Joe Douglas’ Dalvin Cook comments highlight deep NY Jets issue

The New York Jets are behind the times

New York Jets general manager Joe Douglas spoke extensively to the media on Monday. One of the topics he addressed was the team’s failed Dalvin Cook experiment.

Douglas defended the Jets’ decision-making process behind signing Cook.

“We felt like we were getting a Pro Bowl running back at an under-market price at the time for a Pro Bowl (running) back,” Douglas said. “So, in terms of the actual decision at the time, we felt like that was a real safe decision.”

Look, I get it. Sometimes, you take a great shot and it doesn’t go in. It happens very frequently in life and the NFL – even with this Jets team.

For instance, drafting Zach Wilson made all the sense in the world. So did signing Carl Lawson and Laken Tomlinson. Each of those decisions was backed by a sound thought process. Unfortunately, they didn’t work out in the end, because that’s just the way it goes. Nothing is guaranteed. All you can do is give yourself the best chance of success and hope the ball bounces your way.

If Douglas attempted to defend the failures of Lawson and Tomlinson by claiming the “actual decision at the time” was sound, I’d understand where he’s coming from. Both signings received near-unanimous praise at the time because they made so much sense in terms of talent, production, and scheme fit.

Unfortunately, Lawson’s Jets career was ruined by injuries (he did have pre-existing injury issues, but few players don’t, and his preceding season was fully healthy) while Tomlinson’s production randomly fell off a cliff without much explanation.

But there are many times when a failed decision can be foreseen from the start. That’s the case with Cook. He does not fit under the umbrella of sound decisions that failed due to factors that could not have been anticipated.

Now, I’m not saying there is ever a scenario where the outcome is one hundred percent guaranteed, whether the predicted outcome is good or bad. However, in this case, we have a decision that was littered with an absurd number of red flags from the start. The thought process behind signing Cook was always flawed.

While signing Cook had its share of positives and could have worked out, it certainly is not surprising that signing him did not work out. Based on the evidence, it should have been viewed as likely. The fact that Douglas viewed it as a “safe decision” confirms an alarming truth.

The Jets don’t value analytics.

Are the New York Jets using analytics at all in their decision-making process?

We broke it down ad nauseam here at Jets X-Factor in the offseason, even before the Jets signed Cook. The guy had more red flags than Raymond James Stadium. You just had to dig beneath the surface to see them.

If Douglas evaluated Cook like a casual NFL fan, then yeah, Cook definitely seemed like “a Pro Bowl back” who could be had “under-market price”. Cook ran for 1,173 yards and eight touchdowns in 2022, adding 295 receiving yards and two touchdowns. That brings his total to 1,468 scrimmage yards and 10 touchdowns. That’s awesome.

But when you peeked beneath the hood, you could see Cook was not the shiny object that he looked like on the outside, and that he was on the verge of breaking down.

In terms of his actual impact on winning, Cook was not a Pro Bowl running back in 2022, or anywhere close. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even an average running back.

These were Cook’s rankings in 2022 among 42 running backs with at least 100 carries, according to NFL Next Gen Stats and Football Outsiders:

• Rush Yards Over Expected (RYOE) per carry: -0.1 (30th)
• EPA (Expected Points Added) per rush: -0.20 (39th)
• Rush success rate: 48% (33rd)
• DVOA: -10.8% (36th)

These numbers would be troubling behind an average offensive line, but Cook put up these numbers behind a very good Vikings offensive line, which further emphasized how much of a negative impact he had.

In 2022, Minnesota earned a team-wide run-blocking grade of 74.1 at PFF, ranking third-best in the league. PFF’s evaluation was backed up by other metrics that are designed to capture run-blocking quality. Based on GPS tracking data from Next Gen Stats, Cook averaged an “expected” yards per carry of 4.5, which ranked 10th-highest among 42 qualified backs.

Additionally, Cook got to play in a strong passing offense led by Kirk Cousins and Justin Jefferson, which created a ton of light boxes for Cook to run into. Per Next Gen Stats, Cook faced a loaded box (more defenders than blockers in the box) on just 15.5% of his carries, the lowest rate among running backs with at least 100 carries.

Ultimately, no qualified running back saw a greater disparity between their EPA per carry and the run-blocking talent of their team.

Thought this was an interesting way to look at RB impact relative to blocking

Shown are 52 RBs (80+ carries) and the difference between their percentile ranking in EPA/carry and their team’s percentile ranking in PFF’s run block grade.

Notable…
Breece Hall: 1
Dalvin Cook: 52 pic.twitter.com/Ywqemx0NDT

— Michael Nania (@Michael_Nania) June 8, 2023

Cook put up lowly efficiency numbers in an extremely favorable environment. He was a massive net negative as a rusher.

