John Urschel will be speaking to employees where I work today.

[JR4PSU]

Speaker Series: John Urschel
John Urschel graduated from Penn State with Bachelors and Masters degrees in Mathematics. Upon graduating in 2014, he was drafted in the 5th round by the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. In 2016, he began a Doctoral program at MIT studying Applied Mathematics. He’s published several peer-reviewed articles and is an Advanced Stats Columnist for The Player’s Tribune. John was recently highlighted in Forbes’ 2017 “30 under 30” article highlighting his academic and athletic achievements.

John will be sharing his pro football perspective on the use of data and analysis in the NFL.

 

[JR4PSU]

JR,

What type of company do you work for?

https://www.sig.com/
Susquehanna International Group (SIG): private trading and institutional brokerage

 

[Jerademan74]

Speaker Series: John Urschel
John Urschel graduated from Penn State with Bachelors and Masters degrees in Mathematics. Upon graduating in 2014, he was drafted in the 5th round by the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. In 2016, he began a Doctoral program at MIT studying Applied Mathematics. He’s published several peer-reviewed articles and is an Advanced Stats Columnist for The Player’s Tribune. John was recently highlighted in Forbes’ 2017 “30 under 30” article highlighting his academic and athletic achievements.

John will be sharing his pro football perspective on the use of data and analysis in the NFL.

Urschel is a great example of someone who has both "Brains and Brawn"! I guess that's why he is playing for the Ravens, as he knows exactly what angle to take on block

 

[JR4PSU]

I have an old friend who works in applied mathematics who's initials coincidentally match yours....it appears it is just a coincidence.

Not this guy?

 

[step.eng69]

https://www.sig.com/
Susquehanna International Group (SIG): private trading and institutional brokerage

Thank goodness, my first thought was a "football factory"

 

[83wuzme]

Urschel is a very unusual guy, obviously. Most of us know somebody who is brilliant in math or science, but very few of these people are athletically gifted and fewer still are effective at public speaking and have a sense of humor.

 

[Keyser Soze 16801]

Urschel is a very unusual guy, obviously. Most of us know somebody who is brilliant in math or science, but very few of these people are athletically gifted and fewer still are effective at public speaking and have a sense of humor.

Nerds are the last people in America that it is safe to stereotype

 

[LionJim]

Nerds are the last people in America that it is safe to stereotype

Perhaps it's because they make more money than the rest of us.

 

[BobPSU92]

Please take this opportunity to remember that Penn State has a culture problem.

 

[83wuzme]

Nerds are the last people in America that it is safe to stereotype

Yeah, but he doesn't come off as a nerd. If you just met the guy and didn't know anything about him, you would probably wonder what planet he came from.

 

[JR4PSU]

Perhaps it's because they make more money than the rest of us.

I suspect that the average yearly income of professional full time athletes in America is higher than the average yearly income of professional full time mathematicians in America.

 

[hereforthebeer]

I admire John.

 

[JR4PSU]

The discussion with John Urschel was very interesting. Lots of good questions by the crowd and lots of good answers by John.

A significant amount of the discussion revolved around analytics in sports in general and in the NFL in particular. It is interesting that analytics have not made much headway in the NFL. At least not from the game perspective. Analytics in the NFL is probably used more for player evaluation than anything else at this time.

There are several reasons cited by John as to why analytics haven't gained much traction in the NFL. Certainly the biggest being the resistance by head coaches. There are some that have embraced analytics, like the Patriots. But most head coaches today are pretty old school. John did say that Harbaugh at the Ravens has embraced analytics pretty well. At least as far as it can be for now.

Another big reason that analytics has been slow in being adopted is because of the rules set down by the NFL. No computers in the press box. And even though the NFL formally adopted the Microsoft Surface, they still only allow them to be used to view the still photos that the teams have always viewed on the sidelines with printouts. So they are simply being used as digital binders for photos. And they can still only show two photos per play. Typically one photo is pre-snap and the other roughly 3 seconds after the snap. So the Surface hasn't added anything at all.

There are also real limitations to data collection and analysis in the NFL (football in general). Where sports like baseball have like 162 games per year, there is enormous amounts of data that can be stored and evaluated. In the NFL there are only 16 games. Also, with baseball, the players are all spread out and in general it is very easy to attribute performance characteristics directly to the players involved in a play. Whereas in football there are 22 players in relative confined quarters with a lot of interaction between players. This makes it very hard to attribute any particular outcome directly to one player. This is especially true on the interior line. So it's hard to get good isolated data in football.

Our company owner mentioned that he had approached Andy Reid with the idea of offering him our services (we have a ton of applied mathematics Phd(s) working here) to assist the Eagles. Andy Reid wouldn't even discuss it. Our owner asked John if he thought he would be more successful at convincing head coaches to do this than would our owner. John said absolutely. Basically because John comes from the football world and would automatically have a level of credibility out of the gate that someone from our company simply wouldn't have. Our owner told John that when he is done with his playing career he has a job here in our marketing dept if he wants it. It was a funny interchange.

There is a lot I've glossed over or left out, but these were some of the more interesting points discussed.

All-in-all interesting discussions.

 

[LionJim]

I suspect that the average yearly income of professional full time athletes in America is higher than the average yearly income of professional full time mathematicians in America.

Two reactions:
1. Good job framing your answer so that you took Bill Gates out of the equation.
2. Mathematicians ain't nerds.