I was listening to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast and he discussed a theory or framework he called strong link/ weak link.
Essentially, what he said is that study proved that for a soccer team, the team gets more improvement from improving the weakest members of a team than they do from adding on superstar. Because of the flow of soccer games, it is rare for one transcendent player to make a score soley by individual effort or achievement. The contrasting sport is basketball, where one superstar can succeed on a team of less competent players.
This got me thinking what kind of application this has for football, and in particular for the Rams.
If I had to guess, I would say that football is a hybrid strong link/ weak link sport. Because of the importance of the quarterback position, spending resources getting a superstar at that spot would make sense. Aside from the QB, however, I would argue that football is more like soccer in that all the parts have to work together to increase team success, and that it is very possible that teams would be better served to spend medium money on mid-range FA to replace their worst players, rather than spending big money on a superstar. In fact, I wonder if this type of analysis is what has led to Patriots having such continued success. They rarely pay superstars outside of Brady. And making decisions using this type of analysis would explain something like the Britt signing...they signed Britt not because he is good but because he is marginally better than their worst WR and is reasonably priced.
IF this is true (and I admit it is a big if) how does it apply to the Rams? Does it suggest that giving a Suh+ contract to Aaron Donald might be bad utilization of funds, relative to trying to find 3 or 4 midrange FA that we can use to replace our worst players? In a sense, that is what Snead and McVay did last year, as Robinson and Barnes and our WR's were almost certainly our weakest links. For that matter, who would be considered our weakest links on this year's team?
Anyway, I don't know the answers, but it is pretty interesting way to look at team building, isn't it?
