At ESPN’s Bristol, Conn., headquarters, analyst Dan Orlovsky can be spotted in-person walking around in front of green screens. On TV, though, Orlovsky appears within a virtual football stadium, spitting projections about the NFL Draft.
Rather than focus on this weekend in Nashville and making assumptions about which prospect will go to which franchise and why, Orlovsky is focused on a few months and years down the road: predicting the top starters and most likely Pro Bowlers.
Powered by ESPN’s Stats and Information Group’s sports analytics team, Orlovsky is forecasting career path probabilities for certain 2019 NFL draft class members over the first three years of their professional football careers.
“There’s always a conversation around which players should go where, who is going to be good. And this is a way to pull some data that is position agnostic together and run some comparisons,” said Allison Loucks, a director at ESPN’s SIG. “Not only does the model project out their chance to reach certain thresholds as a player within a certain amount of years, but it also has a similarity score. This allows us to take their combine data and compare them to players of the past.”
The stats group has pulled in data from a variety of sources, including grades from Scouts, Inc., the NFL combine, and Pro Football Reference, to create player predictions and make historical comparisons. Their model is able to compare each prospect with five current and past players with matching athletic profiles, predicting which players in this year’s draft will end up having strong rookie seasons, and beyond. The ESPN model covers a range of forecasts, including how well each player may be able to step in for an injured starter, and can get even more granular by breaking down insights by position.
LSU graduate Devin White, for example, has a 70 percent chance of reaching the Pro Bowl in his first three years, according to ESPN. His athletic profile matches that of Luke Kuechly, the Carolina Panthers Pro Bowler who was the No. 9 overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft.
“You always hear scouts or talent say ‘Hey this guy is a can’t-miss prospect, best ever!’ What our models shows is that even the best guys only have a 70 to 75 percent chance of being a Pro Bowler,” Loucks said. “There’s no such thing as can’t-miss when it comes to this. Our metrics make things more objective rather than subjective, helps takes bias out of it.”
ESPN said it played around with the model in an unofficial capacity last year, but built out a virtual studio to bring the analysis to life for this year’s draft. Orlovsky’s segments are being used to enhance ESPN’s overall storytelling. They currently appear on SportsCenter and NFL Live.
ESPN will also have stats-heavy virtual studios for other events, including the NBA Draft, and plans to continue expanding its capabilities to other sports in the coming years. The stats team is looking at how to better leverage data, including eventually providing real-time statistics that might aid fans interested in sports betting.
“There’s no secret that gambling is becoming a bigger deal in the country,” Loucks said. “We don’t have any set plans on anything but we certainly started looking at what types of storytelling we can do with odds and gambling.”
The team is looking to widen the variety of predictions it produces as well. Last year, for example, ESPN launched a college football playoff predictor. It plans to expand that capability to the NFL this year. While there are roughly eight people on the sports stats team right now, Loucks said the team is in the midst of expanding.
All of this will come as ESPN focuses on building out its virtual studio capabilities. The virtual studios are highly customizable and can be turned around by ESPN’s motion graphics team in a few weeks. They offer the company additional flexibility in its storytelling, giving ESPN the ability to create any kind of relevant scene, rather than relying on a traditional studio setting.
“A goal is to replace some traditional studios with virtual ones, so you can have a unique look for each,” said Mark Perron, a senior manager within ESPN’s production operation.