So, I got this idea stuck in my head about the whole “offensive player of the year” thing. Not just watching the games, but actually trying to figure out, you know, who really moved the needle. Seemed like a fun little project to tackle.
I started off pretty simply. Thought I’d just pull some basic stats together. Points scored, yards gained, touchdowns, the usual stuff. Fired up my computer, opened a spreadsheet. Figured I could just crunch some numbers and see what popped out.
Well, that got messy fast. Finding consistent data across different sources was a pain. One site had stats calculated one way, another site had slightly different numbers. And then you get into the arguments – does a running back’s receiving yards count the same? What about quarterbacks who run a lot? It wasn’t just about adding numbers up.
It got complicated. I tried writing a few simple scripts to grab data automatically, but cleaning it up and making it comparable took way more time than I thought. I spent hours just trying to standardize things. It felt like I was trying to force a square peg into a round hole. What does “most valuable offensive player” even mean? Is it just stats, or is it about making big plays when it counts? The numbers didn’t really capture that.
Hitting a Wall and Thinking Back
Honestly, hitting that wall with the stats project reminded me a lot of my old job. Not the stats part, but the feeling of trying to push something forward, taking the ‘offensive’, you could say, and running into roadblocks.
There was this one time, I had an idea for a new way we could handle customer feedback. Seemed straightforward to me, a way to actually use the input instead of just filing it away. I put together a proposal, showed how it could work, thought it was a no-brainer. I was ready to be the ‘offensive player’ on that project, drive it down the field.
But man, the pushback. It wasn’t about whether the idea was good or bad. It was about stepping on toes. “That’s not how we do things.” “This department handles that.” “We don’t have the resources.” All the usual stuff. It felt like trying to run through a brick wall. People were more worried about their little kingdoms than actually improving things.
- I scheduled meetings that got cancelled.
- My emails went unanswered.
- Suddenly, people who were friendly before seemed busy whenever I came around.
It was frustrating. I spent weeks trying to nudge it forward, making small adjustments, trying to win people over one by one. It was exhausting. In the end, the whole thing just fizzled out. Died on the vine, you know?
Looking back, it taught me something. Sometimes being the ‘offensive player’, the one pushing hard, isn’t about scoring points directly. Sometimes it’s just about surviving the pushback, learning the landscape. And sometimes, you realize the game is rigged, and the best offense is finding a different game to play. That whole experience was part of why I eventually moved on from that place. Found somewhere new where taking initiative wasn’t seen as a hostile act.
So yeah, my little stats project didn’t really crown an ‘offensive player of the year’. But it did make me think. Made me remember that sometimes the toughest yards gained aren’t on the field, they’re in just trying to get something done.
