Nick Driskill: The Mighty Mouse

Nick Driskill is a player I wanted to mention, even though there is an extremely good chance that nobody will ever hear from him again.  He played strong safety at Mt. Union.  He didn't get drafted, but was picked up as an undrafted free agent by the Colts.  I really have no idea what to make of him, but some of the numbers that make up his story are just fascinating.

Here are his stats from college:

            TKL    SACK       TFL    INT    Passes Broken Up    FF
2012    101         3          14.5      2               11                     3
2011    113        6.5         17        4                9                      1
2010     80          3          13.5      5                4                     2
2009     43         0.5         6.5       1                3                      1 

Those are the kinds of stats that should only exist in a video game.  They are absolutely silly.  Granted, he played at a rather goofy school, though Cecil Shorts and Pierre Garcon also went there.  Even if you wanted to downplay his production, how could you?  He dominated every defensive statistical category there is, at least by the standards of a defensive back.  How many defensive backs finish school with 13 sacks, 12 interceptions, 7 forced fumbles, and two seasons of triple digit tackles?  That doesn't even mention his 51.5 tackles for a loss.  He must have been constantly killing people behind the line of scrimmage, because a lot of defensive ends who get taken in the first round don't have those kinds of stats.  His opponents at Heidelberg University, Muskingum University, and Baldwin Wallace, must have been trembling in their boots (wherever the hell these schools are)!

I don't know how he accumulated these stats.  Watching Mt. Union play isn't something I get much opportunity to do (and is probably something I would avoid).  Were they running some peculiar defense, with the coach saying, "Funnel all the plays to Driskill!  I've got to make that kid a star to win a bet with my buddy at Marietta!".  I have no idea.  This is the only clip I can find of him playing, and it doesn't tell you very much.



There is a catch though.  He is 5' 8.5" tall (that half inch matters here!), and 197 pounds.  He is a bit on the short side.  You definitely aren't going to want him covering tightends.  His pro day results (since guys like him don't get invited to the combine) were merely average, except for his vertical jump, broad jump and bench press.  Strangely, the Mayor of Munchkinland's bench press results were better than what most offensive linemen achieve, though this is of questionable value.  The numbers sort of tell the story of a guy who is explosive, quick and powerful, but not necessarily fast or exceptionally agile.  Here are his results, along with some other comparable midgets.

Player                     Ht       Wt    40-yd   10-yd   BP   Vert     BJ    Shrt-Shut    3-cone
Nick Driskill            5' 8.5"   197    4.53     1.53    29      43    10'8"     4.16         7.00
Cortland Finnegan   5' 9.5"   188    4.34        ?      14      44    10'8"     4.34         6.95
Brent Grimes          5' 9.2"   177    4.57        ?       4      33.5  10' 1"    4.25         7.13
Dre Bly                   5' 9.7"   186    4.51     1.58     ?      34.5   9'6"      4.09         7.11
Bob Sanders           5' 8.3"   204    4.35     1.50    15     41.5  10' 8"    3.95         6.70

Some of these players are clearly faster.  Some are more nimble.  Almost all of them are oddballs with significant physical shortcomings, but also some areas of strength.  The player I would really like to compare him to is Jim Leonard, who was also a very dynamic toadstool, but I don't have combine data for him.  Honestly, I probably wouldn't have bet on any of theses guys achieving much success.  In Nick Driskill's case, I still probably wouldn't bet on him.  In three years, I would place the odds strongly in favor of him becoming a special teams player at best, or a Winnipeg Blue Bomber at worst.  Still, even though it runs contrary to my normal views on players like him, I don't want to bet against him.  Those ridiculous stats of his, as well as my love of a good vertical jump, just intrigue me too much.

I'm going to take the cowardly approach.  I'm mentioning him in hopes that he becomes something special, in which case I will look like a clever boy.  Yet, I am kind of betting against him, because I am feeling a bit gutless and know the odds are against him.  If I do this a hundred times, eventually something prophetic will come out of my mouth, and then I'll just need to delete every post where I said something stupid.

Oh, and he was a biology major.  So, perhaps with a little tweaking we could nudge a chromosome here and there, to make him a bit taller and faster.

Why people love statistical outliers

Football is a sport.  Sports are played by athletes (unless it is bowling).  The NFL Combine puts people through different tests of athletic ability.  Then at the end of this testing, we gather together and say "Hey, you know that short slow guy?  He's the one I want.  The guy has moxie."   Then a year or two later, when our man of determination and heart has been run off to play in the CFL, we try again.  This time, we'll get it right.  That other guy?  Hell, he didn't have half the heart this new guy has.   This new guy really brings his lunch pail to work (really, why the fuck do we say this?).  Yup, it's going to be different this year.

