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ShareThisWho is the current Dave Duerson?
Awhile back I was talking football with this kid I know. I brought up Dave Duerson as an example of something or other, and the kid had to confess to never having heard of Duerson. I scolded the kid and started muttering to myself. Never heard of Dave Duerson. Sheesh. Ever heard of the 85 Bears???!!! Awful.
A few months later, I had the occasion to do some research on Lemar Parrish. As a completely honest blogger, I have to confess that, before looking him up, I didn't know much more about Parrish than the kid did about Duerson. And Parrish was a better player. According to AV, he is the best eligible post-merger defensive back not currently in the Hall of Fame (at least until Aeneas Williams becomes eligible).
So I did the math, and realized that if you map Duerson's NFL career onto the kid's life, it looks very similar to the mapping of Parrish's career onto mine. Duerson's NFL debut happened a few months before the kid was born. Duerson retired when the kid was ten. Likewise, Parrish debuted the year before I was born, and he retired when I was 11. So the kid's only crime was being a toddler when the NFL --- and indeed the entire sports world --- attained perfection, which of course coincided with my being 12 to 14 years old.
Anyway, what's needed in these situations is the ability to translate a guy to other eras. Off the top of my head, I couldn't describe Duerson very well to the kid: he was a safety who wasn't a hall of famer but was pretty good. That really doesn't say much.
So I decided to whip up a very, very simple similar-player generator.
If you visit baseball- and/or basketball-reference, you know that they both have fairly sophisticated similarity scores on their player pages. What I'm doing here is much, much less ambitious. I'm not interested in finding safeties whose playing style is similar to Duerson's, or cornerbacks whose style is similar to Lemar Parrish's; I just don't think that's possible from looking at the stat lines.
I just want a way to tell the kid that Duerson is Merton Hanks without the neck. Or, for the even younger set, Mike Brown with a little more staying power. Likewise, I feel I have a better handle on where Lemar Parrish fits in the grand scheme of things by regarding him as just a tick below Mike Haynes, or as Eric Allen with a longer career.
The method is very simple. Well, after you've computed everyone's approximate value for every season, it's simple. For each pair of players, you give them 100 "similarity points" if they both occupy three-dimensional space and breathe air. Then you subtract one similarity point for each point of difference in their best-season AVs, .95 of a similarity point for each point of difference in their second-best-season AV, .90 of a similarity point for each point of difference in their third-best-season AV, and so on.
I do this instead of simply comparing career AVs because I want to measure the "shape" of the career in addition to its value. Terrell Davis and Corey Dillon have pretty similar career AV totals. But I wouldn't call their careers similar, because Davis's value was largely concentrated in a couple of seasons, whereas Dillon's was spread out over several good-but-not-great years. In this method, Davis's best comps are Lawrence McCutcheon, William Andrews, Billy Sims, and the like. Dillon's comps are Jerome Bettis, Herschel Walker, and Earnest Byner.
[Please remember, I'm not trying to identify backs who were stylistically similar to Dillon. Just backs who had similar kinds of careers in terms of value and length.]
So here, according to the system, are Duerson's best comps:
Dave Duerson | 100 | 18 12 11 11 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 Merton Hanks | 85 | 13 12 12 11 7 6 5 4 2 David Fulcher | 85 | 15 11 11 7 6 5 4 0 Glen Edwards | 84 | 15 10 10 10 8 6 5 4 3 2 2 Mike Brown | 84 | 17 11 7 7 6 3 2 1 Ken Ellis | 84 | 20 12 10 8 8 8 1 1 1 0 0 Eric Turner | 83 | 17 9 7 6 6 4 3 3 3 Blaine Bishop | 83 | 14 12 9 9 7 6 6 5 2 1
The number between the pipes is the similarity score between Duerson and the given player. The numbers that follow are that player's AVs arranged from best to worst (not chronologically).
Lemar Parrish's comps:
Lemar Parrish | 100 | 15 14 13 13 12 12 11 10 10 9 5 4 1 Mike Haynes | 84 | 17 16 16 14 14 13 13 11 9 7 3 3 1 1 Louis Wright | 83 | 18 17 13 11 11 10 10 7 7 6 6 4 Aeneas Williams | 81 | 18 17 15 14 11 10 10 9 7 6 5 5 4 3 Deion Sanders | 79 | 20 16 15 15 14 13 13 13 8 7 4 4 3 2 Eric Allen | 79 | 18 15 13 12 11 9 8 7 7 7 7 6 6 5 Mel Blount | 79 | 18 16 14 14 14 14 9 9 8 7 7 7 6 6 Jake Scott | 79 | 17 15 14 14 13 9 9 9 8
Now, for you youngsters out there, I'll just pick a few random guys from my youth who I think may not have been remembered to the extent that they should have been, and I'll try to give you an idea of how good they were in terms of more recent players.
