Achievement Metrics sells sound of success in NFL draft prospects

The career passer ratings of several NFL quarterbacks show how their performance has matched up against Achievement Metrics' assessment of their speech while the players were in college. The chart places the players according to their scores for "positive power,” or their belief in the ability to influence outcomes, and “in-group affiliation,” or how well they interact with a group. The firm cautions that the report "is designed for informational purposes only" and "should not be construed to guarantee a player’s future performance or behavior and is not a comprehensive statement, evaluation, or judgment of any player’s character or future performance."

Here are a couple of interesting articles and graphics presented at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference http://www.sloansportsconference.com/ by a firm by the name of Achievement Metrics.

They may have some potential to replace the Wonderlic test to help NFL teams better assess the intangibles they are looking for in QB's and other leadership positions.

If they do a decent job in sorting out the leader for a couple of drafts, the NFL will beat a quick path to their door and as always, it helps if the QB or MLB can make plays. Interesting stuff in that it seems like it attempts to quantify that which has historically been a "gut-feel" thing among scouts. The interviews at the combine are supposedly where teams either hit or miss big on some of these guys and anything that can be objectively quantified is going to give GM's and owners more of a "warm and fuzzy" feeling before they invest big dollars in a guy. It might even help finding that later round, smaller school guy who has better potential to succeed a similar prospect from a larger, more visible school.

from AchievmentMetrics.com
Achievement Metrics sells sound of success in NFL draft prospects « News « Achievement Metrics:

How an individual speaks, he said, is a gauge as to how they think, and the company thinks NFL franchises could find that valuable when they analyze how to spend millions of dollars on player contracts.

The career passer ratings of several NFL quarterbacks show how their performance has matched up against Achievement Metrics' assessment of their speech while the players were in college. The chart places the players according to their scores for "positive power,” or their belief in the ability to influence outcomes, and “in-group affiliation,” or how well they interact with a group. The firm cautions that the report "is designed for informational purposes only" and "should not be construed to guarantee a player’s future performance or behavior and is not a comprehensive statement, evaluation, or judgment of any player’s character or future performance."

Online magazine Slate.com has a more detailed breakdown of the science, but Hall said the brief pitch is this – it creates psychological profiles of player prospects based on words used in spontaneous speech.

It isn’t a grammar test. An algorithm analyzes speech to determine traits such as “conceptual complexity,” or whether a prospect views the world in shades of gray or clearly pall mall cigarettes delineates it in black and white; “positive power,” or belief in the ability to influence outcomes; and “in-group affiliation,” or how a prospect associates – well or poorly – with a group.

'via Blog this'

USE YOUR WORDS

from AchievmentMetrics.com
http://www.achievementmetrics.com/archives/319

It’s notoriously difficult to figure out which top collegiate quarterbacks will succeed in the NFL. Pro teams give prospects an SAT-type test called the Wonderlic test, which doesn’t parliament cigarettes predict all that accurately.  A company called Achievement Metrics, on the other hand, studies the words college athletes use in media interviews. Some use words that signal high degrees of confidence, conceptual complexity and team orientation. Others use words that signal self-centeredness and distrust.

The results of their work were recently written up by Machael Agger in Slate. The most arresting example concerns a choice the San Francisco 49ers faced in 2005, whether to draft Alex Smith or Aaron Rodgers as their future quarterback. Both were college stars and Smith had a phenomenal score on the Wonderlic test. But Smith didn’t use common leadership words in his interviews, while Rodgers had leadership words spewing out of his mouth.

The method assumes that the words we blurt out in a quick interview are a window into our soul. I don’t know if that’s true, but they might be as good an indicator of football performance as an IQ test.

David Brooks
Source: New York Times

from slate.com
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2011/04/will_cam_newton_be_a_bust.single.html

As you can see, Cam Newton is in what I've termed the "quadrant of doom." He talks like other first-round draft picks—Matt Leinart, Alex Smith, Brady Quinn—who have bombed in the NFL. Does this mean Newton is destined for a disastrous career? Absolutely not. This year's No. 1 pick could defy the probabilities and become a success in the NFL, just the way that Carson Palmer has done.

More jarring, perhaps, is the presence of Tim Tebow in the quadrant of doom. Though his on-field readiness for the NFL has been debated endlessly, nobody disputes his skill as a leader and orator. The pledge he made after a 2008 loss to Ole Miss—"You will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season"—is even inscribed on a plaque at his alma mater. Although this sounds uplifting to our ears, the algorithm heard something different. It detected a guy who had a little less love for the team and a little less belief in himself than his peers did.

The big surprise in the first round was the Minnesota Vikings' pick of Christian Ponder, a quarterback whom many had projected to go in the third round. On the NFL network, the assembled pundits couldn't stop repeating "there's something about this guy." He's in the "Julius Caesar" quadrant, along with his fellow first-round draft picks Jake Locker and Blaine Gabbert. The other highly regarded quarterbacks in the draft, Andy Dalton (taken by the Bengals as the 35^th pick) and Ryan Mallett (taken by the Patriots in the 3^rd round) also talk (at least) like winners.