Sure, being a hard worker or a guy with great character is a good thing.  Do you think you can identify this trait?  Was Randy Moss a hard worker?  Or what about Terrell Owen's character?  "Bah", you say,"They put up great stats, but I wouldn't want those cancerous guys on my team."  Sure, sure.  I get it.  It's a team sport.  It takes all 53 guys to win not just a couple guys who put up pretty stats.  Okay then, so how are we going to identify these guys with character, that everyone seems to like so much?  Do you have a Moxie-Meter hidden in your basement?  A Lunch-Pail-O-Graph device that we can attach to their skull with electrodes, to measure this essential gritty determination?  Even a Balboa-gauge would do in a pinch, if you have one on hand.

I suspect that no matter what team you root for, you have been in this position at least once.  Your team has selected a wide receiver with a fairly high draft pick, only to find out that the guy just really can't catch the ball very well (Troy Williamson, Travis Taylor, etc.).  So, somehow we are supposed to believe that NFL GMs can get an accurate read on a player's psyche, level of motivation, commitment, or whatever, when they can't even tell if a guy can catch. (which would seem like a fairly obvious trait to pay attention to, but perhaps gets overlooked while they are busy reading their DSM to analyze the player's psychological profile).  Sure, I'm certain that most of these team's scouts, who were generally just failed former football players themselves, have keen analytical minds, highly trained and attuned to detect the faintest whiff of moxie in the air.  Hell, that is probably why they stopped playing football in the first place.  You don't want to damage a mind like that, with blows to the head.

Now, lets say we were working at NASA, and were looking to hire a new guy.  We've got applications from all the best and brightest, from the finest universities in the land.  If I turned to you and said, "You know what Bob?  This guy here is the one we want.  Sure, on paper he doesn't look so great.  In fact he appears to be brain damaged.  But you see, Bob, he just doesn't test well.  I've talked to this guy and he's a real crackerjack.  Sharp as a tack, I tell ya'.  He's the guy we want to plan our mission to Mars."  Well, best case scenario you would be laughed at.  Worst case?  Well, I suppose that would involve having the space shuttle go off course, and instead of heading to Mars, crashing into the White House (maybe I can pitch this idea to Michael Bay).  

Yes, test results should matter to you.  I know, we all hate to feel as if we are confined or trapped by some measurement, whether it is I.Q., 40 yard dash time, or whatever.  We like to look in the mirror and see past that receding hairline, growing paunch, and strange rash in our armpit that just won't go away, to see the vigorous and brilliant man we know that we really are.  Women just can't resist us.  Oh, they play coy, but they notice us.  As for other men, they tremble before our intimidating masculinity.  No stupid number is going to tell us what we are, and it shouldn't do that to any man.  This is America for god's sake, and no commie numbers are going to change that.  USA! USA! USA!

So, basically, what I am trying to say is we tend to be morons.  We're not all beautiful little snowflakes.  Potatoes are all unique too, though nobody ever seems to compare themselves to one.  We're not all just a step away from having our greatness discovered.  We're not all going to be that outlier, who is going to defy expectations, but we still root for it to happen to someone.  Somewhere inside us, we know that some guys are just better, more talented, but we don't have to like it.

Then we see a receiver run a 4.7 second forty yard dash.  We pause.  We think about all the great things that his coaches said about him.  How his teammates would follow him through the gates of hell.  He was the star of the Rose Bowl for Christ's sake!  It's those damned commie numbers, coming to get us again!  Anquan, he'll save us!  Anquan Boldin ran a 4.72 forty yard dash, and things turned out great for him.  He was gritty and tough wasn't he?  That's all you need, man.  Just give me some gritty tough guy, and you can keep those commie numbers of yours.  Hell, look at Wes Welker.  That sumbitch was 5'8" and running a 4.65 forty.  Takes a lot of grit to be small and slow, doesn't it?

Sure those guys are great.  They are anomalies.  Outliers.  Basically, they are like a cancerous tumor spreading through an otherwise healthy statistical analysis.  They show up in your spreadsheet.  They scare you a bit.  You can't figure out what to do with them, or how to make them go away.  So you learn to just accept them for what they are, a pain in your statistical ass (yes, statistical ass cancer).  Though it is reasonable to find them oddly fascinating, it doesn't mean you should spend your life searching for them.  That would inevitably prove rather depressing, sort of like a daily colonoscopy.

People might say that Wes Welker was underrated, or that he should have been drafted higher (actually he wasn't drafted at all).  How highly should you draft a small slow wide receiver, with good but not exactly shocking college production (especially when they come from Texas Tech where everybody accumulates decent stats)?  Maybe good old Wes was just hungover at the combine?  Maybe Anquan didn't have his bran muffin that morning, allowing him to drop the ballast needed to increase his vertical jump?  Okay, fine.

