Bears Capture Analytics Chief

American football team The Chicago Bears has appointed Mitch Tanney for a newly created role, Director of Analytics, responsible for developing techniques to identify, extract and analyze player data.

Tanney (pictured) joins from football products and sports analytics firm STATS LLC, where as Manager of Sports Analytics, and latterly Manager of Football Products, he helped create and manage many of the company's advanced football statistics. While there, he also oversaw the system that aligns a team's analytical data to player records, and he analyzed more than 30 years of historical data to identify those statistical categories that influence game outcomes.

Earlier, he served as Assistant Football Coach at Monmouth College, and played as a quarterback in the Arena Football League and other pro leagues.

In his new role, Tanney will primarily research player evaluation and game situations, in an effort to project future outcomes.

General Manager Phil Emery comments: 'We needed somebody with an expertise in filtering through subsets of data to make sense of them in terms of which pieces are important and which pieces can be put together to give a clearer picture of projecting performance, whether it's on the field in situational football or in scouting projecting players moving forward.'

Just under a year ago, The Baltimore Ravens hired Sandy Weil in a similar role, Director of Football Analytics, working alongside the player personnel department and coaching staff to study data related to game trends, NFL scouting and player production.

Web site: www.chicagobears.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.