QB Skill: A Narrative of Numbers (pt. 1)

Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty ImagesThanks to the nflFastR project and NFL NextGen Stats for the timely sources of data.

It’s not easy being a football analytics guy. Gathering and managing data is time-consuming. Learning and using coding languages is tedious. Becoming adept at methods of analysis is a never-ending life’s pursuit. Putting it all together to create a hypothesis supported by data is usually met with a resounding “whatever”.

However, for me, the reward is completely worth the effort, as there is a story told by the numbers that most fans will never understand. While I don’t expect others to be as passionate about the data as I am, I do hold out hope that I can show that there is…