Draft Analysis - We're All Debi from Depew

[hondo in seattle]

8 hours ago, Rampant Buffalo said:

 

Your post isn't specific to Beane in particular. It's defense of pretty much every NFL front office for the past few decades.

 

With that in mind, I'd like to take a trip down memory lane, to the 2006 draft. Marv Levy was the Bills' GM, Dick Jauron was the head coach. Levy/Jauron used the 8th overall pick to draft Donte Whitner, SS. Then, they traded back up into the first round, to take John McCargo, DT. Nick Mangold, C, was drafted one pick later.

 

A number of fans decried these picks. Many wanted the 8th overall pick to be used on Ngata, a defensive lineman. I personally wanted the Bills to take Jay Cutler, QB. Many, including myself, wanted the Bills to take Mangold.

 

Whitner was not a bad player, but he never came anywhere close to living up to his lofty draft position. Ngata had a great career, and was much better than Whitner. Cutler played well for the Broncos for a number of years. When they finally traded him away, they received 2 first round picks, Kyle Orton, and some other stuff. That's two more first round picks, one more Kyle Orton, and one more instance of other stuff than the Bills received for the departure of Whitner. Whitner went first-contract-and-out. McCargo was a bust, and Mangold was the NFL's best center for a long number of years. The Bills made do with a backup caliber center, in the form of Melvin Fowler.

 

In the late '70s, during the middle of a game, Notre Dame benched their starting QB. They put in a backup instead. The crowd started cheering. "What is going on?" asked a reporter from the opposing team. "We just put Joe Montana in the game," a Notre Dame reporter replied. "Now you guys are going to lose." The fans recognized what Notre Dame had in Joe Montana before the coaching staff did.

 

Excessive knowledge is not a substitute for insight. Sometimes, the fans are right, and coaches or front offices are wrong. Beane is a better GM than Levy/Jauron, and he's not going to do anything as boneheaded as drafting Donte Whitner 8th overall. But even Beane can make avoidable mistakes. If or when a GM or coach makes an avoidable mistake, it will often be pointed out by at least some fans. To broadly label all fan criticisms "Debi from Depew" demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the last 20 years of this team's history. 

 

I respectfully disagree.

 

As for my post being a defense of all GMs.   There's an element of truth to this.  But I specifically mentioned Matt Millen.   I've listened to Millen talk.  The guy is bright and knows far more about players than the average fan.  He still sucked as a GM because the average fan isn't the measuring stick.  As a GM, he was up against a lot of other talented GMs with good scouts beneath them.  He failed against that level of competition.  

 

Drafting is a combination of subjective evaluation and predictive science that is inevitably imperfect.  Every GM will have a Donte Whitner on their resume.  But the probability of a GM getting a draft pick right is far greater than a fan getting a draft pick right because of all the hours or research an NFL team puts into the process.   We simply don't have the resources to do the same level of due diligence.  

 

The fact that some fans decried the Whitner pick proves nothing about probability.  It's anecdotal.   Jeane Dixon predicted Kennedy's assassination.  That doesn't mean she was prescient.  She also predicted that WWIII would begin in 1958 and made a lot of other poor predictions.   But people focused on the big one she reportedly got right.  A mathematician called this the "Jeanne Dixon Effect."  Fans are the same way.  They focus on the random predictions they get right.  That doesn't mean they have "insight."    

 

I demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the past 20 years of Bills football???  I'm not sure why you want to personally attack me that way.  I've watched nearly every Bills game for the past 20++ years.  But that's irrelevant.  The bigger point is Beane and his staff have a track record of success.  It's not a perfect track record.  As Tom Brady recently reminded us, there are no rings.  But since Beane's arrival, the Bills are one of the winningest teams in the league.  Debi does not a similar track record.  So, yeah, I trust Beane more than Debi from Depew.  When Debi demonstrates the ability to put together a team that perennially reaches the NFL playoffs, that's when I'll listen.  

 

 

 

[518Buffalo]

My hot take is that while professionals have far more information and knowledge than fans, and while having more information is better in a vacuum, it can also lead to poor decision making if a GM over indexes on information that doesn't matter. What analytics does is it reduces the player down to a handful of data points that are known to be somewhat predictive of NFL success. Analytics doesn't model the player holistically, so it misses some context behind the numbers and also who the player is as a person. But if say a player is an excellent human being and wows the staff in person, they might let that information cloud any statistical red flags that us dumb fans wouldn't ignore. That's basically what I'm worried about with Coleman - though of course that's what we were worried about with Josh Allen and it turned out that the Bills staff nailed their assessment of him.

