The NFL season is a chaotic, four-month-long marathon. The same chaos that makes it entertaining makes it difficult to process in real-time. Take time to catch up on the regular season before turning to rookie drafts.
Process the Season
There are a lot of things that happen we do not process during the season. For example, players that are disproportionately impacted by high variance stats can look different than you should expect they would look in the future. These players are often producing in a way that is difficult to repeat. This can be good or bad. Players that score a lot of long touchdowns in their season are the types of profiles that are tough to repeat. These players have unnaturally high touchdown rates and points per target, two classic regression stats.
On the other side, there may be running backs who looked like underperforms, but in reality, they led the league in runs against 8 man boxes, the toughest look for a running back. They may actually overproduce expectations on these runs, indicating good performance in their circumstances, but look bad on a stat sheet because the situation was so rough.
Identify Your Team Trajectory
Early in the offseason is a critical time to address the direction of your team so you can figure out key next steps. Take the opportunity to think through how your team performed and what that means for the future. When thinking about your teams, ask yourself the following questions
- Did you overperform or underperform your expectation?
- Were you hurt by injuries?
- Did players you were high on miss?
- What does that tell you about your process?
- How do you fix it in the future?
- What holes do you have in your roster?
This early offseason preparation will help you focus your offseason on improving your process and your team. Once you answer your questions about the past season, you can address key questions about the future.
In identifying your offseason direction, ask yourself the following questions:
- What positions do you need to improve?
- What positions can you deal from depth?
- What is your regular season goal for the upcoming season?
Takeaways
The early offseason is a time of excitement as the NFL Draft preparation takes off in full force. Before you jump into the offseason, make sure to understand what happened in 2022. This is the best way towards a successful 2023 season.