Greg Olsen and Mark Schlereth Credit: The Dan Patrick Show / © Denny Medley-Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

Mark Schlereth spent several minutes on The Dan Patrick Show on Monday railing against analytics and the people who use them.

The former Denver Broncos offensive lineman and current Fox NFL analyst launched into an all-too-familiar tirade, sparked by Sean Payton’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-1 from the Patriots’ 14-yard line in the second quarter of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game rather than kick a field goal.

“I get into arguments because I hate analytics,” Schlereth told the former SportsCenter anchor. “I hate all analytics people, I don’t like nerds.”

The problem with Schlereth’s rant — as Greg Olsen pointed out on X — is that the analytics actually supported kicking the field goal in that situation.

“The irony here is the ‘analytics’ actually said KICK!!” Olsen wrote on X. “But that’s not as fun, I guess.”

This isn’t the first time Schlereth has gone after analytics without understanding what the analytics actually said. It’s become a pattern where any decision that goes wrong must have been driven by nerds with calculators rather than football people with experience, even when the opposite is true. The analytics community isn’t some monolithic group that always recommends the same thing in every situation, and the best analysts understand that numbers are just one input among many that should inform decision-making.

Olsen gets that. He’s played the game at the highest level, understands the human elements that matter in critical moments, and can still recognize when data provides useful information that should be considered. He doesn’t treat analytics as gospel or ignore the realities of football, but he also doesn’t pretend that numbers are useless or that every coach who uses data is betraying the spirit of the game.

While Olsen has built his broadcasting career on explaining the nuance between data and decision-making, Schlereth has built a media persona around blaming analytics for bad decisions, regardless of whether analytics actually recommended those decisions.

“You have to understand the feel of the game, and I thought Sean made a major gaffe not kicking that field goal, but that has become endemic of the league in general,” Schlereth said. “It’s almost like you’re a wussy if you kick a field goal. And I hate the momentum shift, I hate it all. Take the points.”

As it turns out, the nerds might have saved Sean Payton from himself, but that’s not the story Schlereth wants to tell.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann