If you avoided the Black Friday madness and stayed home to watch football, you are not only a person of high intelligence, you also saw a prime example of why “Analytics” has no place in football.
You also saw why this abomination and its supporters need to be sacked and thrown out of the game.
Yes, if you are a proponent of Analytics, that means you might be a dumbass.
I personally blame “Moneyball” for this madness as much as I do any idiot who supports its use in football. That system might work for a candy-ass game like baseball. But the game of football is an alpha man’s game.
No matter how good-looking Brad Pitt might be, baseball is a dumbass beta guy’s game.
Cold, Hard Facts
Football is not a game that can be defined strictly by cold, hard numbers. It is a game of physicality, of raw emotion, of players digging down deep to rise up and meet a challenge.
A football contest is played in driving rain, in snow, in heat, and in bitter cold, but a light sprinkle brings a baseball game to an immediate halt.
Football players slam into one another violently. Baseball players get their feelings hurt if a pitch comes within a foot of hitting them.
Football is a game of momentum. A change in momentum can bring a team all the way back from, say, 25 points down to win a Super Bowl.
Football is a game of dozens of intangibles that Analytics simply cannot accurately compute, like:
- Individual matchups
- Injured players still in the game
- Weather/Field conditions
- The overall ebb and flow of the game
- Playing at home/on the road?
And that is just the top five.
There are so many other intangibles in the mix that a computer program simply cannot account for accurately.
The introduction of Analytics into football is the worst thing to happen to the game since the introduction of artificial turf and fully-enclosed domed stadiums.
A coach who heavily relies on it, and anyone who swears by this hell-spawned system, might be a dumbass.
What Brought This On?
On Friday, down 24-15 after scoring a touchdown, Philadelphia took to analytics. That idiotic system of cold, hard numbers said to go for the two-point try.
Yes, if successful, the Eagles just need another touchdown and would then have the option to tie the game or go for the win.
However, miss the two-pointer, and you’re down two possessions instead of just one with three minutes left.
The Eagles went for two and missed. They got the ball back with 1:10 left on the clock.
They now needed to score either a field goal or a touchdown, recover an onside kick – a near impossibility these days – and then score a second time.
And they would need to do all of that in 70 seconds.
Scoring a touchdown in the conditions that existed Friday in 70 seconds was doable. It would not have been easy, but it was doable.
But by going for two on the first touchdown and failing, it effectively ended the game as the Eagles no longer had enough time to try to win it.
Incredibly, far too many people who should know better are defending the Eagles’ decision. In fact, they should be ridiculing Nick Sirriani for probably being a dumbass.
Hold My Beer
Former NFL tight end, and current FOX broadcaster, Greg Olson apparently spent his time off the field at the University of Miami drinking beer and chasing women.
He clearly didn’t spend much time in the classroom. It seems he just skipped math classes all together.
That may have been his pattern dating all the way back to grade school.
In the course of foolishly defending the Eagles’ decision, he dropped this whopper on X:
Assuming kick the EP and go down 8 (he missed earlier EP), you may still need 2 possessions (8 is not 1 score)
If you fail the 2 pt try the game is over. Bc u treated as a 1 possession game when its not
Also, my odds of a coin being heads is greater flipping it twice than once. https://t.co/uucCmzsERt
— Greg Olsen (@gregolsen88) November 28, 2025
So, a touchdown followed by a two-point conversion for a total of eight points, is not “one possession” anymore?
The schools I attended taught that 6+2=8. Since Philadelphia would have only needed eight points to tie the game at the end, the game was in fact a “one possession game.”
Greg, you might be a dumbass.
A Final Thought
Too many times, we’re seeing “But, but, muh Analytics” cited as reasons why coaches make dumb decisions that cost their team chances to win games.
How many times do you see a team get the extra-point after a score but accept a defensive penalty, just so they can go for two instead?
They do this because Analytics tells them this is what they should do. Then they fail to get the two points.
Now they are chasing that point for the rest of the game.
I’ve lost track of how many times that point would have allowed a field goal near the end of the game to tie the contest. Instead, now down four points, they need to reach the end zone to win. And far too often they don’t.
And how many times do you hear announcers say a team down 14 should go for two if they score a touchdown?
The (alleged) thought is that a successful conversion means you can score again and take the lead with a normal PAT.
But miss on the two-point try? Now you have to go for two a second time just to tie.
Which would have been the result if you’d just kicked the two PATs in the first place.
How many times did we see the Great Apostle of Analytics, Mike McCarthy, go for it on fourth down in his own territory because Analytics said go for it?
How many times did the Cowboys fail to convert? How many times did that lead to easy, early points for the other team?
Just like the Browns did on Sunday when they listened to “Analytics” and went for it on fourth down on their own 33. They failed on the attempt, and the 49ers turned it into seven points a few plays later.
How many games were lost that way?
Coaches need to rely on the feel of how a game is going and toss the reams of computer-generated gibberish in the trash where it belongs.
People who support Analytics need to be tossed in right behind it. And yes, if you support Analytics in football, that means you too might be a dumbass.
