Clay Girdner

Jack Conklin: Cleveland’s Newest Right-Hand Man

2020-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

A deep dive into the Brown’s latest right tackle acquisition

Every franchise had needs going into the 2020 offseason, but few teams had a more glaring hole in their roster than the Browns did at the offensive tackle position. After a decade of greatness from future HOF left tackle Joe Thomas, Cleveland has struggled to find stability at either tackle slot in recent years – as evident by Baker Mayfield’s 20.2% sack rate in 2019, sixth highest in the NFL. After watching their young QB take beating after beating, Browns management could not ignore the issue any longer and decided 2020 would be the year to seriously address the team’s tackle problems.

The Browns first step towards improving the tackle situation would turn out to be an act of omission. Immediately following the season, insiders began leaking reports that the team had no intentions of resigning starting left tackle Greg Robinson when his contract expired in March – allowing the former number two overall pick to hit the free market and explore other career opportunities. Next, the Browns needed to address their other struggling edge-protector, right tackle Chris Hubbard. After two dreadful seasons starting on the right side, the writing was on the wall for the sixth-year man going into 2020. Ultimately, the former UDFA was forced to restructure his contract in March, opting to take a pay cut to avoid being released.

With Robinson gone and Hubbard demoted, the Browns turned their attention to free agency and the draft – signing former Titans RT Jack Conklin to a 3-year, $42 million contract before selecting Jedrick Wills of Alabama with the 10th overall pick in the 2020 draft to fill in at left tackle. Wills’ simultaneous transitions from college-to-pro and RT-to-LT is a fascinating topic in and of itself, however, for the purposes of this writing, I will limit my focus to the Conklin signing. More specifically, what Conklin means for the Browns offense and overall roster construction in the coming seasons

We’ll kick things off by examining Conklin’s fit in Kevin Stefanski’s new zone-heavy scheme. Then, we’ll move to some film examples highlighting the right tackle’s strengths/weaknesses, before wrapping up with a look into Conklin’s new contract and how it stacks up to other recent tackle signings.

Scheme Fit

Before we get too nitty-gritty, let’s begin with a bird’s eye view of the situation to see how Conklin stacks up against his peers at the tackle position. The plot below displays pass/run blocking grades from Pro Football Focus (PFF) for Conklin, Hubbard, Robinson and the other 59 NFL tackles who recorded at least 1,000 snaps over the past two seasons. (I know these grades are subjective, but as of right now, they are the best metrics we have for evaluating offensive line play.)

Conklin clearly distinguishes himself when it comes to run blocking, easily surpassing the previous Browns tackles and most other NFL tackles in PFF’s run grades. In fact, there are only five other OT’s throughout the league to record a higher run blocking grade since 2018. Unfortunately, almost the exact opposite can be said for Hubbard who recorded the third lowest run blocking grade over this period.

In addition to simply being a better run blocker than their former tackles, the Browns were also drawn to Conklin due to his experience in a zone-heavy run scheme like the one Stefanski is bringing to Cleveland. According to Sports Info Solutions (SIS), the 2019 Titans were among the league leaders when it came to zone running, calling zone on 65% of running plays, trailing only the Bengals and Stefanski’s Vikings (both at 67%) for highest zone rate in the league.

Conklin is also an upgrade when it comes to pass blocking, albeit not quite to the same extent as the run game. That being said, this smaller improvement in pass protection may prove to be more consequential than anything Conklin does to support the run. Given the importance of passing in today’s NFL, competent pass blocking is imperative if a team has any hopes of competing for a Superbowl. To put it differently, plays like this simply can’t happen if the Browns hope to be a factor in 2020.

Although he comes in just below average in the PFF pass blocking grades, Conklin performs well in other advanced pass blocking metrics such as ESPN’s Pass Block Win Rate (PBWR) which uses player tracking data to measure the percentage of blocks sustained for a given amount of time. Conklin finished 2019 with the 8th highest PBWR among tackles, winning on 92% of his pass sets.

Nevertheless, there are a few potential red flags with his pass blocking. Conklin benefited from a Titans scheme that leaned on short/quick dropbacks in 2019, limiting his number of true vertical pass sets. The Titans also aided Conklin by regularly designing chip blocks from tight ends or running backs. Fortunately for Conklin, much of these scheme-based luxuries should still be present within Stefanski’s offense in 2020 which is expected to feature plenty of bootlegs, play-action, TE help, etc. – all of which are designed to take pressure off of the O-line.

Now, let’s take a look at some film examples highlighting Conklin’s strength and weaknesses to help us visualize Cleveland’s newest right tackle within Stefanski’s offense.

Strengths

Conklin’s defining characteristic on the football field is his stellar use of hands (UOH). Everything from punch timing/placement to grip strength is damn near elite and allows Conklin to compensate for other deficiencies in his game. Below is an example of this UOH which came from last year’s AFC Championship game that pitted Conklin against Pro Bowl DE Frank Clark.

