Former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Virgil Carter is something of a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
Carter was selected in the sixth round of 1967 NFL Draft by the Chicago Bears. After Cincinnati Bengals’ quarterback Greg Cook was injured during the 1970 preseason, Carter ended up in a Bengals’ uniform. He led the NFL in completion percentage in 1971 and finished third in overall passing.
The following year, Carter split time with Ken Anderson until Anderson finally claimed the starting role. Carter missed the entire 1973 season with a broken collarbone. Carter played in the World Football League in 1974 before ending up back with the Bears during the 1975 season. He retired after the 1976 season.
He played for such football icons as George Halas and Paul Brown and was mentored by Bill Walsh. A few of us still remember Carter as a highly intelligent quarterback who flashed some real talent before his injury.
“Oh, I don’t know how good I was, but I had fun,” Carter said in an interview several years ago. “If I work a little bit on my arm, I might still throw now. I don’t have much overwhelming muscle mass left (laughs).”
But, it is not his arm that he will be remembered for. Carter, who earned an MBA in mathematics at Northwestern while with the Bears, is considered one of the founders of modern NFL analytics.
In 1971, Carter and Northwestern professor Robert Machol published a three-page paper called “Operations Research on Football.” In it, the pair dealt with two primary concepts: (1) different yard lines and situations on the field were assigned different expected point values and (2) teams should be more aggressive in certain fourth-down situations.
Fast-forward several decades, and Carter and Machol’s findings have made a huge impact on the league. The point-value model they pioneered, which is now known as expected points added (EPA), is used by almost everyone to evaluate offensive effectiveness. Every NFL team has at least one analytics staffer, and college programs have embraced the concepts, as well.
“A lot of what’s in that paper is literally the same thing that’s being done now,” said Michael Lopez, the NFL’s senior director of football data and analytics. “The numbers have changed because football’s evolved, but just the idea that that existed so far before people got onto it, I think it’s pretty neat.”
When Carter and Machol set out on their project, the entire process took more than 160 hours. Brian Burke, a senior analyst for ESPN, revised and modernized the EPA in 2008 and formally introduced it to the NFL. Eventually, the analytics went from information on fringe websites to something that every NFL franchise uses and embraces.
“Now it’s everywhere,” Burke said. “It’s kind of like watching your kids kind of grow up and have their own lives, move out, get married and have their own kids.”
Sam Francis is the Bengals’ football data analyst and heads the team’s analytics. He started working in the NFL in 2017 and has seen firsthand how the use of numbers has become more prevalent.
“The more conversations we have, the more projects we do, the more studies we do, they’re going to understand what I have access to and how it can be used,” Francis said.
When he started out, stats such as EPA were buried on spreadsheet reports. Now, EPA has earned a much more important position. When the Bengals evaluated rushing offense this offseason, EPA was the first column they looked at as they ranked teams across the league.
The process in Cincinnati and around the league shows how important the analytics department has become, especially now that the speed and tracking data they seek are so readily available.