I’ve repeatedly defended Ron Rivera’s forthrightness on this site, particularly against claims that he was being duplicitous about his intentions in dealing with players. Last week though, my steadfast defense of straight shooting Ron was nearly tested. Rivera was interviewed on the Rich Eisen show, and in the aftermath, the twitterati seized upon a single passage from his 6+ minute discussion, and spun Rivera as an analytics troglodyte.
“If I do what the analytics said, and it says 9 times out of 10 you’re going to complete it, there’s that 1 time out of 10 that you don’t.