This is actually a fairly stereotypical pass set for Conklin who personifies the “bend but don’t break” approach to pass blocking. Although Clark appears to have the advantage as Conklin is quickly driven back towards the quarterback, Conklin is able to mount a stand thanks to a strong right hand that never leaves Clark’s breast plate following the right tackle’s initial punch.

However, good UOH is pointless if a tackle doesn’t have the footwork to go with it. Again, Conklin is a excels in this regard. Here we see another example of Conklin’s bend-don’t-break pass blocking, this time utilizing a series of tiny backwards hop steps to absorb an all-out bull rush from Houston’s Charles Omenihu in week 17.

Although he surrenders ground initially, Conklin never loses control of the situation. With each additional backwards hop, Conklin is able to plant his back foot and essentially use the ground as a backstop, working to slowly chip away at a defender’s momentum until the bull rush is neutralized.

If you’ve read this far, it probably comes as no surprise to hear that Conklin is also a master technician when it comes to run blocking. By combining his efficient footwork and consistent UOH with precise blocking angles and the right amount of nastiness, Conklin has become a force to be reckoned with in the run game. To see all of these traits on display, let’s check out an outside zone towards Conklin’s side which came against the Patriots in last year’s playoffs.

Just before the snap, we see Conklin signal to running back Derrick Henry that he will be kicking out the end man on the line of scrimmage. In this case, the end man happens to be stud hybrid linebacker Kyle Van Noy, one of the top run defenders at the position in 2019 according to PFF. Yet, Van Noy was hardly a factor on this play after Conklin whipped him off the line thanks to the aforementioned combo of hands/feet/attack angle with a little nastiness to top it all off.

Weaknesses

Unfortunately, Conklin was not born with this technical toolkit, rather he had to acquire these skills in order to make up for certain athletic deficiencies – particularly balance and quickness. Conklin is normally able to work around these limitations, but every now and then they rear their ugly head, like on this sack surrendered to the Bills in week 5.

Although most of the blame should go to the right guard, this play is also a bad look for Conklin who got a front row view of the sack after ending up on his rear end. As usual, Conklin has pretty solid technique here, keeping an eye on the end while leaving his left hand inside to help on the 3 technique. However, by helping inside, Conklin is thrown off balance by the crashing DT and ends up on the ground blocking nobody while his QB goes down for the sack.

Nor is the tackle perfect from a technical standpoint. One such flaw is his tendency to lower his head when meeting a charging pass rusher, which leaves him susceptible to swims and other counter moves like we see here when Conklin got schooled by Calais Campbell in week 12.

By attacking Conklin with multiple aggressive bull rushes to kick off the game, Campbell had effectively set his trap. Once Conklin dipped his head in anticipation of yet another clash, Campbell hit him with a quick swim inside, leaving Conklin flatfooted while the all-pro defender clobbered the QB.

Another technical blemish is Conklin’s tendency to over-pursue blocks in the run game. Earlier, I mentioned blocking angles when describing Conklin’s strengths, yet, every now and then savvy defenders are able to use these angles against the right tackle like we see here versus the Broncos in week 6.

On this counter play, Conklin is tasked with blocking down on the backer, A.J. Johnson. Unfortunately, Johnson sees this block coming and with one quick olé, the backer is able to swim past the charging Conklin before taking down Henry in the backfield.

Ultimately, Conklin’s strengths vastly outweigh his weaknesses which is why the right tackle was the among the top targets in this year’s free agent class. Combine this with Conklin’s seemingly perfect fit into Cleveland’s new zone scheme, and the signing looks to be a slam dunk for Stefanski and the Browns. However, anyone with investing experience knows that price, not just quality of the underlying asset, also determines whether something was a good investment or not. With this idea in mind, let’s now turn our attention away from the football side of the Conklin signing, and take a look at the money side of the equation.

Contract

Conklin’s path to free agency began last spring when the Titans declined the former first-round pick’s fifth-year option, making him an unrestricted free agent following the season. After a stellar start to his NFL career with a Pro Bowl appearance as a rookie, Conklin struggled in subsequent years before having his third season cut short due to a torn ACL. The Titans soured on Conklin following the injury and decided that the up-and-down right tackle wasn’t worth the investment.

Given the limited number of quality tackles in this year’s free agent class, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect the 25-year-old right tackle after coming off another impressive season with seemingly no hindrance from his ACL injury. The kid was due for a big pay day, and the Browns were happy to oblige, signing Conklin to a three-year, $42 million deal with $30 million guaranteed. Below is a year-by-year breakdown of Conklin’s new contract courtesy of OverTheCap.com.

(Note that the contract has a paper value of $70 million over five years but is effectively a three-year deal worth $42 million.)

The first thing to note with this contract is its relatively short duration compared to the normal four-year deals for other tackles in Conklin’s price range. Although players normally prefer longer deals, all else equal, Conklin and his agent opted for the shorter deal in hopes that the tackle (who turns 28 when this deal expires) will get another shot at a big contract in 2023 under a presumedly higher salary cap.

The second point of note with this contract is its massive front loading, with Conklin taking home $20 million in 2020 after accounting for salary and signing bonus. By structuring the deal this way, Conklin gets his big payout now while leaving the Browns with some flexibility going forward to address other young playmakers like Baker Mayfield and Myles Garrett when their rookie deals expire.

