Not too long ago, Bill Barnwell was at Northeastern University, trying to figure out how he’d fit into the sports journalism world. The 36-year-old has had an impressive path to success which started at FootballOutsiders, a statistically-driven platform built around NFL news, before he became a lead writer with (now-defunct) Grantland and later landed a senior writer role at ESPN.
Currently, you can find Barnwell churning out insightful content on ESPN+ regarding the NFL draft, salary cap, team strategy, and many other facets of the professional game.
Barnwell has long been in the spotlight of sports journalism, but as analytics have moved to the forefront of decision making in the NFL, his work has gained increased national attention.
“Analytics” has become a buzzword for the NFL media, but what does that word actually entail? Game Plan sat down with Barnwell to discuss his outlook on the integration of analytics and the use of statistics in the NFL, and to learn how he carved his own path out of an unique niche in the sports journalism industry.
How did your stint at FootballOutsiders shape your perspective as an NFL writer?
I think the biggest purpose it served was leading me to question beliefs about football, even if they were widely held and already regarded as confirmed. In many cases, the data underpinning those beliefs either was outdated, incomplete, or didn’t exist. Needing to find, shape, and work with that data to answer those questions or examine those beliefs helped me develop my voice and grow as a writer.
What were some of your favorite aspects of working at Grantland and now at ESPN?
The freedom to explore topics and the faith that Grantland afforded me was really exciting. When I was at Northeastern, I had gone to a Boston Globe co-op meeting where they told us what the typical career path would be for a writer. I’m paraphrasing here, but they suggested we would spend six months doing grunt work as an intern, eventually graduate, go work in the middle of nowhere covering high school sports, slowly work your way up, and maybe after 15 to 20 years, end up back at the Globe in a meaningful role. I didn’t think I was good enough to pull that off, and even if I had that sort of confidence, the Globe didn’t select me to be an intern, anyway.
Grantland trusted me enough as a 27-year-old to be their lead writer on the most popular sport in America. That wouldn’t have happened anywhere else, and I was very lucky to be afforded that opportunity.
In the last few years, the new NFL trend is the adoption of analytics. How would you define analytics and how it fits within the game of football?
Analytics, to me, has always been about using quantitative evidence to try and increase your chances of succeeding. That can manifest itself in football in all kinds of ways. By now, most people are familiar with organizations using win expectancy charts to help determine whether a team should go for it or kick on fourth-and-short. On a scouting level, it could mean using college measurables and performance to estimate a player’s chances of succeeding as a pro. With sports science, it could be using sleep monitors and nutrition to get players better prepared for Sunday.
Sports are increasingly data-driven and the evolution of the MLB and NBA are evidence of that. Why do you think the NFL’s implementation of analytics has lagged behind?
Well, I think it depends on how you look at the idea of analytics. Teams have been studying measurables and college data to help narrow the draft-able player pool for decades. The “Draft Chart” we commonly associate with Jimmy Johnson is around 30 years old.
Naturally, when it comes to on-field performance, football data is always going to be messier than other sports. Baseball games are made up of discrete events with a clear batter-pitcher matchup. Basketball and hockey are fluid, but they’re five-on-five. Football is 11-on-11 and every player is involved in the vast majority of plays. Accounting for context and trying to separate out the impact of the individual from the players around him is going to be exceedingly difficult, although we’re getting better data now than in years past.
With the use of analytics, what were some of the more prominent schematic trends we saw in the 2020 NFL season?
We’ve seen teams move towards what the data would suggest to be an optimal offensive approach. Passing is more efficient than running, so we’re seeing teams throw more than ever before. Those passes are shorter than they were in years past, which has helped drive down interception and sack rates to record lows. We’ve seen teams move more and more into the shotgun, apply pre-snap motion, and use play-action to try and create throwing lanes for their quarterbacks. The evidence we have suggests all of those things help. In 2019, for example, when quarterbacks didn’t use play-action, they posted numbers like Philip Rivers. When they used play-action, those same quarterbacks looked like Patrick Mahomes.
With the 2020-2021 season wrapped up, what are some lessons NFL teams should learn from this year?
Well, with the Super Bowl we just saw, keep your offensive linemen healthy! A more realistic thing to learn might be looking at the way we’re evaluating quarterbacks. Two years ago, Josh Allen looked like a disaster, while Carson Wentz and Jared Goff were budding stars who were about to get huge extensions. Now, the Rams just shipped off Goff and two first-round picks to get Matthew Stafford, while Wentz imploded in Philadelphia. Allen, who has been surrounded by the right talent in Buffalo, has taken huge strides and looks like a superstar.
The lesson we’re learning is that there’s a real danger in paying the wrong quarterback like he’s a superstar. Obviously, it was never good to do that in the past, but quarterbacks on rookie deals are so much cheaper than veterans, and the difference in skill might be negligible. Paying Goff cost the Rams $25 million they could have spent on the players around him. As their teams begin to weigh extensions for Allen, Baker Mayfield, and Lamar Jackson, they’ll have to worry about making the same mistake.
With the salary cap expected to shrink from $198 million to a range around $180 to $185 million, what are some things to expect going into this offseason?
This is going to be a market flooded with talent. Teams were planning for a cap around $210 million or so and structured deals accordingly, which means they’ll have to make cutbacks. We’re going to see players who wouldn’t hit the market in a typical year end up as free agents alongside all the players who are actual free agents. As a result, I think you’ll see a lot of players settling for one-year deals in the hopes of hitting the market again under better conditions in 2022. We’ll also see teams like the Jaguars and Patriots be able to leverage their healthy cap situations into quicker turnarounds.
And because it’s so unprecedented to see someone of Deshaun Watson’s caliber possibly get moved, what odds would you realistically put on him being traded?
I think 50%, which has been steadily rising all offseason. The Texans might not want to trade Watson, but if the star quarterback has really decided he’s played his last game in Houston, they may not have much of a choice. Watson may have to sit out a year to get a deal done, but as we’ve seen with guys like Carson Palmer and Trent Williams in years past, you can’t force someone to play football. Houston’s leverage isn’t going to go up, so they may decide to cut ties and get the best possible deal for the future of the franchise.
