The NFL Has Redefined The Model
Data-Driven Decision-Making From The Athletic Field
The old refrain “learn the plays" feels plenty antiquated these days around the NFL. A new generation of “Knowledge Worker" athletes spends more time reading, analyzing, and adjusting than ever before. The NFL has become as data-driven, if not more, than the rest of the economy.
What began with Peyton Manning is now the role of nearly all the “skills" players on the field. Arguably that designation now applies to the center and numerous members of the defense as well. Everyone is reading signals, making adjustments, and analyzing the game on the field and in the film room. It is data-driven decision-making in a highly entertaining (and competitive) fashion.
If it hadn’t been Peyton, it would have been someone else. The world is moving toward more analysis, more data, and more distributed decision-making. Peyton was amazing, but inevitable. Unfortunately, many aspects of the football universe have failed to adapt. This is especially true of collegiate, high school, and club programs.
College programs are trying but have been a bit slower to adapt and adopt. This level of sport IQ is not easy to perfect in a truncated collegiate career (1–2 years top). But worse still, none of it is being taught at the club or high school level… or almost none. Peyton created a football academy. And like its namesake — Plato’s Academy, it teaches skills and wisdom. It is about the mental aspects of the game, not learning a play or a program.
Post Peyton — Brady, Rodgers, and now Wentz are executing precision offenses predicated on reads and adjustments, but many others still cling to the old model. They learn systems, plays, and programs passed down for generations. And they are proud of it. Old school, smash mouth, basic blocking and tackling. It is part of the football tradition, even more so for Friday Night Lights. But the model is changing…
There is nothing wrong with traditional football. But learning a system and running a program is dated thinking. The NFL is proving it. But so few coaches at the junior level are adapting, yet. Of course, most of those coaches excelled at learning a system and running a program. Much like the education industry, they are caught in an old, dated, and more and more pointless process. A process that is reinforced by a heredity style structure will be a stubborn model to remove.
Sports and education were once the training mechanisms of the military and the factory. Youth sports hasn’t evolved very far since, even though few kids go on to such pursuits. The new economy requires knowledge workers who can learn and adapt, skills players who can read and decide. How long will it take our sports and schools to catch up? History argues quite a while.
The greatest coaches in today’s game are building learning organizations of their football teams. Athletic prowess is still important, but strong game IQ is now mandatory in places like New England, Kansas City, and Green Bay. New stats emphasize the speed at which the quarterback makes a pass (essentially decision-making). The entire team now looks to the sideline for signal calling. Offenses are adopting no huddle techniques in order to give the quarterback the maximum amount of time to read the defense.
Great quarterbacks are often great athletes, but more and more they are merely smart ones. Lineman are increasingly being pulled from Stanford and Ivy League schools. Every player is spending more and more time in the film room, though perhaps no less in the weight room. The model is changing at the highest levels, but it needs to change sooner at the levels below.
Decision-making on the athletic field, especially driven by data and analysis, could be incredibly helpful to the next generation of young people. As noted, education is still lagging here and lately lacks any nuance of competition. The athletic field becomes the perfect place to teach the next generation of analyst, leaders, and knowledge workers (something the military has realized, too). Sports competition is a great precursor to the highly competitive and increasingly data-rich business world.
The NFL is not alone here. Professional racing, baseball, and even golf have all embraced increasing levels of data, feedback, and decision-making. But in most of these other sports, the nuances of that change are only indirectly visible to the audience. The NFL puts it all on display, a fact that their TV analysts have struggled to keep up with as well.
Thanks for reading!