When it comes to salary cap impact, this deal is surprisingly light, only averaging $14 million a year against the cap. Although this makes him one of the highest paid right tackles, there is still a sizeable gap between Conklin and those at the tippy top of the RT wage scale such as Trent Brown and Lane Johnson, both with average cap hits of north of $15 million over the next few seasons. However, this gap pales in comparison to the difference between Conklin and the highest paid left tackles who are starting to see salaries approach the $20 million range.

Anyone who has seen The Blind Side knows that left tackles garner higher salaries than their brethren on the right side because they safeguard a team’s most valuable asset, the quarterback, from taking dangerous unforeseen blows. However, this conventional wisdom began to be challenged once NFL defenses realized that they could simply move their best pass rushers to the right side to take advantage of the seemingly weaker pass blocking on that edge – like we saw with T.J. Watt abusing Chris Hubbard in the first gif.

Now that right tackles are taking on a larger role in passing offenses, we’re starting to see deals approach left tackle levels (i.e. Lane Johnson and Trent Brown). But there is still some way to go before the market reaches equilibrium, thus implying a market inefficiency for prudent teams to exploit. By signing a right tackle and drafting a left tackle with a cheap rookie contract, the Browns seem to realize this and are embracing the idea of positional value when it comes to building out the team’s roster.

Conclusion

We began by examining Conklin’s seemingly perfect fit within Stefanski’s zone-heavy offensive scheme, partially due to his prowess as a run blocker but also due to his experience within a similar offense during his time in Tennessee. Next, we showed that, despite being an average athlete compared to other NFL tackles, Conklin is able to overcome his limitations with top notch fundaments – from hand placement in pass protection to attack angles when running the outside zone. Lastly, we wrapped things up with by delving into Conklin’s team-friendly contract, which largely resulted from the simple fact that he plays on the right side of the offensive line rather than left tackle.

In summary, this looks to be a fantastic pick up for the Cleveland Browns. As long as Conklin stays healthy, this signing should go a long way in helping the Browns move the ball and keep Baker Mayfield upright in 2020.

The Mysterious Mr. Mayfield: Part 2

2020-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

An Explanatory Analysis

Welcome to part two of my deep dive into Baker Mayfield’s young (but fascinating) NFL career! In part one I explored the fledgling QB’s statistics through two seasons and observed three distinct periods – early struggles under the Hue Jackson regime, an ascendant second half of 2018 with Freddie Kitchens calling the plays, and a sophomore slump that ultimately lead to Freddie’s firing.

In this installment, I continue down the rabbit hole in an attempt to understand why – why Baker stunk it up with Todd Haley as OC, why his rookie campaign turned around under Kitchens, and why the Browns passing offense stagnated in 2019. Once the why’s are covered, I look to the future by examining the pairing of Baker and his newest play-caller, former Vikings OC Kevin Stefanski.

2018: Weeks 3-8

Mayfield kicked off his NFL career with a bang, leading the Browns to a comeback victory over the Jets in week three after replacing Tyrod Taylor following a concussion. However, if you read part one or remotely follow the NFL you will know that the good times would not last for long. Baker and the Browns offense regressed in the following weeks, losing four of their next five games before Jackson and Haley were ultimately shown the door.

What went wrong with the Browns offense? Why were drives stalling? Why was Baker taking a beating seemingly every time he dropped back to throw? Fortunately, the football-viewing public now has access to granular team and player-level data which helps us begin to answer some of these questions by examining the relationship between play-calling tendencies and offensive production. Because this article is focused on Baker Mayfield, I will limit this investigation to passing metrics with data courtesy of Sports Info Solutions (SIS) and nflscrapR, including the following variables:

play-action rate
shotgun rate
screen rate
bootleg rate
dropback depth
average depth of target (aDOT)
average number of wide receivers

The following table shows the 2018 Browns passing offense from weeks 3-8 (the weeks Baker played under Jackson and Haley) with accompanying rankings relative to the other 2018 NFL passing offenses.

After exploring the splits for each of these variables, something stuck out about Baker’s performance on plays with deep dropbacks, specifically 5-7 step drops out of shotgun. Through week 8, Mayfield scraped together a passer rating of 79.9 with a 40.8% success rate (plays resulting in positive EPA) on his 240 total dropbacks. However, if we just look at his 22 deep dropbacks from shotgun his passer rating plummets to 30.4 and success rate drops to 22.7%. Although these plays constituted less than 10% of Mayfield’s total dropbacks, they had a sizeable impact on Baker’s aggregate stats, accounting for -10.2 of his -30.3 total expected points added (EPA) through week 8.

It should also be noted that Brett Kollmann found a similar finding in his film study which inspired this whole writeup, The Ballad of Baker Mayfield. Once again, I highly recommend checking out his content.

Combining Kollmann’s analysis with a bit of my own film review, I determined that each failed deep dropback contained one or more of these three elements:

Subpar pass blocking, especially on the edge
Lack of pocket presence from Baker
Poor timing between Mayfield and his receivers

Let’s take a look at some examples! Here is one such play which came on a big third down late in the game against the Ravens in week 5.

