.75	-0.026	0.817	64	1
Ted Larsen	2010	205	4.66	-1.226	0.153	27
Phil Costa	2010	U	4.65	1.420	0.443	20
Nick Hardwick	2004	66	4.65	0.851	0.125	119	1
Mike Pouncey	2011	15	4.64	-1.409	0.468	32
Stefen Wisniewski	2011	48	4.64	-0.235	0.733	31
Ryan Wendell	2008	U	N/A	N/A	N/A	21
Fernando Velasco	2008	U	N/A	N/A	N/A	19
Peter Konz	2012	55	N/A	N/A	N/A	15
Jonathan Goodwin	2002	154	N/A	N/A	N/A	92	1
Lyle Sendlein	2007	U	N/A	N/A	N/A	77
Average		104		-0.581	0.181

Players in Group 1 were drafted, on average, around the 104th pick, which would be in the 3rd round.  The five players at the bottom of this group, for whom I have no data, aren't factored into any of this.  I'll explain why I dumped these unknowns into this group later.  Group 1 is sort of a hodgepodge of highly drafted players, and people that nobody has probably ever heard of before.  While numerous players in this group have short shuttle times that are better than the average result of 4.74 seconds, their results still aren't exactly shocking.  I'm not saying that such players will do poorly.  I am only suggesting that I generally wouldn't be inclined to bet on them, if I had other options.

This is only going to cause me trouble.  You see that guy in the list above?  The one with the most Pro Bowls, 3?  Yes, Maurkice Pouncey!  Well, he might be overrated (please don't hurt me).  Really, I have no axe to grind here, but if you take the fellows at Pro Football Focus seriously (a debatable proposition), he's just kind of average (and, they mention it again here), and they suggest his brother Mike Pouncey is probably better.  Now, I can neither confirm nor deny the validity of their analysis.  That's not what I do.  All I can say is that this view of the two Pounceys is closer to what their measurables would suggest was a likely outcome.  Is it possible...now hear me out here... is it possible that a player taken in the 1st round, with all the hype and expectations that come with this, and is also selected by a celebrated and highly successful team, might be getting more credit than he deserves?  While Pro Bowls are a questionable way to measure success (especially for offensive linemen who people probably don't watch as closely as they think they do), I think they become even more meaningless with high draft picks, who sometimes just need to avoid screwing up, in order to make people happy.  A 7th round Pro Bowler, on the other hand, well, they probably really earned it.  Maybe Pouncey is an outlier, or maybe I am just completely wrong about all of this.

Outside of the Pouncey brothers, the main name that probably stands out is that of Nick Hardwick.  While his short shuttle time is only a little bit above average, his Kangaroo Score suggests he has much more explosive lower body power than most of his peers.  While he might not have had an exceptional score when it came to the primary trait that I look for, he did come through on the secondary trait I consider for a center.

Group 2
The Pretty Damned Impressive- Starting centers with short shuttle times from 4.50-4.59 seconds.

Player	Year	Pick#	Sh. Sht.	Kangaroo	Agility	GS	PB	All Pro
Dan Koppen	2003	164	4.56	-0.762	-0.397	132	1	1
John Sullivan	2008	187	4.55	-0.251	0.759	61		1
Roberto Garza	2001	99	4.53	0.977	0.649	148
Eric Wood	2009	28	4.51	-0.117	0.963	47
Kyle Cook	2007	U	4.51	-1.059	0.963	50
Max Unger	2009	49	4.50	-1.493	1.289	48	1	1
Average		130		-0.451	0.704

When players begin sneaking into Group 2, I start to pay attention.  How rare is it for a center to score this highly in their short shuttle drill?  Well, that is a somewhat complicated question.  So many players are shuffled around from position to position on the offensive lines, that it becomes hard to measure players who are strictly centers.  Still, since pretty much all centers are under 6'5" tall, we can narrow things down a bit.  Out of the 521 offensive linemen that I have in my database, I have short shuttle data for 498 of them.  If we take these 498 players, and eliminate everyone over 6'5", then we are left with only 17.87% of the remaining players who ran a short shuttle time under 4.59 seconds.  Since there are, on average, 41 offensive linemen taken in the NFL Draft, then that would mean the average draft class has 7.32 players who should probably qualify for this group.

