As much as analytics have taken a place in football, some coaches like to lament their lack of value as the data may come from people who didn't play or coach. During his session with reporters on Thursday, Detroit Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp was asked about the success of his unit based on many measures.
Fipp took the baton to start talking about DVOA, a metric created by Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders, which was brought to his attention by someone in the building. Fipp admitted his initial general lack of awareness that DVOA existed, then he went on to basically eliminate its value as far as he's concerned.
"It’s proprietary, so they can’t really tell you how they’re getting what they get. That’s not great. Number two, then you start reading on special teams, like how’s your score influence or whatever, but on the return game it’s by return yards. Well, return yards mean very little to me, I’ve shared that with you guys in the past. If they punt the ball 30 yards and we return it for none, well, they’ve got a 30-yard net, if they punt the ball 60 and then we return it 10, they’ve got a 50-yard net, but my return yards are better on this DVOA statistic or whatever, which really doesn’t make our team better."
To be fair, as Jeremy Reisman of Pride of Detroit pointed out, Fipp's understanding of DVOA as it pertains to the return game is incomplete.
Fipp then had some things to say about Pro Football Focus, which has become the lightning rod for lamenting analytic-driven football evaluation.
Dave Fipp makes thoughts about analytics abundantly clear
Fipp had two stories about PFF.
"So, the next one is PFF....and it’s the PFF grades. And this came up this week again because somebody in the building came to me and said, ‘Hey, there is this player, he’s playing really well for you guys.’ And I’m like, ‘Who said that?’ They said, ‘Well, PFF.’ And I was like, ‘OK.’ Well, here’s two stories for you on PFF. Number one is, I get on a plane, I think I was going to the Combine, this is years ago, and when I sit down, this guy sitting next to me says, ‘Hey, are you a coach for – ‘ I think I was with Philly at the time. I’m like, ‘Yeah,’ And he’s like, ‘Ah, I’m a grader of PFF....He was a young guy, I’m like, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ The guy had never coached football, never played football and he’s grading our players on who played good and who played bad."
"The next thing on that is, we play a game at the Giants and the special teams coach at the time or assistant there at the time was a good friend of mine, and he came up to me before the game and he said, ‘Hey man, just so you know, this player –‘ I can’t say his name, he’s actually in the media nowadays, but he said, ‘This player, he’s the best rated front-line blocker on kickoff return in the National Football League.’ And I was like, ‘Who said that?’ And he was like, ‘PFF.’ And then I was like, ‘PFF?’"
"I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I’m like, ‘Number one, this guy’s like the worst blocker on our team. But number two, we put him on these matchups on the backside of the return every week where he’s blocking basically a guy that doesn’t need to be blocked, but we kind of have to block him just in case. So, he wins the matchup, so he got a good PFF grade, and he’s really the worst player on our team at this job description, but he’s really the best with PFF."
The Lions are No. 1 in special teams DVOA entering Week 11, with the sixth-highest team special teams grade from Pro Football Focus. Those rankings seem to very well reflect how good they've been in that area all the way around so far this season, from kicker Jake Bates to punter Jake Fox to returning and covering kickoffs and punts.
Fipp is allowed to have his thoughts on analytics, and completely dismiss them as the ramblings of people who don't know anything about football. But he took it a step further to practically lament how people in the Lions' building have brought those things to his attention, which I'm sure they won't do anymore.