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The Bills Have Hired a Director of Analytics


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#Bills have hired a Director of Analytics, per @RussBrandon

 

Bills Hire Analytics Man: Russ Brandon announced on WGR this morning that the team has hired Mike Lyons to be the director of the new analytics departments. He is a Western New York native with 20 years of analytics experience at Xerox. He will be involved in the football department and everything that has a probability factor along with dealing with salary cap issues.

Edited by 26CornerBlitz
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Per Brandon's interview, this role may include providing cards for Marrone to use on the sideline to help him make decisions in various game situations. Pretty cool.

 

That would be cool. Imagine being some number cruncher at Xerox and now you get to be walking the sideline, telling an NFL coach to go for it on 4th down.

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Bills launch analytics department with hire of Lyons: http://www.buffalobills.com/news/article-2/Bills-launch-analytics-department-with-hire-of-Lyons/3bf96f90-a18a-4845-aaae-2d20cc83d72b

 

Bills President and CEO Russ Brandon called it a long and thorough process, but the team’s plan to be a progressive and attacking organization has taken a big step forward with the hiring of their Director of Analytics.

 

Michael Lyons, a former MIT and University of Rochester Simon School of Business graduate and 25-year employee at Xerox, will begin to develop the Bills’ analytics department from the ground up.

 

“Mike will be leading the department and he will work with different project teams along the way,” said Brandon. “We have a lot of pieces in place already here through the football administrative department and through the things we want to do business-wise. We have a long list of things for Mike to start working on.”

 

Lyons will work with several department heads on both the football and business sides of the organization.

 

“He’ll work closely with (Senior VP of Football Administration) Jim Overdorf, (Player Personnel Analyst) Kevin Meganck, Steven Brown, who is the assistant to coach Marrone. In the offseason he’ll work with coach Marrone directly and myself. Then as we broaden the scope of what we want to do he’ll work very heavily with the business department.”

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Per Brandon's interview, this role may include providing cards for Marrone to use on the sideline to help him make decisions in various game situations. Pretty cool.

Which interview? I heard him on wgr this morning say that he wouldn't be involved in game planning or decisions. Unless it was meant as a supporting function and not actual "coaching".

Edited by The Wiz
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The Bills are already ahead of where they've been in this department. Whenever I hear Marrone speak, he's quoting percetanges and stats - it's clear he's a student of analytics and applies it to his coaching. And it's on both sides of the ball. Last week one of the announcers mentioned that Marrone told him that when Sproles is on the field, the Saints pass 80% of the time. You hear this type of thing from Marrone all of the time. He's light years ahead of previous Bills' coaches when it comes to analytics and it shows in their preparation each week. I'm happy about it.

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