 

That said, I do obviously trust Brandon Beane, and I would never claim that my uninformed opinion is better. But GMs get it wrong all the time and a lot of the time it's the surface level stuff that fans see that makes it obvious in hindsight

[Rampant Buffalo]

3 hours ago, hondo in seattle said:

 

I respectfully disagree.

 

As for my post being a defense of all GMs.   There's an element of truth to this.  But I specifically mentioned Matt Millen.   I've listened to Millen talk.  The guy is bright and knows far more about players than the average fan.  He still sucked as a GM because the average fan isn't the measuring stick.  As a GM, he was up against a lot of other talented GMs with good scouts beneath them.  He failed against that level of competition.  

 

Drafting is a combination of subjective evaluation and predictive science that is inevitably imperfect.  Every GM will have a Donte Whitner on their resume.  But the probability of a GM getting a draft pick right is far greater than a fan getting a draft pick right because of all the hours or research an NFL team puts into the process.   We simply don't have the resources to do the same level of due diligence.  

 

The fact that some fans decried the Whitner pick proves nothing about probability.  It's anecdotal.   Jeane Dixon predicted Kennedy's assassination.  That doesn't mean she was prescient.  She also predicted that WWIII would begin in 1958 and made a lot of other poor predictions.   But people focused on the big one she reportedly got right.  A mathematician called this the "Jeanne Dixon Effect."  Fans are the same way.  They focus on the random predictions they get right.  That doesn't mean they have "insight."    

 

I demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the past 20 years of Bills football???  I'm not sure why you want to personally attack me that way.  I've watched nearly every Bills game for the past 20++ years.  But that's irrelevant.  The bigger point is Beane and his staff have a track record of success.  It's not a perfect track record.  As Tom Brady recently reminded us, there are no rings.  But since Beane's arrival, the Bills are one of the winningest teams in the league.  Debi does not a similar track record.  So, yeah, I trust Beane more than Debi from Depew.  When Debi demonstrates the ability to put together a team that perennially reaches the NFL playoffs, that's when I'll listen.  

 

 

 

 

First off, it was not my intention to personally attack you. If that's how my earlier post came across, I apologize.

 

That said, knowledge is not a substitute for insight. People with excessive amounts of knowledge can sometimes make worse decisions than those who have some knowledge, but who are not subject matter experts. Why?

 

There are times when one key piece of knowledge is what's necessary to make the right decision. A highly intelligent and insightful person, who also has a lot of knowledge, will often grasp that one key piece of information. Now imagine a different person who isn't necessarily as clear a thinker, but who has also accumulated vast amounts of knowledge. This vast pile of knowledge is like a haystack, and the person in question must decide which parts of the haystack are the needles.

 

When the Bills drafted E.J. Manuel, Doug Whaley was very pleased. Very excited about Manuel. One of the things Whaley was most pleased by was that when Manuel walked into a room, he exuded a commanding presence. Also, Manuel had done well in his interviews with the Bills.

 

Whaley had a lot of knowledge about Manuel that I didn't have. But, when I watched Manuel's highlight videos, there was nothing there. No special passes. Pretty much every pass I saw was something which could have been done by an average college QB. That was the needle. For Whaley, that needle got lost in his haystack of other knowledge about Manuel.

[HOUSE]

I was the one who offered up flowers for Matt Milano

[Buffalo716]

The bills put more money into their scouting department than most NFL teams 

 

The Bengals had like only four or five scouts 5 years ago... They were notoriously cheap and relied on national blesto scouts

[hondo in seattle]

4 minutes ago, Rampant Buffalo said:

 

First off, it was not my intention to personally attack you. If that's how my earlier post came across, I apologize.

 

That said, knowledge is not a substitute for insight. People with excessive amounts of knowledge can sometimes make worse decisions than those who have some knowledge, but who are not subject matter experts. Why?