The tricky thing here is that many of these 7.32 players per draft class still end up playing other positions.  Many end up playing guard quite successfully, such as David Decastro (4.56), Marshal Yanda (4.58), Andy Levitre (4.52) Logan Mankins (4.45) or even tackle, such as Matt Light (4.49) or Jordan Gross (4.39).  It's impossible to anticipate how teams will utilize these players (it is, either way, still a positive trait for other positions to have too).  In the 2013 Draft, 6 players were selected who met this short shuttle time/height requirement (a below average year, unfortunately), with 1 currently being listed by their team as a tackle, 3 listed as guards, and only 2 currently listed as centers.  What position they end up playing is anyone's guess, but this might give us some idea as to how these things typically break down.

Still, considering that these players with a short shuttle time under 4.59 seconds only make up about 17.87% of the draft population, it seems odd that they ended up with 18 out of 32 (56.25%, this includes the upcoming Group 3 players) of the starting center jobs in 2012.  That means that there were 3.15 times as many starting centers last year, with times under 4.59 seconds, than there should have been considering their relative rarity.  Players in Group 2 were also available about 24 picks later in the draft than the players in Group 1.

Dan Koppen is sort of the poster child for this whole theory.  He pretty much bombed every event at the combine...except for one.  The nice thing about this is that, if we believe that measurable athletic traits matter, then this helps to narrow down which drills matter for which positions.  Koppen was a pioneer.  A man ahead of his time.  Setting forth on a path of adventure, he went on a quest to see how far an athletically inferior specimen could go, with only a great short shuttle time.  I salute you Dan Koppen.

Overall, Group 2 looks reasonably impressive, and seems to have fewer random bozos in it than Group 1 (LRBP- Low Random Bozo Population, almost always an important factor).  Half of the players here have managed to make it to a Pro Bowl or an All Pro team (with only one of these three players being selected before the 5th round, which I believe adds some validity to the honor).  Roberto Garza, while lacking in awards, has at the very least had a fairly impressive career, having started 148 games.

Now, we're going to take things up a notch, and everything is going to get much weirder.

Group 3
The Freaks!- Starting centers with a short shuttle time under 4.49 seconds 

Player	Year	Pick#	Sh. Sht.	Kangaroo	Agility	GS	PB	All Pro
David Baas	2005	33	4.48	0.518	1.108	128
Brad Meester	2000	60	4.43	0.702	1.336	193
Will Montgomery	2006	234	4.43	0.172	1.442	47
Nick Mangold	2006	29	4.40	-0.584	1.374	110	4	3
Evan Dietrich-Smith	2009	U	4.40	-0.778	1.587	9
Scott Wells	2004	251	4.40	0.278	1.233	107	1
Dominic Raiola	2001	50	4.35	0.789	1.373	188
Chris Myers	2005	200	4.35	0.213	1.727	95	2
Ryan Kalil	2007	59	4.34	-0.840	1.486	68	3	1
Samson Satele	2007	60	4.29	0.007	1.662	85
Matt Birk	1998	173	4.18	N/A	2.374	187	6	2
Jason Kelce	2011	191	4.14	-0.537	2.472	18
Average		133		-0.005	1.598

UPDATE- 9/10/2014 : In the time since I first posted this, I have come across another, more plausible source, for Matt Birk's short shuttle time.  This new source lists his time as 4.45 seconds.  In the end, that still places him in Group 3, but I just wanted to make a note of this.

Well damn, that is one good looking group of centers we have there, and on average, they will only cost you a pick at the very beginning of the 5th round.  While I have to wonder about the authenticity of Matt Birk and Jason Kelce's short shuttle times, even if I added 0.25 seconds to their results, they would still be in Group 3.  It probably shouldn't come as a shock at this point to see that Birk, one of the most accomplished centers of the past decade would have shocking results in this area, though I am still stunned at how well he did.

Out of these 12 players, 5 have have gone to Pro Bowl or All Pro teams.  Two more players, Brad Meester and Dominic Raiola, have had at least solid Roberto Garza type careers, with a remarkably high number of games started by them.  You almost have to wonder if a Reverse Pouncey Effect might be at play here, since the relatively poor history of these player's teams (Jaguars and Lions respectively) probably doesn't bring them as much attention.