This play was doomed from the start. Mayfield is barely able to complete his dropback before his own left tackle, Desmond Harrison, is in his lap after being dominated by a bull rush from Terrell Suggs. Although Baker is able to improvise and get the completion, the Browns are well short of the sticks and the drive stalls.

Here’s another deep dropback on third down that ended in disaster, this time against the Bucs in week 7.

Although the pocket collapses quickly, Mayfield is not without fault on this one. If Baker keeps his eyes downfield, he would have seen a wide-open receiver streaking down the middle of the field just as he reaches the top of his dropback. Instead, Baker succumbs to the pressure and once again, the drive stalls.

And for our last ugly example - here is a failed third down vs. the Chargers in week 6.

The Browns actually have decent protection on this play. Unfortunately, by the time Antonio Callaway is able to regain his footing after stemming his drag into a go route following the mesh point, Baker is unable to see him and get the ball out, instead going down for the sack and ending the drive.

Part of the blame should go to OC Todd Haley on this one. This long-developing play probably resulted in many long receptions from Big Ben to AB when Haley was with the Steelers. However, Haley needed to recognize that Antonio Callaway is no Antonio Brown and Baker’s ability to step up into the pocket (both due to his height and inexperience) is nowhere near that of veteran Ben Roethlisberger.

At a certain point Browns management couldn’t stomach anymore of this garbage and finally kicked Hue Jackson to the curb along with Todd Haley to be replaced by Gregg Williams and Freddie Kitchens as interim HC and OC, respectively.

2018: Weeks 9-17

The turnaround wasn’t immediate, but it did not take long to notice that Baker and the Browns offense had turned a corner with Kitchens calling the plays. As we saw in part one, Baker went from the bottom of the statistical charts under Haley, to one of the league’s top performers under Kitchens. What was Freddie doing with his play-calling to bring out the best in Mr. Mayfield?

The table below shows the Browns’ passing play-calling tendencies for the second half of the season and how these changed with Freddie calling the plays.

The two changes that immediately jump out are the increase in play-action usage and decrease in deep dropbacks. The Browns went from one of the lowest play-action rates during Baker’s first few starts to surpass the league average under Kitchens. Play-action has received increased attention in recent years due to its strong correlation with offensive efficiency, leading some to argue PA is underused at the NFL level. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that this played a part in the turnaround. Interestingly, the data does not seem to back up this idea as Baker’s splits were largely similar with and without play-action.

Once more, deep dropbacks seemed to be a pivot point. Although the Browns’ struggles on deep drops from shotgun continued into the second half of 2018, Kitchens mitigated this problem by simply calling fewer of these plays – instead, opting for shorter drops and more screen passes. Below is one of these shorter dropbacks from the Browns’ thrashing of the Falcons in week 10.

These quick hitters not only took pressure off the pass blocking up front but also helped to simplify Mayfield’s reads. In this case, Baker is watching the outside backer who takes the TE in the flat. Once he sees the backer commit, Baker zips it right behind the LB’s head, hitting the slant route for a big gain.

Although Kitchens shortened up Baker’s dropbacks, the Browns were still able to stretch the field vertically as the team’s average depth of target actually increased in the second half of 2018. The play below is an example of the Browns taking shots downfield while also getting the ball out quickly.

The Browns’ improved pass timing shows up on this Mills concept vs the Ravens in week 17. Previously, receivers were still trying to get open as Baker was reaching the top of his dropback, throwing off the rhythm of the play and often leading to negative outcomes. However, here we see receivers making their cuts just as Baker plants his back foot. Mayfield spots the safety bite on the crossing route, takes one quick gather step, and hits Breshad Perriman on time and in stride for the long TD.

The Browns offense was flying high to finish 2018. So much so that the team opted to roll with Freddie Kitchens again in 2019 – not just as offensive play-caller, but also head coach. Jimmy Haslam and company went with the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach. What could possibly go wrong?

2019

Expectations couldn’t have been higher for Baker and the Browns going into 2019. The strong finish to 2018 combined with the acquisition of star wideout Odell Beckham had fans dreaming Superbowl. Sadly, once the season started, it didn’t take long to recognize that these playoff fantasies were actually pipe dreams.

In order to begin diagnosing the Browns’ reemergent offensive woes, let’s turn to our handy dandy passing play-calling tendency table.

We’ll start by looking at play-action. Much like the season before, Kitchens continued to lean on play-action in 2019 – and for good reason. Mayfield’s 2019 passer rating when faking a handoff (roughly 29% of dropbacks) was more than 30 points higher than on plays without play-action. Although the Browns were above the league average in terms of play-action usage, this massive difference in Baker’s splits suggests Freddie could have used even more fake handoffs than he did in 2019.

