Bill Belichick isn't a fan of websites that use analytics to examine the NFL.
When the Patriots head coach appeared on WEEI 93.7 FM on Monday, he was asked about his secondary, which one of the radio hosts, Jerry Thornton, pointed out is ranked No. 1 by an analytics website. Before answering the question about how his defense has thrived despite losing multiple players in the offseason, Belichick offered his opinion about those kinds of sites.
Belichick intentionally didn't name any specific URLs, but he made it clear that he isn't a fan of those that exist.
"With all due respect to those websites, I don't really know how some of that information is determined or evaluated," Belichick said. "I know that in the past, we've looked at those websites -- not any one in particular -- but just in general we've looked at those websites and said, 'OK, here's their top rated guy. Where are we?' Just to kind of gauge where we feel like the value of the websites are. If they're rating them the same as we are, then maybe that's something we need to keep a close eye on so we can start to track a lot of guys. If there's a big discrepancy, then is there really any value to that? I'd say a lot of that stuff is, in my opinion, not real accurate, so take it with a grain of salt."
An important distinction needs to be made, though. Just because Belichick isn't a fan of current analytics sites, doesn't mean he isn't a fan of analytics in general. It just means that Belichick doesn't trust the ones he's seen because, as he mentioned, he doesn't know their evaluation methods.
In fact, as Belichick pointed out, the Patriots are performing their own evaluations of a similar nature. But they're apparently not reaching the same conclusions. That's why he's not a fan, because he doesn't think they're accurate -- not because he isn't a fan of advanced statistics.