If you want to go looking for the next Wes Welker or Anquan Boldin, that's cool.  I admire the quest that you are setting for yourself.  I do think there are probably some guys out there who have a good eye for drafting talent, and maybe they will spot the next big thing.  Still, at least with receivers (though this applies everywhere else too), most teams haven't shown that they are employing these savants in their scouting department.  So, you can try to find the next guy who is going to defy all the odds, and over the next ten years you might find one.  If you do manage to turn one up, I'd be the first to congratulate you.  But can you do it again?  If some scout out there can do that, say 60-70% of the time, then I would be very intrigued.  If a team can't do this, then that underdog draft pick starts to look like a fluke, just blind luck.  Or perhaps, they did have a brief moment of insight, where their internal Moxie-Meter went off, only to have it again go on the fritz for the following decade.  I certainly can't rule that out.

Or, you can embrace what seems to be the most sensible solution, that those other guys, the bigger faster stronger ones who statistically pummeled their opponents all through college, might just be a better bet.  It's just putting the odds in your favor.  Even if they seem like assholes.  Even if they seem unmotivated.  Even if they lack moxie.  Victor Cruz, Miles Austin, Marques Colston, now those are guys who you can rightfully justify searching for.  While people might treat them as if they were the same sort of underdogs as Wes Welker, they really aren't.  The numbers were there.  The measurables and statistics existed.  Teams just chose not to pay attention.  Maybe they lacked grit?

An introduction to my lunacy

For a number of years I have been part of a loathsome subculture known as "draft geeks", "draft-niks", or simply guys "with no life".  This circle of bottom dwelling football fans takes a peculiar interest in the annual NFL Draft, trying to prognosticate the future success or failure of athletes who are making the leap from the college level to the NFL.  More often than not, our hunches prove to be wrong, but when we are right we become insufferable boors to all of our friends, happily ruining their Sunday diversions with spreadsheets and analysis that nobody asked for. 

 At some point, I suspect, the game itself became less interesting to us than the machinations that go into constructing the team.  While more stout and virile men take pleasure in watching a middle linebacker decapitate a running back, we obsess over the meaning of a player's time in the 3-cone drill.  Some little boys dream of being quarterbacks, some dream of improving on the Lewin Career Forecast. If given the opportunity to choose between hanging out with the cheerleaders, or getting to run our fingers through Mel Kiper's shellacked locks of hair, our decision would be embarrassingly simple and foolish.   

Do we care if the home teams wins on Sunday?  Or are we more interested in seeing that sixth round pick wide receiver, from North by Northeast South Dakota State, exceed all expectations and become a mediocrity rather than an outright failure, thus proving our wisdom to our uninterested friends and family?  Well, I guess we can agree to disagree on what matters more.

This sort of devoted lunacy ends up crossing over at some point to join the analytics crowd.  Frankly, I still believe the word "analytics" is made up, but I'll try to ignore this for the moment.  I suppose "soulless bastards" just doesn't have the same ring to it (and wouldn't look as nice on a business card).  This circle of sad individuals goes beyond the simple talent evaluation game that is the draft, and focuses more on predicting outcomes for games and individuals, based on the questionable belief that numbers are good for something more than counting the number of illegitimate children Antonio Cromartie has spawned.

The "analytics" crowd, an appropriately anal group, is on a quest to destroy any magic or pleasure that exists in the world.  They don't want to hear any discussion of a player's heart, determination or moxie.  Those are merely the traits you ascribe to the slow and unathletic.  That player you love, the one with the slow time in the forty yard dash, and the weak vertical jump, he's what they would call an "outlier".  Outlier is the sophisticated way of saying "improbable success", and that is only if that player becomes a success.  Until that moment of unforeseen success, outliers are treated with contempt.  Wes Welker and Anquan Boldin are the anti-Christ in the eyes of the analytics crowd, and exist only to make otherwise smart people look stupid.  This may not seem like a terribly kind attitude to take towards two of the games more productive wide receivers, but how can we be expected to be fans of guys who throw such curve balls to all of our delicately crafted projections?  Don't they understand how long it takes to put together these spreadsheets and formulas that predicted their failure? 

Still, while these two related groups, the draft geeks and the analytics guys, can somewhat suck the life out of the room, the is a reason why their numbers and influence might be growing.  The sophistication and accuracy of their projections do seem to be improving to the point where I think they could probably better the efforts of most NFL general managers.  Some of these geeks are better than others.  Some of them still deserve a wedgie.  Almost all of them should be avoided on Sunday afternoon, when you just want to enjoy the game.  But their day is coming, much like it did in the world of baseball.  Hopefully it will all take place behind the scenes, so as not to annoy the mainstream audience who would rather not have their game ruined with scatter plots and regression analysis.  If nothing else, you can take comfort in the probability that these wise but annoying individuals still probably won't be able to get a date on Saturday night (though they would be too busy with their spreadsheets then anyway), and so they will probably be bred out of our society in the long run.  Until then, I'll be posting some thoughts related to these topics and awaiting my own wedgie.