Hudl IQ: Our New Contextualized Physical Metrics

Recently I was reading a book that helped shape how I think about our data at Hudl IQ. That book is Effective Data Storytelling, by Dan Simmons. There are so many great things in the book, but one part really jumped out to me. In talking about data, Simmons wrote "Not everyone can speak the language of data, so you need to make data speak the language of everyone else. Putting data in context is the key to making it accessible" (emphasis added). I especially love this line because one of my passions in the field of sports analytics is making data accessible to “football people”. Lucky for me, Hudl IQ shares that same passion!

One of the most successful ways I have found to make data speak the language of football is by taking time to first listen to “football people”. I started my career in football coaching, so I have that in my background to give me a base line of “football language”, but it is helpful for me to listen to people still in the field, as well as across different parts of an organization. Coaches and personnel groups talk the language of football every day, and it is second nature for them to say things like “explode off the ball!”, “Explode through the hole!”, “Explode into a pass set!” (lots of exploding for some reason?). Listening for these has helped us shape our next set of contextual physical metrics. 

We’ve written about our physical metrics previously. That paper went deep into the background of our physical metrics. Having validated our data against the NFL NGS wearable data, as well as GPS data from college teams, we have the most accurate speeds and accelerations in the market. Using this data we produced contextualized physical metrics like defensive line get off distance, defensive back closing speed, and wide receiver deep route speed. Our latest release adds metrics for running backs, offensive lineman, and another metric for wide receivers.

Examining Hudl IQ's Physical Metrics with the 2024 Running Back Class

2024 was the year of the premier Running Back in both college and the NFL. Ashton Jeanty finished 2nd in the Heisman and had one of the best statistical seasons for a RB of all time. Meanwhile Saquon Barkley put up historic numbers of his own in the NFL leading the Eagles to the Super Bowl Championship. Two “football” traits that both Jeanty and Saquon Barkley have are exploding through the hole, and breakaway speed.

Analysing Breakaway Speed

Sometimes it can be difficult to make data “speak the language of everyone else”, and sometimes it’s not. This is one of those times where it isn’t difficult. Breakaway speed is exactly what it sounds like, the top speed a running back reaches on a breakaway run. The threshold we used for breakaway runs was 25 yards. 

It should come as no surprise that Ashton Jeanty had the most breakaway runs in FBS last season with 26. His top breakaway speed from the season was 21.95 mph on this 70 yd TD run in their near upset bid against the Oregon Ducks. 

As Jeanty was running away from the Ducks defenders, he reached his top speed for any play of the entire season. Similar to Jeanty, just over 60% of running backs reached their season’s top speed on one of their breakaway runs. The few that didn’t reach their max speed on breakaway runs were generally pretty close. But, as you can see in the chart below, there are a few who were not close. Some were even over 6 mph slower than their max speeds when they were in the clear on a breakaway run. Some of the players who had the biggest difference between their top speed, and their top breakaway speed were George Pattaway from JMU, Elijah Gilliam from Fresno State, and Jacquez Stuart from Toledo.

Acceleration through the line of scrimmage

Being able to run away from defenders is a great thing, but we also created a measurement to measure how quick players are at the beginning of their runs. We chose to make our physical metric the top acceleration a running back hits within a yard of the line of scrimmage. We are calling our new metric Running Back Line of Scrimmage Acceleration. 

Straight ahead speed has been the easy way to measure athleticism for over 100 years (check the first Olympics). Between high school track times, and the 40 yard dash at the NFL Combine, there has been a large emphasis on pure straightline speed. Quickness and agility has been a little harder to measure. Although there are some quickness tests at the Combine (the 3-cone and short shuttle are two examples of quickness tests), there aren’t any track races, or other means, to get consistent quickness data on athletes.

As mentioned above, terms like “explode through the hole”, and “0 to 60” are common phrases in the football language. For our metric, we used a commonly understood time frame (when the runner crosses the line of scrimmage), and combined it with our physical metrics data (acceleration) to create the running back line of scrimmage (L.O.S) acceleration metric. 

