In their website and books, the Football Outsiders marry football and statistics in a way that few others do, covering everything from selecting players to the importance of injuries. Their latest book, the 2010 Football Outsiders Almanac is billed as “The Essential Guide to the 2010 NFL and College Football Seasons.” If it’s truly essential, it can even predict the future, right? Here’s their take:
[T]o figure out which teams have the best shot at making the playoffs in 2010, it isn’t enough to just look at last year’s win totals and a few big-name off-season acquisitions. We need to look deeper – at which statistics help indicate that a team was really better or worse than its record, at how much depth each team has, at what we can anticipate as far as injuries this season, and at numerous other issues. We need to go beneath the standard stats of points and yards and wins to try to figure out how good the teams were last year, and more importantly, how good we can expect them to be going forward. That’s where Football Outsiders comes in. We are here to go deeper.
Bill Barnwell of Football Outsiders is here to answer any football questions you might like to throw at him. Leave your questions in the comments section below and, as always, we’ll post his answers in due time.
Update: Barnwell answers your questions here.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
As a Bills fan, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on perennial cellar dwellers. Have you found any statistical indicators of pending turnarounds? Also, I’m interested in the specifics of the looming lockout.
So do NFL Players USE ANABOLIC STEROIDS, YES OR NO?
How did you wind up where you are? We know that Bill James did a lot of his early work while he was a night watchman at a bean factory, but what’s the Bill Barnwell story?
What are you thoughts about the BCS process in college football? How effective do you find it at determining the two best teams out of 120? If a playoff system is not an option (for the sake of discussion) what system/algorithum would you find most effective in determining the two teams out of 120 to play in the national title game?
There are many different philosophies on winning out there. Some coaches focus on setting up big plays, others on defense, others on the running game, others on ball control, etc. What statistics or groups of statistics are most strongly correlated to winning (other than points scored, of course)? How do these validate or repudiate the different schools of thought?
What’s the best stat (or stats) to predict how well a quarterback should perform in the upcoming season? Is the QB rating really any good?
Will we ever have an end to the paternalistic, command-and-control nature of most football analysis, where the knee jerk reaction is that the despite the fact that it’s the players with their careers on the line every play, somehow the whims of the coaches and management are always assumed to be correct in any dispute?
see: Revis, Haynesworth
Do you account for personality and psychological effect?
For example:
1) P. Manning basically ended his season with an interception in the big game.
2) Rodgers’ season ended on what could have instead been ruled a face-mask penalty.
Do these situations burn inside the players and create a bigger force this season, or alternatively tear them up, never to be what they once were? Or does all that “effect” even out amongst professionals?
Are there reliable statistics for these special circumstances?