Art Still =~ Willie McGinest
Fred Smerlas =~ Ted Washington or Sam Adams
Matt Blair =~ Chris Spielman or Donnie Edwards
Jerry Robinson =~ Tedy Bruschi or Chad Brown
Herm Edwards =~ Brock Marion
Gary Barbaro =~ Nate Clements or Donnie Abraham Tony Parrish or Blaine Bishop
Jacob Green =~ a slightly-poor man's Leslie O'Neal
E.J. Junior =~ Mike Peterson
Tom Jackson =~ Mo Lewis
Keena Turner =~ Jamie Sharper
Deron Cherry =~ Brian Dawkins
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Approximate Value, General, History, P-F-R News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Great idea, Doug. But I think you should have shared why you looked at Lemar Parrish in the first place.
It's good to see three former Chiefs on your list. The only thing I would say is Barbaro was a safety and the two guys you presently list are cornerbacks.
Very interesting stuff, Doug. I like the Tom Jackson one in particular, especially since he is compared to Mo Lewis. He's a guy who makes it tough for most people to separate out his playing career from his post-playing career.
Well, you got me: I started following football closely in the early 90s, and I hadn't heard of Dave Duerson. But I suspect that years from now, I'll be trying to explain Merton Hanks to somebody just a little bit younger than me, and he/she will look at me like I'm some sort of moron. Of course, my explanation will be something like "You should have seen the guy's neck! It was so long, and he used to flop it around like a crazy man!"
Seeing Matt Blair's name on there makes me wonder how many of those players that "weren't a hall of famer but were pretty good" are greatly respected by fans of the teams they played for, but mostly unknown to everybody else. I grew up hearing about how great Matt Blair was at blocking kicks. When I go into local sports cards stores, I see Matt Blair cards. Heck, for a book on the Vikings, Matt Blair was even at a local bookstore signing autographs (I went, to get the book and autograph for my dad). I suspect if I talk to non-Viking fans my age, they've never heard of him.
I remember Dave Duerson. Number 29 if I remember correctly.
Oh Bill, good effort, but he was number 22.
Of course, I grew up watching the highlight video of the 1985 Bears' season, so I know very well who Dave Duerson is.
"100 “similarity points” if they both occupy three-dimensional space and breathe air."
Corey Simon occupies four dimensions in space and breathes lard.
Dave Duerson was #22.
And remember it was Todd Bell holding out that season that opened the door for Dave to play.
"Todd Bell?", you ask. Ask Joe Washington.
Unfortunately, Todd is no longer with us.
By "that season" I mean the 1985 season. Al Harris held out, too.
I'm like PV, only started watching football in 1989. I only know of Dave Duerson because he was in Tecmo Bowl.
Well you could start another list, athletes that are academically and post football accomplished. Bachelor's in Economics from Notre Dame and a Master from Harvard Busines School and current President of multi million dollar conglomerate. I bet that list just got shorter. Don't forget, 85 Bears Superbowl and 90 Giants supperbowl and 4 Pro Bowls.
Bill M.:
Was Dave #29 with the Giants and/or Cardinals?
I'll shed a tear the day some kid asks me who Aaron Glenn was.
The obvious advantage that baseball similarity scores have is the statistics used reflect style to a significant extent. By comparing on both home runs and stolen bases, you don't end up saying that (pulling two names out of the air) Rickey Henderson and Mike Schmidt are similar, even if their AV or equivalent turns out to be close.
If you tell me any RB is similar to Jerome Bettis, I'll assume you mean as a power back, not that the other guy is roughly as valuable, even if he couldn't break a tackle to save his life. Unfortunately, football statistics aren't nearly as useful as baseball's for this kind of comparison.
Jerry, and Doug, you could get players with similar styles by adding a very simple stat: Body Mass Index. This would work well for just about every position except QB and DB. It would work especially well for RB. High BMI? probably a bruiser. Low BMI? probably a cruiser
Speaking of Tecmo, I use BMI to help rate the Hitting Power of RBs in Tecmo Super Bowl.
For all those Dave Duerson fans, he has a satellite sports show that starts Thursday November 5. Every Thursday at 3PM, he will be addressing many different facets of sports. Tune in. He also has a website. http://www.ddfavor.com
Forgot to mention it is Voice America Sports.
I appreciate the idea of identifying "similarity" and can see the value of helping to contextualize the careers of players we did not see perform. I am somewhat disappointed that a player like Willie Williams is found to have had a career "similar" to that of Johnny Sample. Having seen both, I think it is heaping lavish praise on Willie Williams. I also saw Dave Duerson, and believe that his was one of the most underrated careers in modern NFL history. A tremendous player, as was the highly underrated Darren Woodson. Perhaps there can be a dimension of AV which takes into account qualitative factors such as All Pro/All NFL...
@JERRY- The problem with bringing up using stats in baseball to compare is that the error occurs when one forgets that baseball players play offense and defense. To establish a player's value is to take into many factors that too many stats can manipulate to very perplexing conclusions. It seems nearly impossible to get a gauge of similar careers without providing so much info that one would lose sight of the big picture. I realize that comparing Jerome "the bus" Bettis to a modern tailback like Chris Johnson would be ridiculous if you are talking about HOW they got the yards they did. However, looking at Bettis' counterparts for his career. You find player after player that relied on tough running such as Csonka, Riggins and Byner. The breakdown of career vs. a 3-5 year window seems to weed out the comparisons with players who employed a style of play more often than not dissimilar.