Brady Should Deliver Value As A Free Agent Even If On-Field Performance Declines

BY ADAM GROSSMAN

The biggest free agent news from the current National Football League offseason is that quarterback Tom Brady will no longer be playing for the New England Patriots. B6A’s Revenue Above Replacement (RAR) and Audience Inference Platform (AIP) demonstrate that Brady should deliver value for his new team even if his on-field performance declines.

RAR evaluates how an individual player generates revenue for a team based on his / her on-field and off-field personal performance. On-field performance is determined by how winning impacts revenue and how a player contributes to winning. B6A created a new on-field metric called “B6A Wins” to determine a player’s on-field performance that is based on the number of snaps and quality of play when a player is on the field.

Off-field performance is determined by how star power impacts revenue and by the level of a player’s star power. Star power is determined from a player’s social media conversation value, earned media mentions, and jersey sales.

We examined Brady across three seasons to see how his on-field and off-field performance impacted on the Patriots. We found that his average on-field value during this time was $19.9 million while his average off-field value was $58.6 million. Brady’s on-field and off-field breakdown are consistent both with other NFL star quarterbacks and with star players from other sports where B6A has RAR models including baseball and basketball.

RAR also finds that all of the star power / off-field metrics tend to increase when a star player changes teams. Not only is there typically increased excitement from a team’s fan base but the player can help his / her new team reach new audience demographics.

We used AIP to complete audience analysis to demonstrate why this occurs. AIP uses natural language processing (NLP) to read social media posts of an account’s followers to determine who they are and what topics are of interest to them. The table below shows analysis we completed on March 17, 2020 (the date that Brady announced he was leaving the Patriots).

We focused the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Chargers for this analysis. We completed this evaluation when these two teams had been originally reported as possible Brady destinations and before it was reported that Brady would likely sign with the Buccaneers. AIP shows that Brady followers are a younger, more educated fan base than the followers of both teams.

In addition, we examined the 5,000 most emphasized keywords across all accounts to determine if followers were talking more about Brady than the base population. The terms “TB12” or “Brady” were keywords mentioned significantly more frequently by the Buccaneers and Chargers fan bases than by Tom Brady’s account or other keywords mentioned by the base population. Buccaneers fans in particular seem the most excited for Brady’s potential arrival indexing 2.44 times higher than the base population.

The primary question about Brady heading into this offseason concerned his on-field performance given his age (he will be 43 years-old by the beginning of the 2020 season). Purely from an economic perspective, however, teams should examine Brady’s holistic value including on-field and off-field factors. In particular, a player’s star power typically drives more revenue and is a more consistent variable year-over-year. Our analysis shows that Brady should remain a star even if his on-field performance declines.