Football Outsiders

Football Outsiders
Name	Football Outsiders
Founded	2003
Founder	Aaron Schatz
Country	United States
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois
Focus	Sports analytics, American football statistics

Football Outsiders is an American sports analytics and journalism organization known for advanced statistical analysis of American football, primarily the National Football League and college football. It produces proprietary metrics, data-driven articles, and annual publications that have influenced coaching staffs, front offices, media outlets, and fans. The site has intersected with mainstream sports journalism, academic study, and professional scouting as analytics expanded across Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and other North American sports.

History

Football Outsiders was founded in 2003 by Aaron Schatz, who had previously written about football for outlets associated with Pro Football Weekly and Sports Illustrated. Early contributors included writers and analysts with backgrounds at publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CBS Sportsline, as well as statisticians familiar with projects like Advanced Football Analytics and the work emerging from Pro Football Prospectus. The site grew amid a broader analytics movement that involved entities like Baseball Prospectus, Football Research, and university programs at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University studying sports data.

During its formative years, Football Outsiders introduced novel play-level metrics and published annual guides that paralleled printed works such as those from ESPN, Sporting News, and independent books by authors from McGraw-Hill and HarperCollins. The organization’s independence allowed it to collaborate with broadcasters including FOX Sports, NBC Sports, and ESPN for explanatory pieces and podcast appearances. Through the 2010s, the rise of public analytics communities on platforms like Reddit and Twitter amplified Football Outsiders’ reach, while professional franchises from the New England Patriots to the Green Bay Packers began to consult similar public research.

Analytical Methods and Metrics

Football Outsiders is best known for introducing and refining metrics that attempt to isolate team and player performance beyond traditional box score statistics. Central among these is DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average), which compares success on each play to a league-average baseline while adjusting for opponent and game situation; this concept echoes ideas used by analysts at Pro Football Reference and in academic work at University of Michigan and Northwestern University. Other metrics include Football Outsiders’ equivalent of pace and situational efficiency, which complement publicly used measures from NFL Next Gen Stats and tracking-derived data from Zebra Technologies.

Their methods emphasize play-by-play data aggregation, opponent adjustment, and down-and-distance context, drawing methodological inspiration from probabilistic approaches taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley. The site also produces offensive and defensive line metrics, pass-rush evaluations, and drive-level success models similar to expected points models developed in research at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Chicago. Football Outsiders regularly updates algorithms to account for rule changes instituted by National Football League competition committees and incorporates sample-size and variance considerations familiar to scholars at Princeton University.

Publications and Products

Football Outsiders publishes a mix of free web content and premium material, including annual books and statistical databases. Their flagship annual, a guide to the upcoming season, sits alongside yearbooks and previews produced by Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports. They have offered downloadable data sets and subscription tools that professional analysts and independent researchers reference in notebooks and proprietary models employed by teams such as the Kansas City Chiefs and Seattle Seahawks.

Content formats have included feature articles, weekly columns, play-level charts, and podcasts that parallel productions from The Athletic, ESPN, and the Ringer. The organization has also produced specialized reports on draft prospect evaluation and historical retrospectives that complement archives at Pro Football Hall of Fame and historical projects by the Pro Football Researchers Association. Periodic collaborations and guest pieces have appeared in anthologies distributed by publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Impact and Reception

Football Outsiders influenced how journalists, front offices, and fans interpret performance, contributing to the wider acceptance of analytics within the National Football League and collegiate programs at schools like Alabama, Ohio State University, and University of Southern California. Mainstream outlets such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today have cited Football Outsiders’ metrics in coverage of coaching decisions, quarterback evaluation, and roster construction. At the same time, some coaches and traditional analysts from organizations like ESPN and FOX Sports initially questioned the applicability of play-level adjustments to play-calling and situational coaching.

Peer reception includes academic citations in journals and conference presentations at venues like the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and workshops hosted by MIT Sloan School of Management, where Football Outsiders’ approaches were discussed alongside work from Baseball Prospectus and university research teams. Over time, its methodologies contributed to industry tools used in scouting combines and analytics departments across the NFL.

Organization and Personnel

Founded and led by Aaron Schatz, the organization has featured a rotating roster of writers, researchers, and data engineers with professional links to outlets and institutions such as Pro Football Weekly, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Stanford University, and Northwestern University. Contributors have included statisticians and former coaches who provided technical essays and scouting evaluations, bringing connections to franchises like the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys. Editorial and technical roles have collaborated with database providers and hosting partners based in Chicago, reflecting ties to regional media networks.

The staff structure combines editorial writers, metrics developers, and product managers who maintain subscriptions, archives, and APIs used by independent analysts and institutional partners. The organization continues to serve as a bridge between independent research communities and professional football stakeholders, mirroring developments in analytics adoption across Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association.

Category:Sports analytics