As part of my weekly analytics series that I write for BlueChipScouting, I believe in going right into the deep end, and as such I wrote about Kirk Cousins (one of the most controversial QBs) in week 1 and week 2, I did the same about Cam Newton. Cam Newton is one of the most beloved players in the NFL, but his play doesn't match his reputation.
The first thing I did for the article was the research. I've been accused of using data too much in the past, so the first research I did was watch every single play Cam was involved with this season. I have a subscription to NFL Gamepass, and they have every game on demand, so I watched Patriots (Cam's team) vs the Dolphins and then watched Patriots vs Seahawks.
Film Notes on Cam vs the Miami Dolphins.
Having got an idea of his play level in 2020 (small sample size), I then decided how I would break down Cam's career in an approach that people could understand the case behind the claim. Splitting his career into four parts made the most sense with a development stage (2011 to 2014), his career year (2015), his injury years (2016-2019) and his new beginnings (2020, two games in).
Before I went into my case for Cam not being great, I wanted to give people an idea of how successful he has been throughout his career. He, after all, has won almost everything in the sport.
I talked about his perception as a player and something I've noted but not researched yet about fantasy football overrating players. I talked about how most people think he is a decent, not great QB as well.
My first dissection of his career was his developmental phase (2011 to 2014), most people don't expect him to be good during this phase, but it is a nice place to start before going onto my killer point.
I choose to use EPA (Estimated Points Added) which is an efficiency metric, CPOE (Completion Percentage over Expectation) which is an accuracy metric and PFF Grades (a quantitive method of doing the "eye test"). There are other metrics around, but when trying not to overload people, those are the three I prefer to use.
When talking about each metric, I look at clusters to find comparisons. I think comparisons are great when found using clusters as they give people less personal bias to think about how good/bad the player has been during this period.
I talk about how he's done quite well during this time for efficiency, but one of his major flaws is accuracy, and that shows up a lot in the CPOE metric. I go back to the previous cluster and show how even compared to people around him, and he did terribly. I finish off the section of the article with a simple rankings table.
When talking to people about the 2015 career year, Cam Newton had people think that he had his best year yet and while that is true he had played better in some aspects before but never put it all together.
I talk in a positive approach about this year (after all he is awesome that year) but I compare the year to previous years he has had to show it is not that much better than before, but perhaps it could have been a down year for QBs in general rather than a pro-Cam year. I think I highlighted this well given I was praising him while still saying it wasn't as good as people remember.
At the end of dissecting this year, I brought up the main concern people have had which is consistency which goes straight into my next point for the whole of the third stage of his career.
For my arguments during the third phase of his career, I kept it pretty simple and kept the talking points the same. I talked about clusters, focusing on how players around his cluster don't have enough snaps to qualify as the teams have decided they aren't good enough to keep their jobs. I, also, noted how the people that are closest to him (not close enough to call clusters) all have questions about their job prospects going into 2020 or don't even have a job.
The final part of his career (to date) is 2020 and the two games he has played this season. I talk about how he looks like he is playing as good as he was in 2015 and how he should have in theory of gotten worse after changing teams.
After writing my case all built on data, I used the research from my film study on Cam Newton in 2020 to talk about how he has done this year. I note some positives and, also, the negatives that I picked up on.
To finish off the article, I have a little Q&A section of the article, which I think is a great idea that I will be using more in the future. I asked a couple of people about the article before releasing it to the public. This allowed me to get three question and answers to why I believe this while talking about data that backed my claim. I plan to update this probably daily when I get questioned about it for the next couple days.
If you would like to read the article, the link is: https://www.bluechipscouting.com/articles/zr/analytics/camnewtonbottom5qb