Stats-taking at NFL games more art than science

NEW YORK (AP)—Corey Dillon was running toward history, and the Cincinnati Bengals’ new stats crew chief felt the pressure.

Jon Braude could just imagine botching a
play that would incorrectly give Dillon the NFL single-game rushing record.

“Don’t think that didn’t occur to me,” Braude recalled more than a decade later. “I kept waiting for the phone to ring.”

It never did that day in 2000—his crew accurately documented Dillon’s 278 yards. In this age of automatically updated fantasy football box scores and passing totals scrolling across the bottom of TV screens, NFL game statistics may seem utterly unambiguous to many fans. But they’re much more fluid than those crisp-looking live stats on your smartphone suggest.

The numbers are generated through a low-tech process of human eyes and judgment calls. “Subjective,” Braude calls it, then searches for a better description.

“I think `hairy’ is the perfect word,” he said.

Somewhere in this fantasy-mad country this week, a few owners will go to bed Sunday night thinking they narrowly won their league’s championship, only to learn later that they lost because of an official stats change. Adam Gizelbach, an engineer in Boston, had that happen earlier this season, when he noted on a Tuesday that a close win had moved him into first place. When he set his lineup Sunday morning, he suddenly was two games back. Turns out the Bills’ defense was credited with an extra sack against the Redskins to add to his opponents’ score, and Gizelbach went from winning by just over a point to losing by less than one.

“That 2-point change cost me a bunch of money,” Gizelbach said, though he understands why those swings of points and emotions happen.

Every Wednesday, the NFL and the Elias Sports Bureau review the previous weekend’s games, looking at specific plays where inaccuracies are most likely to occur. Teams also frequently request that a particularly stat be checked, and that may take place much later. There’s no deadline for changes—box scores from October and November are still being corrected in January and February.

Those don’t affect fantasy football, as leagues and the websites that run them set a day for when a matchup’s score becomes official.

Sacks are the officials stats changed most often. The NFL’s guide for statisticians offers only vague advice on the sticky subject of awarding them. A full sack is “when one defensive player is primarily responsible for a sack.” A half sack is when two or more are “equally responsible for a sack.” Sacks are also sometimes added or subtracted based on whether the play is deemed a run by the quarterback.

Washington Redskins crew chief Jon Stratton has heard of statisticians for other teams getting lobbied by players for another half a sack.

“Fantasy league is one thing, but incentives and performance clauses are a whole different thing,” Stratton said.

Stats crews are hired by each team’s PR staff, and the box score always comes from the home stadium’s statisticians. The NFL leaves it up to each club to determine the size of the crew and the division of labor.

The Redskins have eight people, down from 10 last year. The jobs: offensive and defensive spotters; specialty stats such as knockdowns and yards after catch; participation; internal public address announcer; computer entry; and fixing mistakes from earlier in the game so the entry person can focus on the next play.

Stratton keeps the offensive stats by hand in case the computer breaks down. His crew had to do things the old-fashioned way during the first “Monday Night Football” game at the Redskins’ new stadium in 1997, when they arrived to find all the computers had been stolen.

At the NFL command center, each person monitors two games, checking for egregious mistakes, answering any questions, and helping out in no-huddle situations.

“If there’s a fumble recovery or penalty, there’s a lot of info and very little time to figure it out,” said John Cave, the NFL’s director of football application systems.

The league sends the crews the corrections each week but doesn’t meddle much in how they do their jobs.

“We have good games and bad games,” Stratton said. “Hopefully our bad games aren’t noticed.”

Performance does become a factor for the Super Bowl. The NFL tries to use the host stadium’s crew, Cave said, but in some years the league has decided to bring in an all-star crew instead.

Stratton, in his 25th year with the Redskins, would like more training from the NFL to ensure judgment calls are made consistently from city to city. The 32 statisticians often talk among themselves to share advice. When the NFL switched to the current Game Statistics & Information System in 2000, they all were flown to New York to learn it, but there haven’t been any formal league-wide sessions since.

Braude picked up one very valuable lesson in New York before his first season with the Bengals: buy a DVR. Re-watching plays helps straighten out the hairiest of situations.

That’s especially useful for the stats crews that have been moved from above the sideline to the end zone to allow for more luxury boxes.

“Without getting myself in too much trouble, it’s much more difficult,” Stratton said of the Redskins’ relocation.

Spotters with headsets relay yard lines to him from the side. Differentiating a lateral from a pass can be particularly difficult.

Lateral/pass changes can be some of the most noticeable stat corrections. Aaron Rodgers picked up an extra 6 yards passing from the Packers’ Oct. 16 game after a completion was initially recorded as a run, swinging some fantasy matchups.

Sometimes a mistake is simply the result of a 9 looking like an 8 on a creased, muddy jersey. Fog, rain and snow can make it hard to even figure out the yard line. Determining where a kickoff, punt or interception return begins is often more art than science.

Some of the most vexing scenarios for statisticians: plays where there are multiple fumbles, and those desperate end-of-game situations with lateral after lateral.

“We hate those,” Braude said.

But statisticians seem to love their jobs based on the longevity of many crews. The Redskins have had only two chiefs since the 1940s, with Bob Miller holding the post for 43 years before Stratton. The team was using carbon paper to make copies when Stratton got his start.

Stratton’s day job is manager of corporate financial reporting for the Postal Service—“just a different type of stats,” he said. Braude works in publications for the Bengals and used to do PR for the Reds. He initially didn’t want to take the statistician job for the very reason that the numbers aren’t always so clear-cut.

The pay is hardly lucrative—in Washington, it’s $225 a game. Last season when Redskins linemanAlbert Haynesworth was suspended, the stats crew calculated his lost pay would’ve funded them for 80 years.

“How can you beat going to games, getting paid?” Stratton said.