 

There are times when one key piece of knowledge is what's necessary to make the right decision. A highly intelligent and insightful person, who also has a lot of knowledge, will often grasp that one key piece of information. Now imagine a different person who isn't necessarily as clear a thinker, but who has also accumulated vast amounts of knowledge. This vast pile of knowledge is like a haystack, and the person in question must decide which parts of the haystack are the needles.

 

When the Bills drafted E.J. Manuel, Doug Whaley was very pleased. Very excited about Manuel. One of the things Whaley was most pleased by was that when Manuel walked into a room, he exuded a commanding presence. Also, Manuel had done well in his interviews with the Bills.

 

Whaley had a lot of knowledge about Manuel that I didn't have. But, when I watched Manuel's highlight videos, there was nothing there. No special passes. Pretty much every pass I saw was something which could have been done by an average college QB. That was the needle. For Whaley, that needle got lost in his haystack of other knowledge about Manuel.

 

The EJ Manuel pick was indeed perplexing.  I do remember the remarks about his commanding presence.  And comments about his big hands being an advantage in the cold winds of Buffalo.  Big hands and a commanding presence aren't enough to make a great NFL QB.  The focus on these traits didn't give anyone the impression Whaley did a good, holistic evaluation and I always wondered what the discussions were like among the Bills scouts.  What were they collectively seeing?  Or was Whaley the only one seeing it?   

 

Another perplexing one was Aaron Maybin and his one good college season, indifference toward football, and 'quick first step.'

 

But let's say I sit down at a poker table in Vegas next to a professional poker player.  I don't know squat about poker.  But I'm smart enough to realize the pro is reading my tells.  So I start sending false tells and win a hand.  At that point, I'm thinking, "I just outsmarted a know-it-all, arrogant pro!"  And I did!  My native genius won out!!!

 

Of course, by the end of the evening, he's humming a cheerful tune as I'm on the phone explaining to my wife how I lost our entire life savings.  In the end, his mathematical calculations, ability to read opponents, and knowledge of poker strategy overwhelm my meager skill.  

 

Beane is like the professional poker player.  Except he's not playing alone.  He's got an entire team of experts in his ear buds.  You and I can win a hand here or there but in the long run, the expertise and resources of the pros will win out.   

 

It's fun to second-guess and argue about picks but I'm confident that if Beane's picks were put against the average fan's or sportswriter's (picking in the same spots), Beane would come out ahead.  It's only realism to acknowledge that the probability of Beane being right on any given pick is greater than mine.  So, yeah, I'm concerned about Coleman's lack of speed and the shortcomings evident in other players we drafted.  But I'm keeping an open mind until I see them play in a Bills uni.    

[Jauronimo]

On 4/28/2024 at 1:06 PM, HardyBoy said:

 

Um dude, he's saying people shouldn't listen to Debbie from Depew, not that Bills leadership and scouting should be proud they know more than Debbie.

He's saying you and @GoBills808 are Debbie from Depew.

[GoBills808]

8 minutes ago, Jauronimo said:

He's saying you and @GoBills808 are Debbie from Depew.

I'm saying I'm Debbie from Depew

 

no case too small no generational QB left unweaponed

[Rampant Buffalo]

8 minutes ago, hondo in seattle said:

 

The EJ Manuel pick was indeed perplexing.  I do remember the remarks about his commanding presence.  And comments about his big hands being an advantage in the cold winds of Buffalo.  Big hands and a commanding presence aren't enough to make a great NFL QB.  The focus on these traits didn't give anyone the impression Whaley did a good, holistic evaluation and I always wondered what the discussions were like among the Bills scouts.  What were they collectively seeing?  Or was Whaley the only one seeing it?   

 

Another perplexing one was Aaron Maybin and his one good college season, indifference toward football, and 'quick first step.'

 

But let's say I sit down at a poker table in Vegas next to a professional poker player.  I don't know squat about poker.  But I'm smart enough to realize the pro is reading my tells.  So I start sending false tells and win a hand.  At that point, I'm thinking, "I just outsmarted a know-it-all, arrogant pro!"  And I did!  My native genius won out!!!

 

Of course, by the end of the evening, he's humming a cheerful tune as I'm on the phone explaining to my wife how I lost our entire life savings.  In the end, his mathematical calculations, ability to read opponents, and knowledge of poker strategy overwhelm my meager skill.  

 

Beane is like the professional poker player.  Except he's not playing alone.  He's got an entire team of experts in his ear buds.  You and I can win a hand here or there but in the long run, the expertise and resources of the pros will win out.   

