The Philadelphia Eagles went heavy on the sports science craze while Chip Kelly was the head coach, and it appears that Howie Roseman and crew have decided to keep certain facets despite Kelly moving on, and Doug Pederson taking the reigns. The Eagles are now implementing the analytics and sports science stuff into roster building.
According to Tim McManus of ESPN.com, Roseman and the Eagles have been at the forefront of utilizing analytics and sports science to help the team increase the rate of successful signings when it comes to free agency. According to McManus, Roseman was able to get team owner Jeffrey Lurie to sign off on a player that he originally had reservations about.
“When we started the process with this free agent and went over his age and his background, Jeffery is like, ‘This doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why are we doing that?’ And I said, ‘Here’s what we think from an analytical perspective, here’s what we think from a value cap/cash perspective, and here’s our scouting perspective. Let me send you all the information, let’s get back on the phone because this is what I’m looking at. And we got back on the phone and he said, ‘Not only am I in favor of this, but this seems like a great value.’
For the Eagles and Roseman, it involves traditional scouting and advanced analytics, that allows the Eagles to grade a player based off what the teams see on film and testing numbers to help determine who’ll be the best value signing.
“We use this now for everything we do,” Roseman said of sports science, which he described as the integration of strength and conditioning and the medical and training staff. “Before we sign a free agent, we’ll have our sports scientists look at how the gait is of this player to see if there’s anything that may give us a heads-up on a decline. We’ll have them go to the combine and separately look at guys.
Here’s to hoping the Eagles continue to make good bets in free agency and elsewhere.
