The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance and an Unexpected Amount of Andrew Hawkins: While We’re Waiting…

Last Friday, I described the Cleveland Browns’ “chronic credibility” crisis and status as the biggest punchline in the NFL following The Orangening. Within hours of completing the column, Grantland’s Brian Phillips recreated the marketing questionnaire that resulted in the Browns new sans-serif, orangier identity; Jimmy Fallon thanked the Browns for making a nearly identical new logo (as all in the joke-telling industry should); and the Browns signed a 35-year-old quarterback who went 1-10 last season. Is it too late to add a few footnotes to my post?

The McCown signing may end up being a savvy move — maybe even a great one. But the Browns don’t enjoy the benefit of the doubt until they prove they aren’t the only team in their division unfit for the playoffs. Until then, the “Kick Me” sign remains stapled to their backside, and the public puntings will continue.

In other news, baseball is back! (even if it is 2000 miles away), and the Cavs survived the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night. They remain the favorites to win the NBA Finals in spite of their obvious flaws and their having nine wins less than the Atlanta Hawks (whom they play on Friday). Last week, I introduced the Championship Watch (name pending approval), which gave us a 35.2 percent chance that we won’t be waiting until next year, largely thanks to the Cavaliers. ¹ But while we’re waiting….

We love underdogs in Cleveland, and Browns receiver Andrew Hawkins unquestionably qualifies for that distinction. The 5-6, 175 pound wide receiver wrote about his journey to make it to the NFL in part one of a two-part series for The Players’ Tribune this week. In pursuit of his dream to become an NFL receiver, Hawkins competed in a reality TV show hosted by Michael Irving, stalked Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, mailed out audition tapes, took an internship in the Lions front office, crashed on friends’ couches, and even sent emails to agents posing as a fictional assistant coach from Toledo (where he went to college). The following anecdote typifies the post.

I was a legit 5’6 ½” without shoes on, and even though I was able to pack on a few pounds through my workouts, I was still pretty light.

I had to get creative again [for Pro Day].

Before my Pro Day, I made a pit-stop at Michael’s — you know, the craft store — to pick up some clay. I bought clay that matched my skin tone, molded it to the heels of my feet and taped my feet up all the way past the ankle, like I would for a game. When it came time to measure me, it gave me about another inch and a half. Then, when I weighed in, I dropped a two-and-a-half pound weight in each of my pockets, which gave me an extra five pounds.

…. When all was said and done, I went on paper as 5’8’’ and 182 pounds. A huge step up from the 5’6’’, 161-pound guy that decided just a few months earlier to take a shot at the NFL.

I’m fascinated by The Players’ Tribune for a couple of reasons.² First, it allows athletes an opportunity to cultivate their own brand/persona/message themselves, and deliver it directly to their target audience. Second, writing first-person articles for the consumption of fans is simultaneously the most genuine and the most artificial way to interact with fans. It’s genuine in how it grants athletes a chance to verbalize experiences or thoughts from their own perspective in an unprecedented way, and artificial in the way that expression is curated and edited to perfect the most sympathetic and publicly palatable angle possible.³

Many thanks to Hawkins for sharing his story, of which few Browns fans and even fewer NFL fans were aware. It deviates from most sports-related/Tom Rinaldi-esque human interest stories by staying away from his upbringing, focusing only on what it took for Hawkins to get his foot in the door for even a chance to make an NFL roster. The ungrateful ones make fans forget that for most professional athletes, playing their sport at the highest level has been the chief goal of their lives — one they desperately sought and for which they go great lengths on a day-to-day basis to maintain. It’s hard not to root for a guy like Andrew Hawkins, who exhausted every ounce of talent and guile he had to make an NFL roster. He’s also a smart guy (read his imposter assistant coach letter), with an adorable son (as we know from his Instagram) and aspirations to become an NFL GM one day.