We also see that the percentage of deep dropbacks reversed trend and moved back upwards in 2019. Unsurprisingly, Baker and the Browns offense continued to struggle on these plays just as they did throughout 2018. While Baker’s aggregate stats weren’t great in 2019 (80.1 passer rating, 42.7% success rate), his numbers on deep dropbacks were downright bad (60.5 passer rating, 34.5% success rate). The same structural problems were still there for the Browns – poor exterior pass blocking, an antsy Mayfield in the pocket, bad receiver timing. Yet, for some reason, after watching these inefficient, long-developing plays consistently fail over the previous two seasons, Freddie continued to call them.

Another interesting trend in the Browns’ 2019 play-calling was the shift away from intermediate dropbacks in favor of shorter drops and run-pass option plays (RPOs). On the face of it, this appears to have been a prudent decision by Kitchens as Baker’s efficiency stats on these short drops were noticeably improved compared to intermediate dropbacks. However, this strategy is not without its downsides. Although shorter dropbacks often lead to increased completion rates, focusing too much on quick hitters can limit an offense’s ability to stretch the field vertically, which is what we observe when we look at the Browns’ average depth of target (aDOT) which went from one of the highest in 2018 to just above average in 2019.

Of all his 2019 play-calling sins, unoriginality was perhaps Freddie’s greatest transgression. If we compare Kitchens 2019 play-calling tendencies to the year before, most metrics were either unchanged or continuations of the trends we saw in the second half of 2018 (more play-action, more screens and quick throws).

Kitchens’s play-calling was also unremarkable when we compare it to the other passing offenses around the NFL. Below, I have constructed a principal component analysis (PCA) much like I did in part one, but this time we are observing 2019 play-calling tendencies in the passing game rather than aggregate QB passing stats. Again, PCA is a statistical method that “compresses” correlated multidimensional data by creating new uncorrelated variables or principal components (PCs) which capture the most variance in the data. The first principal component, PC1 corresponds to the line drawn through our 7-dimensional vector space which explains the most variance (i.e. best fit line, explaining 29% of the variance in this case) with each subsequent PC corresponding to the perpendicular axis explaining the next most variance. I know that this is a lot to digest, but for now let’s just see what this looks like when we examine the first two principal components.

In essence, teams further from the origin are considered more unique in their pass play-calling while teams closer to the origin are less unique or basic, as some would say. Interestingly, the Browns are nearly right on top of the origin, as basic as you can get, which isn’t exactly where you want to be in the modern NFL. If we compare offenses near the origin (Browns, Colts, Jets, Lions) to those furthest from the origin (Vikings, 49ers, Saints, Ravens) there would appear to be some connection between uniqueness and offensive success. However, before making any definitive conclusions, I must note that this scheme analysis is far from complete as it is missing many crucial elements that define an offense like pre-snap motion or route combo usage, just to name a few.

Luckily, we will get to see this “uniqueness leads to success” idea be put to the test with the Browns offense in 2020. After cutting ties with Kitchens in January after just one season, the Browns opted to replace Freddie with Kevin Stefanski, a key architect behind the Vikings’ distinctive passing offense in 2019.

2020+

This coming season will likely be a make-or-break campaign for Mr. Mayfield. If Baker stinks it up for the second consecutive season, the Browns are liable to blow it up once more and move on from the third year QB entirely – especially with a chance to grab Justin Fields or Trevor Lawrence in the 2021 draft. On the other hand, if the pairing with Stefanski is a success and Mayfield is able to rekindle some of that 2018 magic, the young gunslinger could earn himself a nice payday in the form of a long-term extension next offseason.

With this in mind going into 2020, everyone around Cleveland wants to know if Baker can gel with Stefanski’s unique passing scheme. To begin answering this question, let’s start by taking a look at the Vikings’ passing tendencies for 2019.

I’ll begin with play-action, as is tradition. Although the Kitchens-lead Browns leaned heavily on PA in 2019, Stefanski and the Vikings still managed to outpace them, attempting a fake handoff on 30% of all dropbacks. This trend bodes well for Mayfield if it continues into 2020. As I showed earlier, the young quarterback had significantly better numbers in 2019 when using PA compared to straight dropbacks.

Another defining characteristic of the Vikings 2019 offense was Stefanski’s clear preference to have his QB take snaps from under center rather than in shotgun. This aversion to the gun resulted in a league-low 50.7% shotgun rate on passing plays. To put this figure into perspective, the next lowest shotgun rate was 65.2%, belonging to the 49ers. At first blush, this would appear to be a big issue for Baker due to his history in shotgun-heavy offenses in college and high school – a fact often listed as a potential concern during the draft process. Surprisingly, Baker has actually been worse from the shotgun during his brief NFL career, with a passer rating nearly 25 points lower than when passing from under center. Barring a major regression in this aspect of his game, it looks like Baker shouldn’t have any problems taking a few additional snaps under center in 2020.

Let’s return one last time to the topic of deep dropbacks, of which the Vikings used more than the Browns in 2019. Again, knowing what we know about Baker and his poor play on deep drops, this would not appear to work in his favor. However, not all deep dropbacks are created equal, which is why I was careful to mention that Mayfield’s struggles on deep drops were largely limited to shotgun snaps. Baker actually has surprisingly good stats on deep dropbacks when under center (125.2 passer rating). Knowing this information, the outlook brightens when we just examine dropback tendencies when in shotgun. Removing under center snaps causes the Vikings to drop below the Browns to the ninth lowest deep dropback rate in the league for 2019.