 

It's fun to second-guess and argue about picks but I'm confident that if Beane's picks were put against the average fan's or sportswriter's (picking in the same spots), Beane would come out ahead.  It's only realism to acknowledge that the probability of Beane being right on any given pick is greater than mine.  So, yeah, I'm concerned about Coleman's lack of speed and the shortcomings evident in other players we drafted.  But I'm keeping an open mind until I see them play in a Bills uni.    

 

A professional poker player will have played many thousands of hands of poker, and will have had good results, on average. The environment of professional poker is very good at weeding out everyone except the highly competent. It's a ruthless, highly Darwinian environment. A highly skilled player will almost always be able to elbow aside a less skilled player. And in turn be elbowed aside by someone even more highly skilled.

 

The same is not necessarily true of NFL front offices. When Buddy Nix was retiring, the one candidate the Bills seriously considered for his successor was Doug Whaley. Others might have had more natural aptitude for the position, but hadn't built Doug Whaley's connections. Doug Whaley and his scouts worked incredibly long hours. But they were not subjected to the same ruthless, Darwinian environment as professional poker players.

 

A typical GM gets seven picks per draft, which is analogous to a poker player playing seven hands of poker per year. Moreover, not much is expected from day 3 picks. Also, it takes several years to evaluate draft picks. Bad GMs are weeded out much more slowly than bad poker players. If a front office guy worked 20 hours a week, he'd be weeded out quickly, because the length of a workweek is easily measured. But if a front office guy makes bad draft picks, it will probably take years for him to get weeded out.

 

That's why during the playoff drought, the Bills saw first round picks like Aaron Maybin, Donte Whitner, John McCargo, J.P. Losman, E.J. Manuel, etc.

[Mikey152]

On 4/28/2024 at 4:53 PM, Einstein said:

 

I would like to see some non-anecdotal data for this assertion.

 

A few years back an analysis was run on the Bills draft record during their drought. Nearly 20 years of data. In that span, it was shown via analysis that if the Bills front office had simply followed a publicly available player ranking (think: Kiper, McShay, etc), they would have drafted more impact players than they actually did.

 

A similar one was down for Oakland I believe.

Thats right - the professional NFL front offices of multiple teams, with access to dozens of scouts, in-person interviews, and player data galore, was beaten out by a generic player ranking list. 

 

Too many people buy into the “expert” fallacy. That simply because someone does something for a living, that they are better at that job than someone who doesn’t do it for a living. It’s not always accurate. 

 

Retrospective validation is inherently flawed. It assumes that the only variable is the player, as if they are just plug and play. 

 

Example:  Twin kickers, identical in every single way...one goes to a dome and the other goes to Buffalo. Who do you has the higher odds of winding up with a better FG%?

 

Things like coaches, teammates, personal life, etc all have impact on how well a guy performs. Using such a simple model as comparing the actual draft to a big board is incredibly simplistic...

 

Everyone likes to say the Bills are lucky because they drafted Josh...as if they had nothing to do with his development. Or that Buffalo wasn't a good fit as a town.

 

Sure, general consensus on a players value can be guided by group think...everyone watches these guys play. But lets be real...most of these big boards are based on what industry guys tell these prognosticators. They talk to scouts and GMs. Their opinion isn't just their own. But it is generic. There is no way to know what a team values or needs better than the team picking.

Edited May 7 by Mikey152

[HomeskillitMoorman]

I somewhat trust Beane. It's his head coach that I don't trust at all. 

[GoBills808]

10 minutes ago, Rampant Buffalo said:

 

A professional poker player will have played many thousands of hands of poker, and will have had good results, on average. The environment of professional poker is very good at weeding out everyone except the highly competent. It's a ruthless, highly Darwinian environment. A highly skilled player will almost always be able to elbow aside a less skilled player. And in turn be elbowed aside by someone even more highly skilled.

 

The same is not necessarily true of NFL front offices. When Buddy Nix was retiring, the one candidate the Bills seriously considered for his successor was Doug Whaley. Others might have had more natural aptitude for the position, but hadn't built Doug Whaley's connections. Doug Whaley and his scouts worked incredibly long hours. But they were not subjected to the same ruthless, Darwinian environment as professional poker players.

