Back in late July, Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio made it clear that he has embraced the analytics world in football.
“I love analytics,” the 66-year-old defensive coordinator said.
Fangio even went as far as to say that he has his own proprietary system of analytics that he uses on his own. But aside from Vicalytics, Fangio also said he’s happy to take any information the Eagles’ analytics department gives to him.
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Philadelphia sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
Give him the information and he’ll sort through it, Fangio said.
This week, Eagles assistant general manager Alec Halaby — who has a strong background in analytics — corroborated that relationship.
“Vic and I get along really well,” Halaby said. “I really enjoy working with Vic. He has so much knowledge from 30+ years in the league. So I think you have anytime you have someone with so many years in the league and so many good defenses and has a unique perspective on the game, I love that.
“And Vic is a data-driven guy so I think that, yeah, we work really well together. And he’s worked really well with our analytics team.”
NFL
Because Fangio is in his 60s and because he definitely has a reputation of being an “old-school coach,” it might come as a surprise to some that Fangio is so willing to accept something like analytics, which is considered very new-school.
But that’s not a surprise to Halaby.
“I don’t think there’s always a 1-to-1 mapping between, quote, unquote, ‘old school’ reputations and what they’re like,” Halaby said. “”And there a lot of perceived ‘old school’ coaches that are really analytical. I think it goes back to some of the roots of football scouting and opponent scouting, where it really was collecting a lot of data, a lot of information.
“There are people that were viewed as old school — it was the 60s, it was the 70s, it was the 80s — but I think they were, in practice, very analytical, even if it wasn’t called analytics.”
While Fangio is on-board with getting extra information, he did say in late July that the analytics community misses the boat on what’s actually important. Halaby said he hasn’t had a conversation with Fangio about that exact criticism but offered that folks in that community often disagree.
Halaby, who began his career with the Eagles as an intern and this offseason interviewed for two different GM jobs, explained the role of the analytics department in Philly: It’s meant to be a support role, “where you’re trying to provide any information, analysis that will help” the coaching staff.
And different coaches want different things. So the analytics crew really tailors the information they give to coaches based on their personal preferences.
“There are people who love text, people who love tables, there are people who want graphs, there are people who just want you to tell it to them in 20 seconds,” Halaby explained. “So our analytics group is really good at adapting to however coaches want to learn. They may have things that they did at their previous stop. They may have things that they did earlier in their career, things that they wanted to do but didn’t have the capacity to do. It sort of is a support role and there is a lot of personalization in terms of figuring out how every coach works and how they think about the game too.”
What Halaby seemed really excited about was the opportunity for staffers to see how coaches — and vice versa — view the game. Different perspectives are welcome and can be productive.
Given Fangio’s experience, is there anything unique about the information he wants?
“Vic has really sharp, unique ideas on the game, without getting into too many details,” Halaby said.
Subscribe to Eagle Eye anywhere you get your podcasts:
Apple Podcasts | YouTube Music | Spotify | Stitcher | Art19 | RSS | Watch on YouTube