Now that NFL training camps have opened, it’s that wonderful time of year when every football fan has hope for the next season. For the players, they have just begun the grind of summer, hoping for a good season or just to make the roster. Right now each team will have roughly ninety players in camp, and with only 53 roster spots there are some tough decisions ahead, but then there always are when it comes to signing players.

Building an NFL roster is not an easy task; it is a complex balancing of player ability and maths. Spend too much on one player and you will have to sacrifice somewhere else on the team to keep under the salary cap. You might think that with the new wave of analytics that is being applied to sport, that finding value in the NFL would be getting easier, but there are several reasons that this doesn’t seem to be the case.

When it comes to American sports, the leader in the application of analytics is baseball, but there is a reason for this. Baseball, despite being a team sport, is in fact a sequence of individual actions that occur in specific and often quantifiable circumstance. As a consequence, it is a lot easier to say to give percentage for a right handed power hitter facing a left handed pitcher. However, football is built around the interaction of twenty-two moving parts for each player, so it is not always as easy to quantify.

One of the routine problems is that due to the variety of schemes in place in the NFL, a player that works brilliantly in one scheme will be no where near as effective in another. A classic example of this would be a favourite player of mine, the 49ers defensive lineman Justin Smith who started his career on the Bengals. He was a first round selection (fourth overall) and set a rookie record with 8.5 sacks in his first season. However, there was always a lot of debate over him as a player for the Bengals, he never had the double digit sack numbers that people expected out of such an early draft pick. I always thought that this was little unfair as he had no control over where he was picked, and Justin was a three down player who routinely played a high percentage of snaps, and after his first year hold out never missed a game. Having been franchised for one year, in 2008 he finally left and signed with San Francisco, where he has gone to five consecutive pro bowls since 2009.

So what was the difference? Well if you look at his numbers, they haven’t really changed, but the role he is being asked to play has. With the Bengals he played as a 4-3 defensive end and was expected to get a lot of sacks and tackles. He was always a good player of the run, but never had the number of sacks you would want out of a high draft pick playing the end position. However, when he signed with the 49ers, Justin moved to a 3-4 defense where his role was more to take up space and occupy the opposition blockers so the linebackers behind him can make the tackles. He plays this role brilliantly, and has the type of personality where he doesn’t mind sacrificing himself for the team concept. One of my favourite things to watch is Justin Smith take on one or two linemen and manhandle them and often get the tackle or sack anyway. If you get a chance, make sure you watch number 94 for a series or two, it’s one of the great sights in football.

The relevance in all this value is that one team’s doesn’t quite make the grade is another’s pro bowler and this is something you find by looking at tape and understanding the scheme rather than numbers. But sometimes I wonder whether this value always makes sense.

One of the stories over the summer has been the contract situation of Jimmy Graham, tight end with the New Orleans Saints. Unable to come to an agreement over a long term contract earlier this year, the Saints placed their franchise tag on Jimmy Graham, guaranteeing they would have his services this season unless he chose to sit out and go unpaid. This in of itself was a relatively straight forward sequence of events, however the fun began when Graham filed a grievance that was taken to arbitration over whether he should be tagged as a receiver or a tight end. Now in mind, no matter that he spent 67% of his snaps last year in the slot or out wide as a receiver, Graham is a tight end, that’s one of the reasons that he so successful is the mismatch when he splits out to these positions.

The reason for grievance was money, the franchise tag for a tight end was roughly 5 million dollars less than a receiver, as it is generated from an average of the top players at that position and receivers get paid more than tight ends. The problem with this is that in terms of production as receiver, Graham’s numbers were comparable to those of a receiver and a damn good one at that. Thanks to the power of the franchise tag (something I’ll probably look at next offseason) the Saints had all the advantages in this negotiation and used this to get a pretty favourable deal for them despite making Graham the highest paid tight end in the league. The reason I think this is favourable, is that in the open market I think that Graham should and could get paid receiver money. Why? Because his production can justify it, and so the Saints have just saved themselves money for receiver production that they can spend elsewhere.

But what does this mean for us at this time of year? There are still extensions in the offing, players holding out, and a myriad of transactions happening at the bottom of rosters. But soon there will also be cuts, and what determines whether you make the team is complex equation based on what you can do on the field, your age, your potential, how much you cost, your scheme fit. In short does your value as a player on the filed stack up against your cost off the field? There will be more than one player who catches your eye in preseason, that through some combination of these factors will end up being more valuable for another team. It is usually these players that several seasons later people will wonder, how did everyone miss on them? The answer is that it is not always that easy to tell in a player’s early career, but that’s half the fun.

