THE ORIGIN

     An idea that took Russell Clay (@RussellJClay) and Nate Liss (@AnOutragedJew) over three years to bring to life, and one that to this day is still evolving, the Breakout Finder, in its simplest form, was created to help bridge the gap between the “film” and “metrics” communities by providing the most accurate account of a collegiate athlete’s career. The goal was to avoid bias, and offer a completely empirical option that took into account the entire body of work a player provided.

     But there were hurdles.

     Attempting to provide an accurate representation of a player’s production required more than just raw counting stats. It required innovation. To fully understand someone’s production, it meant accounting for who they played with, who they played against, and how they produced while on the field with these factors. These questions helped launch the creation of three different scoring measures: Teammate Score, Dynamic Score, and Level of Competition Score (LOC). These metrics became the drivers of the database and each one carries an ability to raise or lower an athlete’s Output Score. The sole purpose of these three measures is to put all players on a level playing field in an attempt to neutralize the difference between opportunity, competition, and production type. So whether a player is from the Mountain West Conference or the SEC, the Breakout Finder values them accordingly and scores them evenly.

     The Breakout Finder gives scouts, fans, and fantasy football enthusiasts alike the ability to equip themselves with the greatest understanding possible of how a player produced in college and, just maybe, if they’ll break out.

GLOSSARY

BEST SEASON MARKET SHARE – The amount of receiving yards a prospect accounted for in an individual season for their team. Market share is one of the primary indicators when assessing talent to identify future potential.

BEST SEASON YARDS PER RECEPTION – The highest yards per reception a prospect produced in a single season during their collegiate career. Yards per reception can be an indicator of a player’s most suitable positional usage.

TEAMMATE SCORE – A value that accounts for each individual teammates that a prospect played with to put true context to their opportunity share. Created by Russell Clay, the teammate score was designed to find an empirical way of addressing the skill position players around a prospect and converting it into one composite score.

DYNAMIC SCORE – A composition of kick return, punt return and rushing yardage accrued during a prospect’s career. The higher the score, the more diverse and elusive the athlete.

LEVEL OF COMPETITION (LOC) – A value range that puts into context just how difficult the road to production was for a prospect. A metric designed to indicate how easy or a players road to production actually was.

RECEIVER RATING – Measure the relative usage and efficienct of a running back in the passing game. With a value range of 0-100, running backs scoring over 85 were dynamic college receivers, while those below 60 underwhelmed in the passing game.

CITED SOURCES

Pro Football Reference: https://www.sports-reference.com/

Player Profiler: https://www.playerprofiler.com/

Rotoviz: https://www.rotoviz.com/