So, how rare are the players in Group 3?  Well, using the same method I used for Group 2, the numbers would suggest that only 8.03% percent of drafted players are likely to qualify.  Out of the 41 offensive linemen taken in an average draft, you should only expect to find 3.29 players who qualify.  You should remember, these 3.29 players are also part of the same group of 7.32 players that would fit into Group 2, and not in addition to them.  Just like with Group 2, there is still the issue that some of them will also end up playing positions other than center.  In the 2013 Draft, 3 players were selected who could fall into this group, and only one is currently listed as a center, while the other 2 are currently listed as guards (David Quessenberry and Jeff Baca).  Are you curious who this one unnamed center is?  I'll get to that in a minute.

You should also consider this.  These 12 players in Group 3 make up 37.5% of the starting centers, while only being 8.03% of the draft population.  This means that there are 4.6 times as many of them starting as you would expect, considering their rarity.  As players' short shuttle times improve, they continue to take an increasingly disproportionate number of the starting jobs.  They are also available, on average, nearly a full round later than their more common Group 1 peers, though this also means that many of them have to overcome their team's lower expectations of them.

The one player, out of all three of these lists, that I had to sort of cheat to include, was Evan Dietrich-Smith.  He doesn't really belong in this list at all, since the Packers had no intention of him being the starter.  Legendary center Jeff Saturday was the actual opening day starter, a 37 year old free agent acquisition that the Packers had just signed.  In fact, Saturday did start the first 14 games, before being benched (in his defense, you have to expect a decline in performance from a 37 year old).  Unfortunately, I don't have the combine data for Jeff Saturday, but it strikes me as very interesting to see who they replaced him with, and who is now penciled in as the opening day starter for 2013.  That they just happened to replace him with a player who had a 4.40 short shuttle time would seem like a peculiar coincidence.  You have to wonder how this happened.  Did Mike McCarthy, frustrated with Saturday, say,"Put in that undrafted kid from Idaho State.  Yeah the one who has been lurking around here for 4 years, and only started 3 games.  I'm feeling lucky!"  It seems unlikely that Dietrich-Smith's excellent short shuttle time was a factor they consciously  considered when making this move, since teams haven't shown many signs that this factor registers with them as terribly important in their draft decisions.  Nonetheless, the undrafted oddball rose to the top of the heap, sort of like Jeff Saturday, who was also an undrafted player.

Among the players in this list, Will Montgomery's might not be a household name.  Still his story is kind of interesting.  Drafted at the very end of the 7th round, back in 2006, it is probably safe to say people expected very little of him.  He bounced around the league, going from the Panthers, to the Jets, and finally to the Redskins, starting only 15 games in his first 6 years in the league, mostly at guard.  Then in 2011, someone got the bright idea to give him a shot at the center position, and according to Pro Football Focus, he flourished with this switch, and was ranked as their 5th overall center for the 2012 season.  The possibility that people would discover this hidden ability to play center, shortly before Montgomery turned 30, kind of strikes me as a cruel joke.

There is also the peculiar situation with Samson Satele (4.29 Short Shuttle), who started the first 11 games for the Colts, before suffering a knee injury.  So, here's a quick trivia question.  Who finished the remaining 5 games for the Colts?  Why it was A.Q. Shipley, who just happens to have a short shuttle time of 4.40 seconds, which would also put him into Group 3 (DUN! DUN! DUN!).  So, how did he perform, this undrafted player from the 2009 draft, who had never started a game in 4 years, on any of the three teams he had played for?  I really have no idea, but the Ravens seemed to think that this formerly forgotten player was worth acquiring in a trade, even though they had supposedly drafted their center of the future, Gino Gradkowski, in the 2012 draft (who happens to have a short shuttle time of 4.78 seconds, uh, oh!).  The odd coincidences seem to keep piling up.

In all of this rambling, I still haven't accounted for the 5 players from Group 1, for whom we have no combine data.  When you consider the disproportionate degree to which players with better short shuttle times seem to be dominating the center position, it could lead you to the not so wild hunch that 2 or 3 of these unaccounted for players probably would fall into Group 2 or 3 as well.  This would just push the overall representation of athletically gifted players even higher.  If just 2 of these 5 players only made it as high as Group 2, then 20 out of 32 (62.5%) starting center jobs would be occupied by a group of players that only make up 17.87% of the population.  It could conceivably be even higher.