The last interesting play-calling tendency we will dig into is Stefanski’s heavy bootleg usage. Stefanski’s entire offense is built around the outside zone and when this play is clicking, defenses are forced to sell out to stop the run. This is when Stefanski strikes by sprinkling in play-action bootlegs to devastating effect – as evident by Kirk Cousins 123.5 passer rating on these plays in 2019. But what does this mean for Baker? To answer that we need to look into Baker’s track record when operating out of the boot. Although the sample size isn’t huge, Browns fans should be happy to know that Mayfield was a solid 12-12 on bootlegs last season with a perfect passer rating.

As mentioned earlier, because he is on the shorter side, Baker struggles to see the field at times from within the pocket. However, this problem is almost completely mitigated when Baker is out on the edge running the boot which allows him to scan the field without interference.

Below is one such example of a Stefanski-style bootleg which Baker ran to perfection against the Bills in week 10 of last season. After showing this split zone look earlier in the game, Baker keeps this one on a naked boot and hits Jarvis Landry for a big gain after the latter slipped his block on the would-be backside DE.

Hopefully, if all goes to plan, we will see plenty of plays just like this once Stefanski gets his hands on this loaded Browns offense in 2020.

Conclusion

Mayfield and the Cleveland offense never managed to get going under Todd Haley largely due to too few play-action fakes and too many deep dropbacks out of shotgun – a play which Baker clearly seems to struggle with. Once Haley was replaced with Freddie Kitchens, the Browns began getting the ball out quicker which resulted in fewer sacks and more on-time throws to open receivers. Unfortunately, Freddie turned out to be a one trick pony and was unable to adjust his play-calling in 2019 to bring out the best in Baker and the Browns offense resulting in his firing to finish the season. Now, in steps Kevin Stefanski with his distinctive offensive scheme, heavily reliant on bootleg play-action, especially from under center – some of Baker’s most successful plays at the NFL level.

2020 looks to be a decisive year for the fiery young quarterback. If Mayfield can master this new offense and regain some of his late-2018 form, the franchise-QB-starved Browns may just throw the checkbook at him next offseason. Alternatively, if Baker fails in this new scheme seemingly tailored to his skillset, 2020 may be the beginning of the end for the mysterious Mr. Mayfield.

The Mysterious Mr. Mayfield: Part 1

2020-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

An Exploratory Analysis

Many adjectives can be used to describe Baker Mayfield and his brief NFL career, but few would use words like “dull” or “uninteresting” when talking about the fiery young quarterback.

The drama started long before Mayfield made his NFL debut, hell, even before he was selected by the Browns in the 2018 draft. Following a stellar college career, analyst opinions regarding the Oklahoma prospect were famously split – ranging from “undraftable” to surefire first overall pick (where he was ultimately taken). Since then, Baker has somehow managed to become even more polarizing. Through two NFL seasons, Baker’s erratic on-field performances and controversial off-field comments/decisions have provided supporters and detractors alike with more than enough ammunition to maintain their entrenched positions regarding Mr. Mayfield.

Whether you like the guy or not, for whatever reason, I think it’s safe to say that Baker’s play on the field has been a rollercoaster to this point. Just take a look at his weekly performance chart through 30 NFL games. With all its swings and undulations, this chart more closely resembles a WW1 battlefield than a promising start to an NFL career.

modern photo of Verdun, France

Statistically speaking, Mayfield has been one of the most inconsistent quarterbacks in the NFL on both a week-by-week and play-by-play basis since entering the league in 2018 (according to expected points added, or EPA). In fact, only three other qualifying quarterbacks surpass Baker when it comes to per game volatility over this period: famously inconsistent journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick, suddenly reemergent Ryan Tannehill, and Lamar Jackson who, although inconsistent, boasts a much higher baseline performance than Mr. Mayfield.

In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to tease some signal from the noise that has defined Baker’s young NFL career by providing a statistical timeline of Baker’s young NFL career. In a future writeup I will dive into the X’s and O’s and try to understand why Mayfield’s play seems to vary so much before gazing into my crystal ball to predict how the new QB/coach marriage of Mayfield and Stefanski will fare in the upcoming season.

However, before we get too far, I would like to give a big shoutout to Brett Kollmann of Twitter/YouTube fame and his video The Ballad of Baker Mayfield for inspiring me to write this piece. Mr. Kollmann regularly produces top notch NFL analysis and I would highly recommend checking out some of his work if you’re interested in gaining a deeper understanding of this great game!

2018

Viewing the full season without any context, one would get the impression that Baker had average/unremarkable 2018 season, ranking near the middle of the QB pack in most passing stats. However, in reality, Mayfield’s 2018 campaign saw him struggle mightily getting started before settling into his groove and finishing the season among elite company.