 

A typical GM gets seven picks per draft, which is analogous to a poker player playing seven hands of poker per year. Moreover, not much is expected from day 3 picks. Also, it takes several years to evaluate draft picks. Bad GMs are weeded out much more slowly than bad poker players. If a front office guy worked 20 hours a week, he'd be weeded out quickly, because the length of a workweek is easily measured. But if a front office guy makes bad draft picks, it will probably take years for him to get weeded out.

 

That's why during the playoff drought, the Bills saw first round picks like Aaron Maybin, Donte Whitner, John McCargo, J.P. Losman, E.J. Manuel, etc.

Excellent analogy 👍

 

To further it we can consider the positional importance of QB as it pertains to overall team success...it would be like the reg who goes on a heater and wins the One Drop or main event

[Einstein]

1 hour ago, Mikey152 said:

 

Retrospective validation is inherently flawed. It assumes that the only variable is the player, as if they are just plug and play. 

 

Example:  Twin kickers, identical in every single way...one goes to a dome and the other goes to Buffalo. Who do you has the higher odds of winding up with a better FG%?

 

These are just excuses. Most players drafted in the first 4 rounds get several chances on multiple teams. If it were just the circumstance they were drafted into, they would surely show their worth on another team. One example is Sammy Watkins. Yes, he was drafted into a poor situation with EJ Manuel, but he had many other opportunities - including with a HOF QB - and still couldn’t put anything together.

[Shaw66]

On 4/28/2024 at 2:38 PM, Mikie2times said:

I think people are much more pissed off over our philosophy than specific players.

That's an interesting point, but the response is the same.  I can have a point of view about the philosophy the Bills seem to have, and mine might be better than theirs.  However, the PROBABILITY that mine is better than theirs is very small.   The people running the Bills, just like the people running most other franchises, each have years, even decades, invested in watching, learning, and growing with pro football, and that experience is something I cannot replicate by watching ESPN are reading the Athletic.  

 

It's fun to think about and talk about what the Bills are doing and what they should do, but I think the chances are slim that any of us a better understanding of what needs to be done than Beane and McDermott and their staff.  

[Shaw66]

Hondo -

 

It will come as no surprise to many around here that I generally agree with what you said.  The Bills accumulate more data, probably by a factor of ten or more, than any of us here has available to evaluate players, whether they are coming out of college or they are free agent veterans.  And that information is valuable.  

 

However, I think you're a bit unfair to posters here.   There are a lot of people here who actually spend a lot of time reading, studying, and watching film.  Not as much as the Bills do, but a lot nevertheless.   (And the law of diminishing returns works here, too.   The first ten hours of study is generally more valuable than the second ten, and the second ten is more valuable than the third ten.  After a while, the extended study is just producing data, but not knowledge.)  Those people are learning things, and when they post here they allowing all of us to have the benefit of the time and thinking they put into their work.  Yes, there's a bit of group-think that takes over, and that is a problem, but it does not alter the fact that a lot of people share a lot of interesting information here that educates all of us.  

 

I tend to trust the Bills over posters here, because they're professionals, they're smart, and they're committed.  But I also value the thinking of people here who put in the time to have intelligent and informed points of view about the team's personnel decisions.  

[hondo in seattle]

49 minutes ago, Shaw66 said:

Hondo -

 

It will come as no surprise to many around here that I generally agree with what you said.  The Bills accumulate more data, probably by a factor of ten or more, than any of us here has available to evaluate players, whether they are coming out of college or they are free agent veterans.  And that information is valuable.  

 

However, I think you're a bit unfair to posters here.   There are a lot of people here who actually spend a lot of time reading, studying, and watching film.  Not as much as the Bills do, but a lot nevertheless.   (And the law of diminishing returns works here, too.   The first ten hours of study is generally more valuable than the second ten, and the second ten is more valuable than the third ten.  After a while, the extended study is just producing data, but not knowledge.)  Those people are learning things, and when they post here they allowing all of us to have the benefit of the time and thinking they put into their work.  Yes, there's a bit of group-think that takes over, and that is a problem, but it does not alter the fact that a lot of people share a lot of interesting information here that educates all of us.  

 

I tend to trust the Bills over posters here, because they're professionals, they're smart, and they're committed.  But I also value the thinking of people here who put in the time to have intelligent and informed points of view about the team's personnel decisions.  