You may have also noticed that as the players short shuttle times improved from Group 1, to Group 2, to Group 3, that there were corresponding improvements to the average Kangaroo Score for each group.  In reality though, there is only a R^2 value of about 0.17 between the individual player's short shuttle times and their Kangaroo Scores, which is a rather low correlation.  Still, the Kangaroo Score would be the second factor that I would probably consider when looking for a center.  As I said earlier, I think this additional factor might partially explain how Nick Hardwick has succeeded, while being in Group 1.  So, using the same criteria as before, what percentage of the population has a Kangaroo Score that is at least average (average being a result of "0"), while also running the short shuttle drill in under 4.49 seconds (might as well be greedy here and shoot for Group 3)?  That would be 4.01% of the population, or 1.64 players per draft class.  Despite the rarity of this sort of physical ability, 7 seven such players (21.875% of the 32) were starters in 2012, which is 5.45 times as many as you would expect if this was all just dumb luck.  In the 2013 Draft, two players were selected who fit this mold.  One was David Quessenberry, who I mentioned is now listed as a guard for the Texans, and the other is that same Group 3 center prospect that I previously said I would reveal.  So, let's see who this player is, and match them up against the first center who was selected in the 2013 draft.

Player	Year	Pick#	Sh. Sht.	Kangaroo	Agility
Travis Frederick	2013	31	4.76	-0.492	-0.091
Eric Kush	2013	170	4.35	0.221	1.639

Who would you guess will end up doing better?  Travis Frederick?  Or, Eric Kush?  Plus, Eric Kush was available 139 picks later than Travis Frederick.  Whether Kush will actually end up doing well, is impossible for me to say.  Despite that, the numbers would suggest that there is a high probability of this happening.

To what degree do NFL teams seem to care about these measurable factors when drafting a player?  Well, let's divide the 2012 starting centers, from whom we have gathered data, into 2 groups, and compare their results.  The first group will be players who were taken in the first two rounds.  The second group will be players who were taken later than the 6th round, or who went undrafted.

	# of Players	Sh. Sht.
1st to 2nd round	13	4.55
6th round to undrafted	11	4.45

Despite the fact that they are a seriously disproportionate number of the players who end up becoming starters (relative to the rarity of their physical ability), teams seem to place less emphasis on this in the first 2 rounds of the draft.  This would seem to suggest that they don't actually trust these numbers very much.  Still, despite their apparent lack of interest, they end up having to give (begrudgingly?) a surprisingly high number of the starting jobs to these athletically superior late round picks.  If we count the 2012 starters that we don't have short shuttle times for, then we wind up with an equal number (14) of starters that came from the first 2 rounds, as we have from the 6th round through the undrafted.  Then, when you consider that 7 out of 32 teams (21.875%) were starting centers who went undrafted, it really starts to paint a picture that suggests that teams might not really know what they are doing, or what they are looking for.

With such a disconcerting possibility, who can we place our faith in?  Maybe, we can place our faith in the freakishly gifted athlete.  Even when obstacles (GMs), and low expectations (their draft status), are placed in their path, they still just seem to rise to the top.

You can start laughing at me................................now!

Ravens trade for center A.Q. Shipley

Ozzie Newsome does a lot of things that confuse the hell out of me.  This trade isn't one of them.  It was just reported on PFT that the Ravens have traded a conditional 2014 draft pick to the Colts for center A.Q. Shipley.  Here is why this is a very interesting move, even if it requires admitting that drafting Gino Gradkowski last year was probably stupid.

The strongest indicator I have found for success at the center position is dominance in the short shuttle drill.  Hopefullym the player would also have a good Vertical Kangaroo Score, but that is a secondary concern.  You can look at what I wrote regarding Eric Kush, or my post on the short shuttle times of starting NFL centers,  to see a rather extensive list of well known centers that illustrate this trend.  Here is how Mr. Shipley compares with Gino Gradkowski, and Eric Kush.

Player                              Short Shuttle Score    Vert. Kang. Score         3-Cone Score

A.Q. Shipley	1.698	0.450	1.121
Eric Kush	1.943	0.154	1.334
Gino Gradkowski	-0.164	-0.400	0.095

Shipley is very comparable to Kush, who I consider to be the physical model of what a center should be.  Shipley appears to be a wee bit more explosive, while Kush is a tad more nimble.  All in all, it balances out fairly evenly between the two of them.  Shipley had a better bench press, at 33 repetitions, than Kush's 25, though the value of this is debatable.  Kush has a 33 3/8" inch arm length (which is average to above average), while Shipley's are reportedly rather short (supposedly 29.75").  Gradkowski, at least on paper, appears to be in the mediocrity/bozo category. 

