Matt Caraccio: Reframing Player Evaluation in American Football
The Adaptable Athlete Podcast
Intro
Guest Matt Caraccio shares insights on viewing athletes as problem solvers, analyzing film with context, and the complexity of athletes as systems, challenging traditional methods of player evaluation in the NFL.
My guest today is Matt Caraccio!
For the last 6 years, Matt has been the Co-Owner and Co-Host of the Saturday2Sunday Football Podcast. His podcast is dedicated to year round NFL prospect analysis & discussion. During that time Matt has hosted three Summer Seminar Series on Skill Acquisition in American Football -those include The Nature of the Movement Problems in American Football", "The Player Problem-Solver Paradigm in American Football", and "Movement Marvels in American Football".
In each of these unique series Matt was fortunate enough to have an array of football coaches, skill acquisition coaches, academics, sports psychologists and former players come together from across the community to share their unique perspectives and insights on these topics.
More recently Matt has been developing a series of videos entitled "Unraveling Skill" on the Saturday2Sunday YouTube Channel. In each of these videos Matt explains and applies his Player Problem-Solver Evaluative Lens (PPSEL) to the evaluation of current NFL players and future prospects.
Matthew Caraccio has been a High School Mathematics Teacher and Sports Coach for the last 20 years. Matt has developed and taught high school courses in both Sports Analytics & Sports Management.
In addition, Matt has coached athletes across various sports including Basketball, Baseball and American Footbal..Matt’s diverse background gives a very unique look at sport movement, which comes across strongly during the episode
The impetus for this episode was a tweet from someone I know in high school coaching about how players who don’t fit certain “molds” if you will, often get overlooked…we dive into that topic and much more, including the following:
- How Matt views athletes as problem solvers
- What reframing player evaluation in American Football
- How when we evaluate film, we must look strongly at context
- How looking at athletes as a complex system , can help us understand their behavior on the field better
- How brining a “pro model” to youth sports may not be such a goo idea
- How context drives content during player evaluation
- We discuss correlation, or lack of correlation b/t combine performance and length of NFL careers
Guys this episode a lot of fun. Matt is a super smart guy and really does great job trying to bring a different lens to scouting….I encourage all of you to follow him on social media and listen to his podcast, which I will link to in the show notes
Thanks for joining us today, enjoy the show!
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Matt's Contact Info:
- Saturday2Sunday Football Podcast Website
- Matt's Twitter
- Saturday2Sunday Twitter
As always, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, feel free to contact me:
- Email: javier@igniteperformance.net
- Instagram: @thecoachjav
- twitter: @thecoachjav
Credits: Song- "Starstruck" by Freebeats.io
Let's Chat!
Twitter: @thecoachjav
IG: @thecoachjav
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