After the game, my assistants jump on the plane and bury themselves in their laptops to review the film and go over all the statistics and analytics and sometimes I walk on the plane and catch them doing it, I tell them to put down their laptops and get out of the analytics rabbit hole… “we lost that game because we couldn’t tackle.”
Paraprahsing from the HBO documentary, The Art of Coaching: Belichick and Saban
Tech, Tech Everywhere
Coming up in strength and conditioning, doing internships at places that had all this fancy tech, I started thinking about its importance right away.
All the interns would talk about how many different things this new tech tracked and I would stand there and question(silently), “ yeah but does it really matter?”
There were a few “nice to have” things, but essentially it was all non-essential. It looked cool, it got people talking, but it was mostly noise.
When I transitioned to coaching junior hockey after those internship experiences, I quickly found out the “Analytics R Life”(throw that on a tee-shirt) crowd exists in this space as well.
The Problem(s)?
We have a culture that prizes measuring things over understanding people, and hence is disproportionately weak at both seeking and recognising psychological answers.
-Rory Sutherland, Alchemy
Coaches are thinking too rationally
What looks like a defensive zone problem is a people problem.
When your powerplay stats are down, it’s a people problem.
All your analytics problems are people problems.
And sometimes, your people “couldn’t tackle” one game.
People are psycho-logical problems that can’t be solved with rational solutions.
We have too many Belichick assistants, not enough Belichick’s.
Coaching the players is harder than looking at the stats
Dealing with people often means making your best attempt to solve the problem. There’s a chance we fail. We’d rather not fail. So we repeat rational things we’ve told the players, “100 times, do it this way.” (guilty of this)
But they are young adults with non-fully developed frontal cortexes. (they can’t even think on your rational level)
“Meeting them where they are.”
“Speaking their language.”
Knowing they aren’t rational, neither of these things will be solved with your rationality, logic, and statistical analysis.
When you do measure, measure what matters
Distance covered?
The best players are some of the most efficient in their movement. They only go when they need to go.
Top speed?
The best also only go at the appropriate speed for the game situation. They often beat their opponent with a change of speed, not top speed. Change of speed combined with misdirection doesn’t get tracked on the spreadsheet.
If everything is important, nothing is important. Decide what matters. Decide what doesn’t matter. Measuring everything is for baking.
The Antidote to the Problem
In trying to encourage rational behaviour, don’t confine yourself to rational arguments.
-Also Rory Sutherland in Alchemy
Talk to your people, try to understand them better.
What were you seeing out there? What is your perspective?
What were your other options?
What, if anything, would you do differently next time?
Less analytics, more human conversation.
Less logical, more psycho-logical.
More “their language”, less “your numbers.”
More alchemy, less human checkers.
Data-informed, not “data-driven.”