Welcome, blah, blah

I needed somewhere to write up random observations and opinions about football and the growing field of football statistics, so here we are. I'm an Eagles fan, hence the "Eagles By The Numbers," but most of the stuff I post will be non-Eagles specific. It'll probably be also dry and boring. Whee.

I should also note that I don't have a ton of time to explore in detail certain problems, but part of the reason I'm creating this blog is because there are a lot of people whose opinions on football are built on seriously flawed notions of the game. The idea that running keeps your defense off the field. The idea that a team that doesn't score a lot of points must have a bad offense.

A lot of those are cliches, but even some of the nouveau footballthink ideas are built on flawed assumptions. The idea that coaches should be passing a ton more because the average payoff for a run is so much lower. The idea that coaches should go for it a lot more on 4th down.

It doesn't take a lot to discredit those ideas, since most of them are built on theoretical assumptions and you can quickly show that they're flawed. So that's what we're here for. Which means that this site will contain a lot of me criticizing other people. Which I'm sure will make me look whiny, but please keep in mind the point of the blog.

Other sites you should read:

Football Outsiders
Advanced NFL Stats
Pro-Football-Reference (specifically the blog)