We all remember where we were when Baker made his NFL debut on that fateful Thursday night – slicing and dicing the Jets secondary on his way to releasing those poor Bud Lights from bondage. However, Baker floundered in his subsequent starts, ranking among the other struggling rookie QBs in most passing metrics. But this all changed when the incumbent coaching staff was shown the door halfway through the 2018 season and in stepped Gregg Williams as interim HC with Freddie Kitchens as OC. In a matter of weeks, Baker separated himself from the other rookies and joined the likes of Drew Brees and Patrick Mahomes atop many NFL passing leaderboards. However, Mayfield definitely wasn’t perfect in the second half of his rookie season, especially when it came to his propensity to turn the ball over as the chart below indicates.

2019

If Mayfield finished 2018 as Dr. Jekyll, he kicked off the 2019 season as Mr. Hyde. After stumbling out of the gate against the Titans in week 1, Baker appeared to regain his footing with a surprisingly good outing against the high-flying Ravens in week 4. Unfortunately, the good times would not last long, and the wheels really fell off the following week when the Browns faced off against the upstart 49ers on MNF. This was supposed to be his big coming out party, instead, Baker pooped his pants for the world to see, turning the ball over three times on his way to posting an EPA per dropback of -1.0 (meaning the Browns gave up a full point to the Niners each time Mayfield dropped back to pass, not ideal). The debacle in San Francisco was not only the worst showing of Mayfield’s young NFL career, but also one of the worst single game performances of any quarterback over the past two seasons. Baker and the Browns never seemed to truly bounce back from this drubbing by the 49ers. After another poor game against the vaunted Patriots defense in week 8, Baker finished out the season with a string of mediocre outings (excluding a solid performance against the hapless Dolphins secondary in week 12).

Going into 2019, Mayfield was the unquestioned cream of his draft class – Lamar had yet to blossom, Rosen was run out of Arizona, and Allen/Darnold showed flashes but remained project QBs. One year and 16 games later, it seems we know less about Baker and his future in the NFL than we did a year ago. And the data appears to support this notion.

Below, I have constructed a principal component analysis (PCA) in an effort to summarize several different passing statistics for the 2019 NFL season. PCA, in short, is a method to condense many possibly correlated variables down to a more digestible summary, allowing us to observe clusters of statistically similar observations, or quarterbacks in this case. Eight publicly available passing statistics were selected for this analysis and are represented by the dotted lines expanding from the origin. Basically, quarterbacks close to one another will have similar passing numbers and those furthest from the origin are the QBs generating the most unique stat lines (Jameis “1 of 1” Winston is truly in a class of his own). The directional positioning of each player is determined by the stats that essentially “defined” their 2019 season (indicated by the dotted gray lines). Whereas studs like Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes are positioned in the quadrant defined by high EPA’s and touchdown rates, Mayfield and his encircled cohort are most clearly described by their high sack/interception rates. Simply put, Baker Mayfield is no longer the slam dunk franchise quarterback he appeared to be a year ago.

2020 is shaping up to be a decisive year for the young QB. Will Baker regain his mojo in the coming months or are the Browns destined to continue their never-ending quest to find stability at the quarterback position? I, for one, can’t wait to watch the drama unfold.

Conclusion

To this point, we’ve established that Baker has been inconsistent in the NFL. However, this is hardly groundbreaking analysis as any casual NFL fan could have told you that the Browns have seen highs and lows with Mayfield at QB. The important questions are why Baker fluctuates as much as he does and what can be expected from the young quarterback going into 2020 and beyond? Can Mayfield return to the highs of late 2018 or is he destined to fall flat on his face like he did to kick off the 2019 campaign? Will he ever find consistency in his game or is he destined to join the likes of Jameis or Fitzmagic – regularly oscillating between greatness and mediocrity?

Stay tuned for part two of this analysis, where I will attempt to answer these questions by grinding the tape and examining situational data to figure out how Freddie brought out primetime Baker, what went wrong in 2019, and what we should expect from Mayfield and the Browns offense when Kevin Stefanski takes the reins in 2020.

Court of Public Opinion: A Sentiment Analysis

2020-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

Examining Reddit’s collective reaction to recent NFL head coaching hires

Hand up, this time last year I thought Freddie Kitchens was a good hire for the Cleveland Browns. The strong offensive finish to 2018 combined with Freddie’s seemingly close ties to Baker Mayfield had me convinced that Kitchens was the man for the job. I wasn’t about to let the fact that Freddie lacked any head coaching experience come between me and my delusions of Browns grandeur. I was hooked on recency bias, and it was a hell of a drug.

Fast forward to the present day. Freddie’s a goner, the Browns are once again riding the coaching carousel, and my hope-fueled dopamine high has long since faded. However, being so completely wrong left this armchair G.M.’s ego bruised and battered. I had to wonder if everyone bought into the hype or if I was among a gullible minority that fell for Freddie’s good ole boy schtick? To answer this question, I set out to measure the consensus fan opinion of the Kitchens pick and then compare it to that of Kevin Stefanski and other recent NFL head coach selections.

