Grantland: Jets are the 3rd fastest team

Needless to say from his methodology, it is very inaccurate. Since we're talking tenths and hundredths of seconds difference this seems like a waste.

 

In the NFL that's the difference between a touchdown and a tackle.

That said we'll get a little bit slower once Gates is cut.

 

I was referring to the difference between teams in this study being that little and his methodology of using a fixed, steady decline that isn't close to reality

 

Hopefully our players get many opportunities to run a straight line untouched for 4.5 seconds out there.

 

Umm wasn't that always the plan?

 

AL Davis would be so proud

 

I bet Chris Johnson could run to the Cortland Subway and buy Rex 5 meatball on whites and get back before second practice stretches began.

 

This is interesting, but like the article says, not very meaningful. Not only are the stats outdated, but it doesn't make sense to look at the team's average speed.

The o-line, kicker, punter, long snapper, DTs... there are a bunch of positions where raw speed is not really that important. (Top speed only comes into play when they get an interception or return a fumble. Burst/explosiveness matters a ton, but top speed is basically irrelevant.) If you have a slower than average o-line, but a faster than average receiving corps, those shouldn't cancel each other out.

Also take into account the fact that different teams have different positional compositions. If you have some extra guards and defensive linemen- compared to a team that has some extra wide receivers and TEs, that's going to skew the results. Even very slow wide receivers are still faster than almost any lineman.

It'd be more interesting if they broke it down by positional groups; like who has the fastest top-4 wide receivers? Fastest top-2 tight ends? Kick and punt return teams? Those would be pretty meaningful stats (but not really because the combine data is still never fresh enough to give more than a general idea.)

What I'd like the NFL to do is outfit every single player's helmet with a GPS chip- you'd be able to figure out some very interesting advanced speed stats that way. You'd be able to tell not only top speed, but also how fast certain routes are run, and then compare that to how fast the coaches want them to be. It would also make it easier to determine what percentage of the time certain guys "take plays off" by not giving their full effort, and which guys almost never or never take plays off. You'd also be able to track things like "Oh, his first 3 games after his injury, he was running 6% slower than normal." And stats like "Yeah, after recovering from an ACL surgery, your speed drops by 4.71% with a standard deviation of 1.45%."

 

I bet in 2011 we were the slowest team in NFL history.

 

Didn't he say he just used skill players for this analysis? Anyways, it still is a waste of time if you ask me

 

The Patriots are last, and continue to thrash most of the league.

I'd really like to throw the writer of the article in the OP into traffic.

 

Love the GPS chip in the helmet to catch slouchers. But only if it came with a shock collar! Can you imagine how many times Coples would get blasted! They'd probably just put electrodes in his neck like Frankenstein.

 

Why stop at a GPS chip in the helmet? Just insert a biochemical detector into their sack that has a GPS glued to it, little morons would flood to the local magistrates to be like Mike.

Or maybe just treat them like human beings and let coaches do their jobs.

 

Coaches would get to push the shock collar button

 

That's the old Rex. The new Rex would want whole wheat.

 

I think speed does matter but this report is shit.

The QBs are screwing up his analysis. It makes it hard to take the article seriously. He should've left that position out. The teams at the top are weighted with running QBs and the teams at the bottom are heavily weighted with pocker passers.

Look at his bottom 6:
Dallas (Romo, pocket passer)
Denver (Manning, pocket passer)
Pittsburgh (Roethlisberger, pocket passer)
New Orleans (Brees, pocket passer)
Chicago (Cutler, pocket passer)
New England (Brady, pocket passer)

Some of those teams have a lot of speed overall, probably more than the Jets, just the QB stands there and gives it to their speed.

Plus the way he accounts for age is all jacked up. Even though he probably isn't in this analysis just for an example we will use Michael Vick. He ran a 4.33 at the combine in 2001. He might not be able to run that now but he's still fast as hell. By adding two hundredths of a second for every year since, 13 years, he'd have Vick running a 4.59. Vick is definitely faster than that.

I like analytics stuff and usually enjoy Grantland but this report is shit. The Jets are the 3 fastest team according to his jacked up analysis probably mostly because they have Geno Smith at QB and they are a young team overall. I'm not going to check but I'd venture to say those bottom six teams: Dallas, Denver, Pitt, NO, Chicago and NE have a lot of veterans overall. That doesn't at all mean they are slower, but the way he analyzes them it does.

I'm not sure its possible to correctly put a figure and a ranking on a team's speed but I'd venture to say the Jets are middle of the road, certainly better than 2012, where I thought they were slow overall.