With apologies to John Madden; actually, we co-wrote a book.  We're proud to announce that Football Outsiders and Football Project have combined forces to produce Brassey's Pro Football Forecast, which will be in bookstores this preseason.

This is the book that was Pro Football Prospectus for the last two years.  Unfortunately, due to reasons beyond our control, it isn't going to be Pro Football Prospectus in 2004.  The name has changed but the content is better than ever -- plus, we wrote some of it.

(I'm glad they put the best player in football on the cover, but the Ravens are totally screwed now.  This book has a curse like Madden.  Brian Urlacher was on the first cover and the Bears were terrible that year.  Michael Vick was on last year's cover.  Uh-oh.)

The first section of the book also contains a long essay on DVOA -- how it works, and why it is better than conventional football numbers.  The second part of the book features two essays for each team, one that looks at expectations for the team in 2004 and one that explores a research question related to the team.  The essays are written by a number of different folks, including the writers from Football Project like Sean Lahman, Todd Greanier, Dan Lewis, and Brandon Williams, as well as four different Football Outsiders: Aaron Schatz, Michael David Smith, Al Bogdan, and Russell Levine.  Here's a list of the essays contributed to the book by Football Outsiders:

• Analysis of the 2003 season and 2004 expectations for Buffalo, Carolina, New Orleans, the New York Giants, Tampa Bay, and Tennessee
• For Buffalo, an update of our study on running vs. passing in short yardage situations
• For Carolina, a look at the worst Super Bowl teams of all time
• For Denver, a study of whether resting starters in the final regular season game hurts you in the playoffs
• For Indianapolis, an update of our study on whether officials call fewer penalties in the playoffs
• For Jacksonville, an update of our study on whether second-half success is a good omen for the following year
• For Miami, a discussion of whether Ricky Williams will rebound in 2004 (every time in the last few months that we've referred to running backs being overused, we've been referring to this study without trying to give the whole thing away)
• For New England, an update of the first article ever written for Football Outsiders on the importance of establishing the run
• A discussion of the problems on the New York Giants offensive line
• For Oakland, a look back at the amazing career of Jerry Rice
• For San Francisco, a study of whether teams win more with a single running back or running back by committee
• For Seattle, a look at how much dropped passes hurt Matt Hasselbeck's statistics

Yep, that's a lot of new Football Outsiders material, plus you get all of Football Project's work, like a projection system for 2004 player statistics that will help you prepare for your fantasy football draft.  It's the one preseason book you need.  Buy yours today.

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Oh, one more thing.  Does anyone remember the Football Outsiders Offseason Contest, in which we asked people to match certain open coaching positions with candidates and certain free agents with new teams?  Of course, they started filling those coaching slots the same day we posted the contest, which screwed things up a bit.  And with 32 teams to choose from, almost nobody got more than one or two of the free agent/trade bait players correct.  On top of this, most people wrote their picks in the discussion thread even though the rules said you had to email your picks to win a prize.  Next year, we're ditching the coaching part of the contest and listing more players.

Anyway, we have two winners who managed to get three correct answers (not counting coaches already hired).  Manas Pradhan correctly guessed that Warren Sapp was going to Oakland, Terrell Owens was going to Philadelphia, and Ty Law was staying in New England.  Lindsay Oliver also had Ty Law correct, predicted Keyshawn Johnson would go to Dallas, and guessed that Chicago would hire Lovie Smith before they actually filled the job.  As our winners, Pradhan and Oliver will both be getting free copies of Pro Football Forecast in the mail.

Posted by: admin on 21 Jul 2004

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