Data

I needed data to conduct this experiment, so I turned to Reddit threads – specifically posts on the NFL subreddit, r/nfl, and team-specific subreddits (i.e. r/browns for Kitchens and Stefanski, r/NYGiants for Joe Judge, etc.) linking to a Tweet or team release announcing a new hiring going back to 2018 (19 hires and 38 threads).

Python was used to gather the comments from each thread along with the PRAW library which allows users to tap into Reddit’s free API. See reddit_hire_data_pull.py and comments_data.csv in the repository for the code and data.

In order to measure the overall sentiment for each thread, comments were fed through two different text analysis tools available in Python – VADER and TextBlob, both of which produce numeric scores indicating the degree of polarity for each comment (i.e. level of positivity/negativity). Two example comments and their resulting scores are provided below along with a scatter plot displaying the relationship between the two polarity scores for all 31,000+ comments in the data set (correlation = 0.51).

“I really like this hire for our team!”

VADER: 0.47
TextBlob: 0.25

“This guy stinks! Why would we hire him?”

VADER: -0.32
TextBlob: -0.75

We see that the polarity metrics have a tendency to concentrate around zero as both methods default to zero if the polarity cannot be detected. If we exclude these neutral observations (polarity = 0 in either method), the correlation improves to 0.54. Due to this quirk in the data, neutral comments will be excluded when calculating the polarity aggregates for each thread in the subsequent section. However, note that these neutral comments are included in the subjectivity section presented later as they provide context on the overall intensity of emotion within comment threads.

Polarity

With these polarity metrics in hand, scores were averaged for each hire thread on r/nfl since 2018. Results of these averaged polarity scores are presented below.

In the plot we see that Kitchens scored near the middle of the pack in terms of VADER and TextBlob polarity while Stefanski just trailed in both variables. Surprisingly enough, Steve Wilks, the one-year coach of Arizona in 2018 scored the highest in both metrics, while Adam Gase scored last and next-to-last (unsurprisingly enough). However, if we look at comment counts and subjectivity metrics (intensity of emotion, in either direction), Wilks’s high polarity scores begin to lose some of their luster and the Kitchens-Stefanski divide becomes more pronounced.

Subjectivity and Comment Counts

The Wilks thread was the smallest in terms of total comments (116) and one of the least subjective threads (at least according to TextBlob). I interpret this to mean that fans did not feel strongly about the hire and that his high polarity scores could be fluky due to the small sample size.

We also see that the Stefanski r/nfl hire thread was among the most opinionated discussions in the entire experiment and well ahead of the Kitchens thread which scored low in both subjectivity metrics. This suggests that fans are much more divided and emotional when it comes to Stefanski with only 23% of the Stefanski comments being neutral (according to VADER) compared to 34% of comments in the Kitchens thread.

Subreddit Comparisons

In addition to r/nfl, I also examined the hire threads within each team’s respective subreddit to compare the sentiment of team-specific fans to the general NFL fanbase within r/nfl. Here I compare VADER polarity scores between the two subreddit groups.

As intuition would suggest, this analysis shows that team subreddits tend to be more optimistic about “their guy” than the generalists commenting on r/nfl. This is especially true regarding the r/browns thread for Kitchens which had a VADER polarity score well above its r/nfl counterpart, proving that I wasn’t the only Browns fan drinking the Kool-Aid. However, the same cannot be said for the Stefanski thread on r/browns with an average polarity nearly equal to r/nfl, suggesting that Browns fans are returning to their usual pessimistic demeanor. The last point to note from this plot is the r/nyjets reaction to the Adam Gase selection. Jets fans were not only more pessimistic than the community at large, but they generated the lowest VADER polarity score by a sizable margin. (Note that r/eagles was not represented in this analysis.)

Word Composition: Kitchens vs Stefanski

Lastly, I broke out the Kitchens and Stefanski discussions in order to compare the word composition between the two sets of comments. Below are wordclouds showing some of the most frequently used words from the Kitchens (orange) and Stefanski (brown) threads.

The word “baker” clearly sticks out when viewing the comment threads this way as it was heavily featured in the Kitchens discussion but barely mentioned in the Stefanski thread. In fact, Baker was mentioned nearly seven times more often when Freddie was hired! On the flip side, the word offense (or offensive) was mentioned more than twice as often in the Stefanski thread. I believe this is consistent with the narratives that Freddie was hired primarily due to his relationship with Mayfield and the other Browns players (word “players” 1.5x more often for Freddie) while Stefanski was hired for his ability to scheme up an offense and call plays.

Conclusion

In summary, this analysis shows that my affection for Kitchens wasn’t completely outside the norm at the time of his hiring. However, it must also be noted that much of the Freddie love was concentrated within the Browns fanbase as Freddie’s polarity scores were roughly average within the r/nfl thread but sky high in the r/browns comments, supporting the idea that team subreddits are often echo-chambers. Who knows, perhaps this just goes to show that the consensus on Reddit may not be the most reliable predictor of future success (shocker, I know). And if that’s the case, it may be a good thing that the dummies on Reddit are talking negatively about my boy Stefanski! Oh boy, here I go getting my hopes up again…