Some of the top teams in FBS are using Hudl IQ to identify, classify, and vet transfer targets. Utilizing our L.O.S acceleration metric helped give our users even more data to help make sure they were taking the right players in the transfer portal. Some high-profile transfers that had the highest running back L.O.S acceleration metrics last season are new Virginia Tech RB Terion Stewart, future USC RB Eli Sanders, and the Tennessee Volunteers newest addition to the speed crew Star Thomas.

The chart below shows the top 400 RB’s in FBS and FCS and their top RB L.O.S acceleration values with their top breakaway speed values. As you can see there is a slight positive trend, but not always is there a correlation between speed and acceleration. Those that have the ability to do both can be game changers for an offense.

Hudl IQ's Physical Metrics with the 2024 Wide Receiver Class

Listening to football people talk about receiver play, there was one thing that came up constantly: stance and start. This was true for my own players as well! As a former WR and TE coach, on the first day of every camp, we would work on stance and start. As camp finished up and we moved into the season, those would move into a set of every day drills. 

The start for a receiver is important for multiple reasons: individual route timing as part of the bigger route concept, quarterback timing with his dropback, and the individual benefit of threatening a corner that is guarding you. With that in mind, it’s time to introduce our latest Wide Receiver physical metric: Wide Receiver Get Off.

Wide Receiver Get Off is very similar to our previously introduced Defensive Line Get Off metric. Get off is defined as the total yards a Wide Receiver moves downfield in the first second of a play. Like the DL metric, this incorporates the snap reaction time, as well as how quickly the receiver moves once he reacts. To allow the receiver a chance to get a clean get off for these values, and consistency in our numbers, we only look at plays where the receiver is running a route, and when there is no press coverage. 

Below is a plot with Travis Hunter’s get offs from this past season. They are color coded by the opponent's team color, and taken at a glance from his initial alignment. 

Nash’s games with the top Get Off values last season were against Stanford and Boise State, while his games with the lowest get off values were against UNLV, Colorado State, and Nevada. I also find it really interesting to see outliers, or interesting paths like his outside release against Stanford. On this play he was able to run and get a clear release to the inside.

Hudl IQ's Physical Metrics and the 2024 Offensive Line Class

Now on to my favorite group to analyze, the offensive lineman. Underrepresented for so long; and then, when they did finally get a few stats it was for doing something wrong! Offensive linemen deserve some positive attention, and our contextual physical metrics help us do just that! Introducing, Offensive Line Pass Pro Distance. We define our pass pro distance as the total distance traveled for offensive lineman in the first second of a true pass set. 

The gif below helps show what we are measuring with this value. The LSU offensive line, as well as an opposing Edge Rusher, are shown with Campbell lined up at Left Tackle (the purple dot). The yellow dot is where Campbell moves to 1 second after the snap. The line trailing Campbell’s dot is the path he takes in his pass pro set. After 1 second, Campbell has moved 2.72 yards from his initial alignment.

Here are the pass pro distances for all pass pro sets split up by position. Tackles have the highest distance moved on average, as well as for our “Elite” threshold of 90th percentile. Will Campbell’s pass pro rep from above is close to the beginning of the “outlier” group and is in the 99th percentile for all Tackle pass pro reps from last season. Campbell reached the Elite threshold on almost 17% of his pass pro reps this past season, putting him in the top 25% of all qualifying Left Tackles last season.

Of note, Guards have the lowest distance moved of the three offensive line positions. Before this analysis, I thought it would be Centers as they try to create a pocket shape. But, Centers are the position that lines up the closest to the line of scrimmage, they have to be able to be within an arms length of the ball after all. And every other position is setting the alignment of their helmet to the belt buckle (or farther back if you are Jawaan Taylor) of the Center. They need to get back to be in position to create the pocket.

More and more emphasis is being placed on how fast and quick athletes are when they are playing, and not just how fast and quick they can test at the combine. Teams like the Rams have been very vocal about eschewing the Combine for this type of information. As the leader in physical metrics data, these stats are a great addition to our current data suite.