We may be over seven weeks away from the start of the regular season, but football will be starting sooner than you may think. Training camps are just around the corner and the preseason kicks off with the Hall of Fame game on the 3^rd of August. There has been talk of re-organising the preseason games, and there is dissatisfaction with the quality of the games. The players only get paid the same nominal fee as training camp, with their salary not kicking in until the regular season, but with the same injury risks. However, as a fan I am still excited so let me lay out a defence of preseason.

Firstly, it is football. Now this might seem like an obvious point, but the Super Bowl was played on February 2^nd this year and there isn’t another snap until the August 3^rd, that’s just over six months. As a football fan you are guaranteed twenty games a year (four preseason & sixteen regular season games) for your team, so if you discount preseason that’s a fifth of your games gone for the year.

There are also complaints about the quality of the football, and whilst it is true that the game schemes are pretty vanilla, and the starters are playing reduced minutes, if at all, that doesn’t mean that important things are not happening. I never put too much stock in the preseason record, but I do feel better about the upcoming season if the Bengals are 2-2 or better.

One of the major reasons you should pay attention to preseason is quite simple, with everybody focussing on the super stars of the game, heightened by the influence of fantasy football, people seem to forget what I think is one of the most important parts of a football team, depth. Thanks to the never ending pursuit of better training methods, we have bigger and faster players giving us increasingly violent collisions on the field. The injury rate in football is one hundred percent, and this means that your team’s roster will look very different at mid-season when compared to opening day, yet alone in week seventeen. By this point, that sixth linebacker you didn’t care about could well be starting or at least playing a crucial part on special teams, and if you’re lucky enough to have a franchise quarterback, you’d better hope he is still healthy. Depth matters.

During last year’s preseason I watched the Seattle Seahawks and what I was impressed with was the depth of their roster, they did not let up and bullied the Denver Broncos into a 40-10 loss, a precursor of their 43-8 Super Bowl win. Now I’m not saying that buried in this year’s schedule will be a predictor game for the Super Bowl, but I knew the Seahawks were a good team (that sounds obvious in hindsight but it is good to see things with your own eyes!) and you can get a real feel for how deep a team’s talent goes. The Bengals had an excellent preseason win over the Atlanta Falcons last year, that reflected their respective roster depths and whilst the Bengals went on to lose in the post season, the Falcons fell apart and ended 4-12, largely due to the way their roster had been constructed .

So how do you get the most out preseason? Well there is simply too much going on to follow the whole league so you break it down into a selection of things to focus on. Here’s my plan for preseason.

I intend to watch every snap of the Bengals. There has been a lot of coaching turmoil this year, with new coordinators on both sides of the ball. I shall be interested to see the beginnings of their new tenures, and in particular Hue Jackson’s offence with its renewed focus on the run, as I do feel that too much pressure was placed on Andy Dalton to win games and I think he will benefit from the support of a commitment to the run game.

The preseason is also your first chance to get a look at your team’s rookies. I shall be interested to see Russell Bodine, our new fourth round centre who looks as if he might be a starter. He had the best bench-press at the combine and I’m interested to see how he fits in the new offence. Darqueze Dennard is our first round corner and whilst I hope he isn’t starting too early (corner is one of those positions that take time to develop), I’m excited to see him play. Then there is Jeremy Hill, an old fashioned beast of a running back that leads me into the next section of my Bengals preseason plan.

As I said, depth matters, and so whilst you may think that without the starters who cares what happens in the game, but the answer to that is the players just trying to get on the roster. In fact not just the roster, but a roster. Preseason isn’t just about making the team, this is these player’s careers and for those at the bottom of the depth chart, having good plays on tape is important for catching on to any team. All teams scout the bottom of other team’s roster, looking for a player that might not make the opening day roster of the team they went to training camp with, but could really help at a position of need for them.

Each team will have more players at any position than they can keep, but not all roster battles are created equal. The daddy of them all is the infamous quarterback competition, which luckily I don’t have to worry about this year, but I’ll still be watching some other positions of interest and starting with the running backs.

Giovanni Bernard had a great rookie season last year and looks to be the starter this year. BenJarvus Green-Ellis is a solid, experienced back who runs hard and by all accounts is a great person, but is also twenty-nine years old and so facing down the dreaded age of thirty that so few running backs seem to be able to play on past. Cedric Peerman is special teams standout, that played more of a role in the offense in 2012 than last year as the starters were mainly healthy. Finally, there is Rex Burkhead, picked last year and who looked good in preseason but didn’t make an impact in live games. That’s just the players from the final roster last year and as I have already mentioned, the Bengals just drafted a running back in the second round and have another undrafted rookie so something has to give.