On the one hand I think this is probably a very good move by the Ravens.  Still, I always have to nitpick.  If they wanted a center, they could have had Kush for a mere 6th round draft pick this year.  Kush has the advantage of being younger than the 26 year old Shipley, and not needing to be signed to a new contract for at least 4 years.  Shipley would be in line for a new contract after the 2014 season.  I don't know how things will play out, but it will be interesting to see which player emerges as the superior talent, though I expect Kush might need a year or two to adapt to the level of competition.

The bigger concern, from my perspective, is what this means about Gino Gradkowski.  I thought he was a stupid pick the second the Ravens turned in the draft card with his name on it.  So, at the very least, the Ravens will have squandered that fourth round pick, if he is already being replaced.  I suppose that part of the story will get lost in the shuffle, as long as Shipley turns out to be decent, though it probably shouldn't.

Still, this could be one of the best moves that the Ravens have made this offseason.  I'd put it right up there with the Brandon Williams draft pick, which I also loved.  Some people are saying that Shipley is just there for depth, but I obviously think he will become the starter, and possibly a good one at that.  Well done, Ozzie.

Eric Kush

Eric Kush was a prospect in the 2013 Draft that I found very interesting.  Unfortunately, this selection seems to have not been a big hit among some of the fans of the Chiefs, the team that drafted him.  From what I can gather, people seem to be wondering why the Chiefs drafted this center from the University of California (PA), when many draft websites weren't even listing him as a draftable prospect.  So, let me see if I can make people feel more upbeat about why this could have been an excellent selection, despite what ESPN may be telling you..

Identifying offensive line prospects is a little peculiar for me, as I have to rely almost entirely on data from the NFL Combine to come up with my deranged conclusions.  I do prefer drafting positions that accumulate some sort of stats, to sort of see whether a prospect was performing to a level that matches their physical ability.  As a final step, it is also nice to watch the player in action to see if there is an "Oh shit, did you see that?" moment to visually confirm what all the numbers are suggesting.  Unfortunately this last step is mind numbingly dull when scouting centers, though I suppose there are people who are into that sort of thing.

Despite these issues, a computer can do a rather good job of identifying offensive line talent based on just the player's combine/pro day data.  The prospect of making decisions based on something like this seems to revolt most people, but I think they fail to recognize just how horrendously most teams do in the draft, so beating NFL GMs really isn't that hard.  Based on this limited information you should still pick a successful player about 50-70% of the time, regardless of what round they are taken in.  People who swear by the idea of watching game tape are undoubtedly going to laugh at this, but that same film study approach generally only produces about a 21.5% success rate for NFL teams.  By betting on a player's combine numbers and college stats to predict their success, we're basically counting cards.  As you see with counting cards, you have to stick to the system, avoiding gut reactions or subjective opinions, and just play the odds. 

One of the interesting things about offensive linemen is the odd story their combine numbers tell.  To a rather large degree you can tell what position a player is destined for, or would thrive in, just by looking at his combine data.  Centers in particular have a weird anomaly that really makes them stand out, and that is their short shuttle times.  While I would expect positive times in the agility drills to be beneficial for offensive linemen, I have no real theory at this time as to what possible explanation there could be for this short shuttle phenomenon.  There does seem to be some sort of relationship between the short shuttle and lower body flexibility, and change of direction skills.  What this could mean for centers, I'm still not sure of though.  So, for now, I have just decided to go with it, since it seems to work.

Listed below are pretty much all of the centers from the last ten years who have made the Pro Bowl, and the All Pro Team.  I am including their Kangaroo score as well as their Short Shuttle Score, and 3-Cone Drill score.  As I said, it is the short shuttle score which matters the most here, the other scores can be seen as bonuses if a player does well in them..  All scores are given in relation to what the average results were for offensive linemen.  Basically, any score that is one standard deviation above average is going to put you at somewhere above the 70th percentile for your position.

