LA Rams offense last in NFC West per The Athletic

Not again? The latest sleight is the LA Rams offense ranking last in the NFC West this year by the Athletic’s Sheil Kapadia

The LA Rams are just stuck in this national narrative of “you are going to stink and there’s nothing you can do about it!” narrative. The latest? The Athletic’s Sheil Kapadia is someone who is a thorough, objective voice of reason on most topics. He is also a sportswriter who began with the Philadelphia Eagles, then moved on to cover the Seattle Seahawks. All the while, he remained a one-foot-on-the-ground sportswriter.  He made ample use of All-22 NFL video clips for solid in-depth analysis. He let the evidence write the story and not the other way around.

So when he authored a Ranking NFL offenses article, he failed to apply the most basic rule when using statistics and analytics to base a story – the sniff test. When the numbers for NFC West offenses project the Seattle Seahawks as fifth, the San Francisco 49ers as sixth, the Arizona Cardinals as seventh, and the LA Rams as 19th,  I have to toss the BS flag.

Football outsiders employ an inhouse statistical tool called DVOA. That is a tool by which each play is compared to a norm for that play called based on the situation. The system then weighs the more recent games more heavily.

Wrong tool for the job

Now don’t get me wrong. Football outsiders are respected professionals who spend countless hours on their analytics tools. But it’s just not the correct tool to base future projections upon, and more than a screwdriver can be used to pound nails into a wooden board.

That type of analysis tool is very effective for judging relative rankings of NFL team offenses mid-season, but it doesn’t have much bearing to a new season projection. We know that the 2019 LA Rams offense was flawed due to injuries on the offensive line.

Wide swings make bad projections

We also know that the 2019 San Francisco 49ers offense performed very well because it remained healthy all season.  So by season’s end, the beat-up Rams become the basis for the 2020 projection. Similarly, the very healthy 49ers offense now becomes the basis for their projection?

Want to know how the bias works to make this statistic unreliable?  The same system ranked the LA Rams offense as the second-best offense in 2018, but the 17th ranked offense in 2019. It also showed that the Arizona Cardinals improved from the 32nd-ranked to a 13th-ranked offense, and the 49ers improved from a 27th ranked offense to a 7th-ranked offense. So using the data to predict 2019 performance is equally flawed by using the same data comparison.

Vigilance continues

We are not here to belittle anyone, or make disparaging remarks about the efforts that go into the ranking of 32 unfamiliar teams. But there is a set of preconceived notions that begins any relative ranking, a bit of “this is what I expect to find” that allows the mapping of so many data points into a story.  The problem is? More and more that preset storyline dictates the final product.

If the Rams fall from the 2nd to 17th ranked offense, that in itself means nothing without knowing what happened.  Injuries?  Rookies on a steep learning curve? A new coaching staff?  The data is merely a mile marker. It does give direction or speed. That must come from analyzing the team’s details. In this fast-paced world? That simply isn’t happening as often as it should.

The LA Rams were the seventh-ranked NFL offense in total yards in 2019. The Seahawks? Eighth. The Cardinals? 20th.  If that changes in 2020, there will be reasons for those changes.  The 49ers became very good in 2019 simply because a badly beaten-up roster from 2018 got healthy.

That same struggle of using imperfect data is the basis for a similarly poor showing for the Rams defense. The Rams suffered many injuries on the defense as well. Now, the Rams injured have healed.  If prognosticators wish to be accurate, let’s make that the starting point going forward?