Look at any team and you’ll find battles like this all over the roster. For the Bengals there is already talk about the effort and weight room exploits of an undrafted defensive tackle making the conversion to full back, who will be in competition with last year’s incumbent H-back (a mix of the traditional positions of fullback and tight end). Add in a scrum of receivers behind the top four (the Bengals usually have six on the roster), a selection of exciting linebackers with safety Taylor Mays thrown into the mix having played extensive time at nickel linebacker last year when Emmanuel Lamur was injured in the final preseason game, but also fighting with the other safeties, That’s just the start and there’s plenty to look at already, there will be players I’m unaware of that will grab the eye too.

But it’s not just the Bengals I’ll be looking at or this blog is going to get very lopsided. The first teams I’ll be looking at this preseason are the Dolphins and the Vikings.

I have a friend, who is a Dolphins fan and given the disaster that was the offensive line room last year, the turn around in players meaning that only one their starting centre was returning and he has already gone down with an injury requiring surgery, things will be very interesting for them on offense. Particularly as they really need to find out if there quarterback Ryan Tannehill is the real deal or not, which is going to be difficult as he is not the kind of quarterback that thrives behind a bad line.

I have more personal reasons for watching the Vikings, in that the architect of the Bengals recovery on defense Mike Zimmer has finally got a head coaching job and I just want it to go well.

Finally, I’ll be looking at the St Louis Rams and watching to see if the Michael Sam, the NFL’s first openly gay player, can make the roster.

There will be other headlines, things that point to how the season might go, injuries, and surprises that we haven’t even thought about yet.

So here’s the trick for getting into preseason, if you have a team, throw yourself into its roster, understand the strengths and weaknesses and where the competition is going to be. If you don’t have a team, why not? Pick one! Or just find the story lines that interest in you, look out for your favourite players; I’m sure I’ll be looking in on the 49ers and Justin Smith. The point is there is plenty to sink your teeth into.

Most importantly of all, football is coming, and that is something we can all be excited about.

Part of the skill of a writer is knowing where to begin a story, so where do I start with this new blog? How about with the question, why American Football? Let’s start at the beginning, with a special team, but even though I am a Bengals fan this is not where our story begins. No, our story begins with the 1985 Chicago Bears.

The 85 Bears are one of the iconic teams of American football, famed for their innovative 46 defence, their swagger, the 15-1 season, and for their 46-10 Super Bowl XX win. They had future hall of fame players like Walter Payton and Mike Singletary, as well as cult heroes like William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry. Such was their status that they even made waves across the pond here in the UK. I was only six at the time, but I remember them being on the news, and whilst I had no clue what a 46 defence was (we can get into the details of that another day) there was a mid eighties surge of interest in American football over here, driven partly by the spark that the 85 Bears provided.

This surge led to channel four, the fourth out of four channels for those who don’t remember back then, to start showing games and highlight packages late at night. I was far too young to stay up, but curious due to the buzz at my primary school, and armed with a book my parents bought me to explain the rules, I started to watch tapes my parents would make of these programs. I was soon hooked, and a feature of our hallway when I was growing up was a poster that I made every season on a sheet of A4, which would be stuck on the living room door to remind my parents to switch to channel four when they went to bed so my game would be taped.

The first season that I properly remember, is the 1988 season and even then it is pretty vague. However, I know that it was season that led me to support my team. A great Cincinnati Bengals team feature a high powered offense went all the way to Super Bowl XXIII and a heart breaking loss, with that touchdown pass with under a minute to go, to one of the major NFL dynasties the San Francisco 49ers. This loss should have prepared me for what was to come supporting them, but it was too late. By then I was hooked on this exciting team who played at a place called the jungle, little would I know that since then we’d win one more playoff game in 1990 and currently have the longest playoff win drought in NFL. I was fascinated by the tactics, the speed, and the otherness of the sport. In short, I was a fan.

Coverage would wax and wane over the coming years, but I followed however I could and watched games whenever possible. Thankfully the internet came along and I could follow online, throwing myself ever deeper into the growing amount of information that was available. These days, thanks to the NFL Gamepass, I can watch every snap the Bengals take in a season and watch any game that takes my fancy, so where next?

I love writing. I love football. This seems like the obvious next step. So in the midst of one of the best football world cups in years, which I am enjoying thoroughly, I am also studying the wrong football. Reading up on how to break down film, thinking about what analytics I want to take a look at, and planning articles. We are only sixty days from the start of the season and training camp is just round the corner. I am already excited so lets get started.