Chatted with @Hawk at @SloanSportsConf. Wants to be an NFL GM one day. Owners would be wise to put him on the futures list. #SSAC15

— Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN) February 28, 2015

As a matter of fact, wannabe GM Andrew Hawkins spoke at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference about the availability of performance data in the NFL, particularly the advent of wearable technology. In today’s edition of “THE FUTURE IS NOWWWWW,” (the Ws are to simulate the sound of foreboding voice of an omnipotent godlike figure shouting from space), ESPN’s Kevin Seifert explains:

Hawkins said the pending availability of performance data will make player evaluation “less of a conversation” and more of an objective assessment, one that can be displayed neatly on a line graph generated by software aligned with GPS-like chips embedded under their pads.

It’s a frightening proposition for many players accustomed to the subjective judgment of coaches and scouts, and leads to obvious questions. How much will objective data impact a player’s value? If a team notices, say, a player’s average speed in practice is trending downward, will he be judged to be dogging it? Or will the team conclude he is simply slowing down and cut him?

“It sucks,” Hawkins said, “but you just understand the business. Whether you like it or not, it’s going to get to that point. In football, philosophically, they would much rather use a rabbit’s foot than actual data from wearable tech to win a football game. But it’s a matter of time before it gets here. You just have to hope there is a balance.”

This is all part of a frightening vision of the future where everything is monitored at all times and every action or inaction is a data point in one universe-defining scatterplot. But in the narrower football sense, Hawkins presents a fascinating scenario, one not necessarily as cold and harsh as Hawkins’ tone suggests it is.

An abundance of quantitative data can make player evaluation more of an “objective assessment,” as Hawkins thinks, but it can also help players, coaches, and fans understand things. Cutting an old or tenacious but under-qualified player will always be difficult, but the use of information in the way Hawkins alludes to can help make sense of the abstract. If a player (and team) can say to a player, with verifiable information, “You are this much slower at this stage in your career, and cannot keep up with receivers anymore,” or, “Your sharp route-running maximizes the distance between you and opposing players,” they won’t only better understand their deficiencies, but better identify areas of improvement.

Obviously, the idea of a robot coming to tell a player he’s cut and will now be euthanized because his 40 time decreased by 10% is a heartless and depressing future. But the influx of information also presents an unheralded rookie or a struggling veteran a chance to make an impression with a statistically exceptional performance that would have been overlooked or ignored in the past. The hope is that data will make football and basketball and baseball and other sports more of a meritocracy. Furthermore, that information presents a new opportunity for organizations and players to have a more open conversation, with even more humanity than before — instead of one rooted in subjectivity and filled with cold finality: “I’m sorry, but we have to let you go.”⁴

And the award went to… Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

How did I do with my Oscar predictions from two weeks ago? My predictions went 4-of-9, which doesn’t sound great. But it’s within a few tenths of a percent of MVP candidate James Harden’s field goal percentage this season — so that’s not so bad, right? Right???

I saw the Birdman Oscar takeover coming from miles above, but believed what I wanted to believe instead of what I should have. Between The Artist and Argo, I thought the Academy would restrain itself from giving a statue to the one halfway decent movie this year that a studio made about making movies. I was wrong. I thought Birdman was excellent (and may give my thoughts on it some other time), but Boyhood is without question the movie people will remember most when they think back to 2014 five years from now, when we are able to think about more than surviving the ongoing zombie apocalypse. Richard Linkalter will have to keep waiting, and we’ll keep waiting here in Cleveland, too. But in the meantime, let us bask in the unexpected virtue of ignorance.

1. The Championship Watch will be updated every other week (roughly), so expect one next week. [↩]
2. For the unfamiliar, the Players’ Tribune, founded by The Captain Derek Jeter, describes itself as “a new media platform that will present the voices of professional athletes” primarily via “first-person stories directly from athletes.” [↩]
3. Plus, with very few exceptions, athletes don’t write copy that clean. Without question, some of The Player’s Tribune posts undergo substantial edits. Does this make me, Mr. Spellcheck and Quadruple Re-Edited Writer, a hypocrite? Maybe. But my writing is the product in and of itself. The Player’s Tribune is an unofficial public relations arm for the images of the athletes using it. [↩]
4. Although it’s much more likely that the objective data will be used to justify a release in an email attachment from front office software, forgoing face-to-face contact altogether. [↩]