One of my favorite Bill James essays is one that he did on Boston Red Sox second baseman Marty Barrett in his 1985 Baseball Abstract. He spoke about a time when he was scouting Barrett and a situation arose in which the pitcher was almost certain to throw an inside pitch. James said that after Barrett smashed the expected inside pitch out of the park, he was really impressed because it showed that Barrett had the ability to handle that type of pitch. At the same time, he also knew this sentiment was a bit inaccurate because he had predetermined that this was the play he was going to judge Barrett on. James ended the essay by noting, "this is a good example of the kind of gut-level decision making that sabermetrics intends to render obsolete."
The same type of gut-level decision making can happen in tape grading NFL players if one isn't careful. Nothing illustrates this better than a recent six-game breakdown I did on Alabama linebacker Rolando McClain (at Kentucky, at Mississippi, vs. South Carolina, vs. Tennessee, vs. LSU, at Mississippi State).
After the first three quarters of the Wildcats game, I was convinced that McClain's top-10 ranking was far too low. He dominated his opponent in a way that no other Draft Lab prospect has come close to. McClain defeated five Point of Attack (POA) run blocks, forced the quarterback to throw a pass away on a blitz, intercepted a pass, forced a fumble, tipped a pass that was intercepted by another Crimson Tide defender and threw in twelve tackles to boot.
Some personnel evaluators might see such a performance and immediately make the mistake that James spoke about and judge McClain's draft status based on the wow factor that can occur in a small sample size. As impressive as a dominant single game is, the best players in the NFL follow the Bill Walsh credo that emphasizes consistent dominance from week to week.
McClain's performance in the other five games certainly wasn't subpar, but it was far from his Kentucky showing. One good example of this: he won only six POA blocks in that other quintet of contests. To be fair, he did have seven other plays where he wasn't blocked and was able to stuff the ballcarrier at or behind the line of scrimmage, but it still doesn't eliminate the fact that his POA win percentage outside of the Kentucky contest was a meager 13.0%.
McClain's impact on the pass also wasn't anywhere near as good following the Wildcats game. He did have eight splash plays in the other five games (a splash play being defined as negatively impacting a passing play) but two of those came when he was unblocked on a blitz. A third came when a Mississippi blocker made an error and didn't see McClain blitzing until it was too late and a fourth was a garbage sack where McClain simply finished off a sack that his teammate started. Again, he should be given credit for making these plays -- but the volume of stats that he built up in instances of this nature does not bode as well for him as the large group of individual plays he made against Kentucky.
My scouting eye also saw a couple of other areas of significant concern for McClain. The first was his tackling technique. By my count, he missed seven tackles in these six games, but it was how he used his arms when tackling that was troubling. The proper arm technique when tackling is to take your forearms and elbows and slam them into the ballcarrier's side and back. That movement will naturally cause the tackler's arms to wrap around the runner and will also cause his hands to slap into the ballcarrier's back. The tackler should then grab the backside of the jersey and finish the tackle off.
McClain rarely, if ever, used this technique. His preferred method was to grab at the ballcarrier and try to yank him down from the front. He also rarely tried to stick his shoulder into a runner -- unless the tackle occurred right at the line of scrimmage. In addition, McClain had more than bit of trouble breaking down quickly when he was on the backside of a run and had to prevent a cutback.
The poor tackling form was the initial sign in the second area of concern, which is his focus. Examples of this include his penchant for jogging far too often in the LSU and Mississippi State games, but the most specific instance came early in the first quarter of the game against the Bulldogs. A Mississippi State blocker went low on McClain and then used his hand to trip him. Immediately after the takedown, McClain's first reaction was to get up and look for an official to complain to. This would have been an apt response except that the play was still alive when McClain jumped up.
This wasn't the only instance in that contest where a player got McClain to take his head out the game. MSU offensive guard J.C. Brignone may have been thinking of this when he kept blocking McClain well after the end of the first play of the fourth quarter. McClain finally shed Brignone's block and then gave him a shove afterwards despite being right in front of an official.
The NFL is full of very creative instigators whose aim is to get their opponents to take their minds off of the game, and if McClain doesn't fix this weakness, he'll have someone testing his patience in every contest.
The Football Scientist Lab Result: This can go either way. McClain has tremendous physical characteristics and when he is on his game, he can be nearly unstoppable. If a team drafts him too high with this in mind, he would be worthy of an overhyped label. If a team drafts him with the understanding that he may need consistent motivating and a lot of tackling drill work, the move would be worthy of the TFS seal of approval.
