Tableau

Prompt: Create Dashboards and Visualizations for your favorite team's general manager to aid in evaluation for analysts, player personell, and coaching staff. Using confined and a provided dataset (nothing crazy in terms of scraping data from websites). 

Instructions for GM, Joe Schoen

Good morning, Joe. I just finished with the dashboards you needed me to get done. I created five different ones in total focusing on all parts of our team. Here is a quick summary of what you’re looking at in each one.

Dashboard 1: Offensive Line Breakdown

As you are well aware, our offensive line has become a perennial issue in terms of production. I thought that we came into the year in a good spot, but wanted to show you the breakdown of the guys that we ended up using. The first graph is a trellis that shows each player’s participation in offensive snaps on a weekly basis. I thought this would be a good way to show just how many guys we had to use this year and the misfortune that we endured with two of our starters missing substantial time due to injury. I think it is a clean way to see the need for better offensive linemen, especially in immediate backup positions for the upcoming season.

On the same note, we need to find a way to allocate some of our resources more effectively to the line. I created a bubble plot in the bottom portion of the dashboard to show how we’ve spent some of our draft picks in the past and which ones are starting the most games for us. Obviously, we hope that our first rounders pan out, but we are finding some good talent in the fourth round from both our picks and other teams. Something to keep in mind going forward. The nulls included in this data signify an undrafted player. I brought in a different dataset from ProFootball Reference to complete this plot.

Dashboard 2: Player Personnel Treemap

We continue our look into where we are drafting well and where we are finding some of our most impactful players on the field. It is hard to compare offensive and defensive players, but we can look at overall snap count to determine availability and success of players. The tree map you see is a great way to see where the majority of our snaps are coming from in terms of rounds in the draft and which team they are coming from. Our homegrown guys are in blue, while other teams’ original picks are in grey. We’ve gotten good production from our first, third, and fifth round picks. I think our second-round picks can be improved in terms of consistency in drafting. There are some good players there, but with such a high draft position, we could do a little better. I want you to take note of the null values in this set, as they are also undrafted players. We have done a very good job here and these players are more than just special teams throw ins.

Dashboard 3: Player Personnel Donuts and Correlation

The two donut charts simply show the average age of each player on our offense and defense. As you can see by the numbers, we are pretty young across the board. I tried to color coat the position groups similarly both within each side of the ball and with the entire team.

The correlation chart below shows a deeper dive into our defensive players. I stuck with looking at snap counts as well due to the lack of more available performance metrics. Our players are divided into regions that are the same as their classification in the donut charts as well. I think we are hitting on a lot of our defensive backs and I’m glad that we are not afraid to take some shorter guys in the backend. They still make plays. Our trend seems to be looking at taller outside linebackers and middle linebackers, going for length over mass. Obviously, there are exceptions, such as MLB Bobby Okereke. Our guys in the trenches have to be both tall and wide, and we are doing a good job with those guys too. In the tooltip for this graph, I included extra information on each player. Their birth year is shown to get a glimpse of how old they are currently. Also, I added a calculated field that determined the number of turnovers they were a part of, being an interception, forcing a fumble, or recovering one. The height was listed as such in the original dataset “6-1” for someone who is six feet and one inch. I had to clean this and create a new column for height in inches and convert all them accordingly, no worries there.

Dashboard 4: Special Teams

As you preach, special teams can make or break games! I thought our return games last year were poor, as we kept rotating people in and out of spots to find some consistent performance there. I decided to look at the average length of return for both kicks and punts for each team and the league as a whole. The four split quadrants show relative prowess in one part over the other. I thought it would be good to see where some of the playoff teams and teams within our division stacked up as well. I was interested to find that playoff teams are sprinkled throughout all four, I think that bodes well for us. However, most of those teams are better offensively than we are at the moment. We may need to invest in getting some energizing play from our punt and kick return games.

Below that split quadrant look, I created a visualization that highlights our kicking and punting games. I looked at our average FG% and our average punt yards per game in comparison to the rest of our division. Unfortunately, we had the lowest FG% and the highest average yards per game punting. That is not two categories that we want to lead going forward. The Cowboys and Eagles should be the standard as we continue to improve our kicking games.

Dashboard 5: QB and RB Free Agency

Joe, I know these two positions are very important to your tenure as the GM of the Giants. We need to get this right year in and year out. The first view in the top half of this dashboard is for our backup quarterback. I highlighted the quarterbacks who are 2023 free agents in red to differentiate them from Daniel and Tommy, both who are under contract this year. It is important to look at everyone in the picture though. I think we need to take a look at bringing back Tyrod or going elsewhere with Drew Lock or Sam Darnold. I created a parameter to focus solely on these players and created a calculated field for completion percentage. I also looked up how to calculate QBR (quarterback rating) and then added a calculated field for that as well. If you hover over one of their stats, you can see the number of games they played as well, which I calculated from the “weeks” pill in the data.

Below them, we look at the impending free agent running backs. I created a bullet graph for us to see a few of the biggest names on the market. I wanted to see some of the players and their overall effects on the game. I set our target number for a running back to be 80 yards per game in total production. The players are ranked in the order of which I think we should pursue, money not being a factor (that’s above my paygrade). Hovering over a player’s average yards per game will give you a deeper dive on the player. This will show the team they played for last year and their game averages for attempts, longest run, touchdowns, and rushing and receiving yards. This should give us a good indication as to who we need to target as the next piece of our backfield.

Conclusion:

         Joe, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to dive deeper into these questions for you and hopefully I added a little bit of insight for you and the player personnel staff. I think our areas of focus of the offensive line, draft pick success, defensive trends, special teams play, and our offensive backfield, will be very important as we head into this upcoming season. I think the coaching staff will benefit from these dashboards too, as they will be able to see which players may fit into our specific schemes. They can use each board as a way to see where snaps are allocated, where we need to improve in formation usage, or even which players they prefer in certain situations.

I had a ton of fun looking into these different topics for you and cannot wait to hear what you think I can do better in the future. These areas of need were most important when I took a wide look at the organization and the ways that we can be optimizing our processes. I trust that you will make the best decisions you can and hope that the information I provide will assist you as we enter the 100th season of New York Giants football. Happy to help.