Rookie Data and Depth - Original Analysis

[SpclKen]

Howdy Huddle! I was reading some articles today and thinking how much I enjoyed the sporadic original content and analysis that gets posted or linked on this site. I thought maybe i should stop lurking and post some content that some of you may find interesting. Pondering what I could possibly offer,  thought back to last year during the win streak to close out the season and how many rookies were starting. I asked myself.. "Spclken, is that normal for the Panthers to start this many rookies in a year? I wonder what that says about our depth and our competitiveness?"    (I try not to talk to myself that much, but 7-0 will do that to you).

With that small thought I began to dig through historical data to look at rookie starts and to see if that correlated at all to wins during a season. I hope you will find the data and players as interesting as I did.

 

Team                         Record                         Rookie Starts            Number of Rookies         

2015 Carolina            7-0                                      5                           1                                        

Players: Shaq Thompson

2014 Carolina            7-8-1                                  52                         10                                       

Players: Benjamin, Benwikere, Boston, Bersin, Brown, Foucault, Glanton, Norwell, Reaves, Turner 

2013 Carolina            12-4                                   32                         4                                         

Players: Klein, Lester, Star, Melvin White    

2012 Carolina            7-9                                     50                         5                                         

Players: DJ Campbell, Robert Lester, Frank Alexander, LUUUUKE, NORMAN, Silatolu

2011 Carolina            6-10                                    58                         7                                         

Players: Byron Bell, Richie Brockel, Sione Fua, Frank Kearse, Terrell McClain, Jonathan Nelson, CAM

 

The data can get significantly more granular if you want to start looking at snaps played by rookies to see who was pressed into playing time vs rotations to develop. I may play with a few other teams to see if this is a common theme of being forced to start rookies showing up in the in the Losses column. My personal belief is that a reliance on rookies will cost a team games the first year, but every time a large group of rookie start happened, the next year should show improvement because the depth increases. I think this is what a lot of analysts talk about a "Window to Win". When a team has contributors on cheap contracts they have a deep team that isn't forced to start rookies, and haven't yet lost those players to free agency or a second contract. Looking at our current cap, and rookies, we have this and next year to make a push before we may have to start a significant amount of rookies because of attrition of our 2012 and 2014 draft class to injuries and Free Agency.

 

I am not sure how many starts we will get out of rookies this year. Maybe 20 total? I don't see anyone besides Williams and Shaq getting a start.

[Mr. Scot]

I'd say needing more rookies to start is generally a sign that your team had more holes.

[Marguide]

Harken back to when Rivera was newly hired. Ron emphasized that he wanted to put together a staff of teachers. Contrast this with coaches known more for play calling prowess, or known for bringing discipline to a team.

We may be seeing the fruits of this emphasis now. And maybe Rivera and staff deserve some of the credit for Gettleman's hidden gems. Perhaps we are better than most at coaching these guys up.

[KB_fan]

Nice analysis, thanks and welcome to the Huddle.  I'm glad others are eager to provide some original analysis.  I've fallen WAY off on that side of things lately as I try to get back ahead of the curve at work after a few tough weeks.  Getting close...

I also did some analysis re: rookie starts and win percentage earlier this year.  I agree with you that there seems to be a really strong correlation between fewer rookie starts and higher wins.  I did look at other teams for 2014, and the pattern holds.  It's not just the Panthers.

Let me see if I can find the threads.  (Search is funky, and the blogs seem to have disappeared.  So I don't know where my "Panthers Analysis" blog is...)

 

[KB_fan]

36 minutes ago, Mr. Scot said:

I'd say neding more rookies to start is generally a sign that your team had more holes.

Yes, and probably indicates some kind of rebuilding / cap hell situation as we know all too well.  Need cheap players = start rookies.

[KB_fan]

Hmmm.  The blogs really have disappeared, so most of the work I did analyzing rookie starts and games played, and win percentage is currently offline,

You can see a Google cache here, but none of the tables show up. 

Cache of blog entry

I *MAY* have saved my blog entry as a document on my hard drive.  I'll have to look...If I find it, I'll post it here again.

And here's a forum post which links the blog entry with a bit of related interesting discussion:

http://www.carolinahuddle.com/boards/topic/118627-new-blog-entry-rookie-starting-levels-wins-across-the-nfl-in-2014/

[KB_fan]

No, I don't seem to have a saved copy of my Rookie Starts & Wins blog entry, but I do have all the saved tables and charts.  For now let me just post those.  Now time for further discussion or analysis tonight.

[ladypanther]

Nice post Ken.

Just curious, did you have to make a donation to post?  If so, well done.

 

[Moorgan]

3 hours ago, Marguide said:

Harken back to when Rivera was newly hired. Ron emphasized that he wanted to put together a staff of teachers. Contrast this with coaches known more for play calling prowess, or known for bringing discipline to a team.

We may be seeing the fruits of this emphasis now. And maybe Rivera and staff deserve some of the credit for Gettleman's hidden gems. Perhaps we are better than most at coaching these guys up.

I'm guessing that Rivera's ties to the military could have an impact on this. The military isn't just about yelling as seen in the movies. It's more about leading, training and developing as well as attention to detail. All of those qualities would serve a head coach well. Grown men want to be lead not yelled at.

[SpclKen]

KB fan, you went way down the rabbit hole. Great data. That is exactly what I was going to look at doing and it is cool that you see the same trends across the league as you did in my small data set. I did have a thought, when I was writing down the names of players that had the starts, it seems to me that players on the D do not have as large as an impact as Offensive rookies on the W/L column. That may be a fun exercise to go through to see if that proves out. 

 

Also it is weird how quickly some of those players that were part of the 12-4 team that started are no longer even on a roster in the NFL. White and Lester aren't playing anywhere. Shows how much our secondary has improved in the last two years.