16 Comments

I would love to read more about how we, as humans developed the number system to track things

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Seconded

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Dan John when asked about health and fitness always asks “Healthy for what or fit for what?” Always two good questions to ask yourself.

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Dan John is awesome.

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I was waiting for a Moneyball reference the entire time I was reading this…

Also I’m another vote for interest in hearing more about numeric systems and how they formed and play in our evolution.

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Ha! Analytics definitely changed baseball in a way that leads me to find the game more boring. The new rule changes have helped.

There does seem to be a mismatch between what baseball (and many sport) are and what teams think they are.

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This one brings to mind 2 of my goto saying- "You can't manage what you don't measure" and "Liars figure, figures lie"

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For me it’s important to track my steps for how much I’m moving and not sitting each day. Track my sleep so that I’m waking refreshed more ten than not. And now I’m tracking strength building because I know that this helps me as I age.

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I wonder how much the combine results actually correlate with draft position. I wouldn't be surprised if it's mostly theatre to give NFL fans something to talk about between the Super Bowl and the draft.

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I do think it gives the league content. But I texted with a couple SEC football coaches for this piece and they said combine performance is super important for a player's draft status.

I imagine combine performance factors more into certain positions.

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Interesting, thanks for the insider information. I was also wondering if it might be the (relatively) poor performances that are more insightful. Some (relative) shortcomings are probably easier to hide in college than the pros.

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One only has to look at Tom Brady to realize the NFL Combine is a joke. When they have a test to measure work ethic, passion, and the intangibles, then it means something.

And this brings me to my point. Bryan Johnson and Dave Asprey and all of these folks getting these Age scorecards claiming they are this to that age. I believe this is so short sighted like the NFL Combine. I’m sure 10 years from now they will look back and say “Damn, we should have been measuring X” as society learns new aspects of the body.

I’m a big believer in what you measure, you improve. Just need to make sure you are measuring the right things.

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Fair enough regarding Brady, but at that point what would have predicted his career?

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To your point, I have hired a lot of people in the past that I felt great about that turned out to be not such a great hirer. Inversely, I had others I hired and thought it was a mistake but needed someone for the position that turned out to be great. But I feel like I got much better over the years of getting more right than wrong. Most of that was just understanding the person better through Q&A which I would think the NFL does. I would put more weight on this aspect than the physical aspect as long as they check the boxes for the position physically. But you are right, you will still have misses….just need to minimize them. I just wish my Dallas Cowboy’s could minimize them :).

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The NFL Combine makes me laugh. A DE runs a 4.4 40 yard dash, or a 4.8 40 yard dash. They don't have to run 40 yards to get to the QB normally. Ok he can run fast in a straight line...

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https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/02/24/nfl-combine-2020-drills-workouts-explained-on-field-applications

your correct, they don't need to run 40 yards, but that first 10 is an important measure for both DL as well as OL.

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