Player               Short Shuttle Score         Kangaroo Score         3-Cone Score       
Max Unger                1.208                               -1.493                            1.396               1 PB
Chris Myers               1.943                                0.213                            1.511               2 PB
Nick Mangold            1.698                               -0.584                            1.051               4 PB
Scott Wells               1.698                                0.278                            0.767               1 PB
Ryan Kalil                 1.992                               -0.840                            0.980              3 PB
Maurkice Pouncey    -0.850                               -1.149                           0.130               3 PB
Alex Mack                -0.017                              -0.026                            1.652          1 PB Alt.
Dan Koppen               0.914                              -0.762                           -1.709               1 PB
Nick Hardwick            0.473                               0.851                           -0.222               1 PB
LeCharles Bentley       1.012                              -0.983                           -0.258              2 PB
John Sullivan               0.963                               0.251                           0.555          1 All Pro

Now, I realize that correlation doesn't equal causation, but I just can't help but find this to be interesting.  Out of these 11 individuals who have achieved some fame/success at the center position, 8 had ridiculously high scores on the short shuttle.  Scores above one standard deviation are rare enough that there may only be one or two people in a given draft that can hit this benchmark, and a lot of these guys are significantly exceeding it.  Of the remaining three players, Nick Hardwick was still significantly above average at 0.473 but had the highest Kangaroo Score at 0.851, which suggests he has better lower body explosiveness than his peers.  Alex Mack basically came out average across the board except for his 3-cone score, but he was also the only one on the list who only made the Pro Bowl as an alternate.  The real mystery is Maurkice Pouncey, who scored terribly on nearly everything.  I have no explanation for him, except to say that outliers do exist, although it is also possible that he is simply overrated and perhaps not quite as good as his reputation leads people to believe.  I really can't say.  However you want to look at it, the statistical chances of this many guys making the Pro Bowl, with these sorts of exceptionally rare short shuttle times, would be incredibly slim.

Now, obviously, using Pro Bowl selections as a benchmark for greatness is a questionable proposition.  The problem is that there really is no truly objective method for saying whether a player is particularly good.  Some people prefer to use Career Approximate Value as a measurement, but this has its own flaws.  It tends to work better at making generalizations about groups of players, and then falls apart when looking at individual players.  I prefer some combination of CarAV, plus stats, plus reading criticisms of a player to get a sense of him, but this is fairly time consuming.  This approach is also difficult to apply to a large group of players.  At some point I think it is probably reasonable to allow some subjective judgments to get in there, and the Pro Bowl, as stupid as it is, at least gives some general indication that a guy was probably doing something right.

So, how does all of this relate to Eric Kush?  Well, here are Eric's numbers:

Player          Short Shuttle Score          Kangaroo Score               3-Cone Score
Eric Kush               1.943                               0.221                                 1.334

Among the three primary things I look for in centers, he did exceptionally well in all of them.  His Kangaroo Score might seem like a weak result, but is still above average for his position.  The bell curve for the Kangaroo Score is somewhat distorted by the fact that offensive tackles are graded with centers and guards, and the best tackles tend to dominate the Kangaroo Score, making it somewhat unusual for centers and guards to even reach the average level.  Beyond this issue, Eric performed admirably with 25 reps on the bench press, and had a respectable 40 yard dash of 5.04 (and a 1.73 ten yard split), both of which have some added but lesser correlations with success.  All in all, he is pretty much the prototype of what teams are looking for athletically from a center, and easily the most appealing center prospect in the 2013 draft.  Though opportunity, injury, and off the field issues can all affect a player's chances of success, I would probably say the odds are in his favor of making a Pro Bowl at some point in the future, considering the rarity of players with his traits, and the frequency with which they end up becoming exceptional.  That would be quite a nice payoff for a team that only invested a sixth round pick.  I rather strongly doubt that any of the four centers taken ahead of him will turn out nearly as well.

None of this should be taken to mean that a player can't succeed with a lower short shuttle time, or that a player with a good short shuttle time is guaranteed success.  I'm merely suggesting that there is a rather strong history of things working out well for centers who do well in this drill.  We'll see what happens.  In the meantime, it's certainly more entertaining to place your bets on a 6th round guy, that some people might be overlooking.

***Update- In the brief time since I wrote this, I wrote something else that I think better describes the subject of NFL centers.  If you are interested you can go to the post on Short Shuttle Times and NFL Centers.