 

 

Shaw, I always value your opinion and you make a good point here.   

 

But imagine this scenario.  Take the 20 best posters from TBD.  Pay them enough so they quit their jobs and study football full time all year long.  Send them to scouting seminars with America's best personnel guys.  Give them access to an analytics department to provide them with good predictive data.  Introduce them to, and give them the contact information for, 100 or so college coaches.  Show them tape of every D1 college football game.  Let them attend the combine.  Have them interview players.  If they want to fully vet a player, allow them to hire PIs.  Give them an annual budget of $3 million or so to make all this happen.  And with all that, you have the Bills personnel department.  

 

But you are right about the law of diminishing returns.  And someone else brought up the idea of collective intelligence.  Maybe no one Bills fan can draft better than Beane and his team.  But maybe if we put together a team of the 500 smartest Bills draftniks, they could outperform Beane and his staff.  I'm open minded to that idea.   

 

I just want and hope others to remain open-minded and humble.  Some of the picks will turn out better (or worse) than we think.  

 

 

Edited May 7 by hondo in seattle

[TBBills Fan]

What if my mailing address was Depew but I lived in the Lancaster side?  Can I still call in?

[Shaw66]

2 hours ago, hondo in seattle said:

 

 

Shaw, I always value your opinion and you make a good point here.   

 

But imagine this scenario.  Take the 20 best posters from TBD.  Pay them enough so they quit their jobs and study football full time all year long.  Send them to scouting seminars with America's best personnel guys.  Give them access to an analytics department to provide them with good predictive data.  Introduce them to, and give them the contact information for, 100 or so college coaches.  Show them tape of every D1 college football game.  Let them attend the combine.  Have them interview players.  If they want to fully vet a player, allow them to hire PIs.  Give them an annual budget of $3 million or so to make all this happen.  And with all that, you have the Bills personnel department.  

 

But you are right about the law of diminishing returns.  And someone else brought up the idea of collective intelligence.  Maybe no one Bills fan can draft better than Beane and his team.  But maybe if we put together a team of the 500 smartest Bills draftniks, they could outperform Beane and his staff.  I'm open minded to that idea.   

 

I just want and hope others to remain open-minded and humble.  Some of the picks will turn out better (or worse) than we think.  

 

 

Not that's it's relevant to anything (other than a collective intelligence), I read somewhere that if you ask 1000 people how many jelly beans are in a jar of jelly beans, their answers will be all over the place.   However, the average of all their guesses usually comes out remarkably close to the actually number.  

 

Still, I like just watching the Bills and what they do, primarily on the field.  The off season is a bunch of guys just trying to give the coaches the best combination of pieces to put on the field, guys who know a lot about football.  It's interesting to me, but it's all just prelude to the games.  

[BigAl2526]

I freely admit to being woefully ignorant of the actual ranking of draft prospects.  Keon Coleman was not the wide receiver I was hoping the Bills would end up picking, but I spent all of about five minutes being disappointed.  He's the new WR for my Bills.  So, what's good about him?  He's smart, and physical.  He's very young with the opportunity to learn and get better, and he might not be as slow as his combine 40 time suggests.  So, I'm ready to wait and see what he can do.  No point in wallowing in disappointment.

[Rampant Buffalo]

5 hours ago, Shaw66 said:

I tend to trust the Bills over posters here, because they're professionals, they're smart, and they're committed. 

 

Professionals, smart, and committed? I can give you another group of people who meet that description. Medical professionals. Below is a quote from Johns Hopkins Medicine:

 

Quote

Results of the new analysis of national data found that across all clinical settings . . . an estimated 795,000 Americans die or are permanently disabled by diagnostic error each year.

 

That's just the diagnostic errors which result in death or permanent disability. The total number of medical errors is of course much higher. If highly trained, rigorously selected medical professionals can make errors at that rate, it is not necessarily the case that a Tom Donahoe, Russ Brandon, or a Doug Whaley "knows better" than any of the fans. Avoidable errors do happen in NFL front offices, just as they happen in medicine. I'd take Brandon Beane over any of our playoff drought GMs, but even he had an avoidable error (2nd round pick on Boogie Basham).

 

I firmly believe there's room for NFL front offices to get better at this. If a particular NFL front office figures out how, it could give itself a competitive advantage over other teams.