Coming off such a poor season, being 28 years old, and having more than 1,500 touches under his belt, it was obvious that Cook was not headed in a good direction – especially considering his career trajectory. The 2022 season marked the second consecutive season in which his yards-per-carry declined by 0.3. A visible arc was forming.

And we haven’t even touched on his issues with fumbles, blocking, and drops yet.

Cook was always poor in those three areas, ranking top three among RBs in each of fumbles (16), pressures allowed (26), and drops (19) from 2019-22. But in his prime, he was still a star despite those deficiencies, thanks to his elite rushing abilities. With the rushing skills vastly depleted in 2022, Cook brought little to the table.

Considering everything we’ve discussed, what could Douglas have possibly seen to think Cook was a Pro Bowl player worth signing for $7 million?

There are only a few possible answers to that question, and none of them are a good look for an NFL general manager in the year 2023. The Jets signed Cook based on one of three things (or a combination): His box score stats, his highlights, or his name recognition.

If the Jets looked at the analytics, it would have been abundantly obvious that Cook was a player to stay away from. Clearly, they did not value the analytics strongly enough in this situation.

The Jets’ failure to value the analytics when evaluating such a big-name player is an alarming sign for the organization. It suggests the team either does not have a strong enough analytics staff, or they do have a strong analytics staff but the lead decision-makers (i.e. Douglas) simply ignore the advice of those analytics staffers.

It does seem that New York’s analytics staff is slightly under-manned compared to the rest of the NFL. The Jets entered August with two analytics staffers, according to the list from ESPN’s Seth Walder seen below. This isn’t unusual for an NFL team, as there are quite a few teams with the same total, but the league average is 3.5 staffers. Among the nine teams who finished with at least 11 wins, the average was 4.8 – including 5.5 between the two one-seeds.

Long overdue refresh of the NFL analytics staffer list after an offseason with plenty of movement.

As always, this is to the best of my understanding based on both what teams list and conversations with analytics folks around the league. pic.twitter.com/Ut538JcK08

— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) August 3, 2023

In a December 2022 ESPN survey that was sent to analytics staffers around the league (with 21 teams answering), each team was asked to name the top five most “analytically inclined” teams in the league. The Jets were one of 11 teams who did not receive any votes.

To be fair, the Jets also did not receive any votes for the question “Which NFL team is the least analytically advanced?”, with seven teams receiving at least one vote for that question.

Still, with an under-staffed analytics department and zero semblance of praise from around the league, it sure does not seem like the Jets’ analytics department is anything to write home about.

Most likely, this is not the fault of the analytics staffers themselves, but the organization as a whole.

The Jets have not put enough effort into hiring more analytics staffers, and those who are in the building are not having their voices heard. It is extremely likely the Jets’ analytics staffers advised Douglas against signing Cook (especially for the price he demanded), but Douglas’ comments on Monday suggest the team took a very shallow approach when evaluating the four-time Pro Bowl running back.

New York’s ignorance of analytics translates to other parts of the organization as well.

Robert Saleh frequently makes game-management decisions that are not analytically inclined. He was among the leaders in “cowardly punts” throughout the 2023 season.

Nathaniel Hackett insisted upon old-school “run-run-pass” play-calling that often dug the Jets into third-and-long. The Jets ran on 43% of their second down plays with 8-12 yards to go in the first half (I isolated first-half plays to control for second-half situations where the Jets were trailing and had to go pass-heavy). That ranked fifth-highest; the league average was 34%. Hackett did this even though the Jets ranked 32nd in yards per rush attempt in these situations (3.1) versus 26th in yards per pass play (4.2).

That is just one of numerous analytics-based critiques you could toss Hackett’s way. He also underutilizes pre-snap motion and play action despite the analytics suggesting the Jets perform better when using those things (and that they are great tools in general for any NFL offense). Finally, Hackett failed to optimize the Jets’ personnel usage, as he underutilized packages where the Jets were successful and overused packages where the Jets struggled.

There are countless problems within a franchise that has missed the playoffs 13 seasons in a row. Some of them are easy to see on the surface. Some are deep-rooted. This one falls into the latter category, but it’s just as important as the problems that are glaring.

Many of the Jets’ bad decisions – whether it’s roster building, game management, or game planning – can be traced directly back to their ignorance of the analytics. This is an organization stuck in the past. For whatever reason, they have chosen to stay behind the rest of the NFL in the modern analytics wave, and it’s left them behind in the standings as well.

At some point in the future, all NFL teams will be utilizing analytics at a similar level, negating it as a tool that could provide an advantage. Until everyone catches up, the teams that are using analytics correctly will continue to gain an advantage over archaic organizations such as the New York Jets who stubbornly think they can outsmart the data.

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