Mike Eayrs might look to you like a genial grandpa and former statistics teacher, and you're not wrong — but he's also the guy responsible for Aaron Rodgers' only NFL title. Mike Eayrs is known as the grandfather of NFL analytics, and while his story hasn't been adapted into a blockbuster Hollywood movie with Jonah Hill playing him, Eayrs' number-crunching strategy has been as equally important to pro football as Moneyball was to major league baseball.
The Athletic recently published an in-depth profile of Eayrs as part of its Changemakers series, and his story is rather unique and significant (statistically and otherwise!).
Mike Eayrs' background
Mike Eayrs got his start as an assistant coach at Minnesota State, where he was always interested in data and charts and graphs to study what was working and what wasn't for his team. Then he was asked to teach a Statistics class at the school, and he tried to make the lessons fun and relatable to students by applying them to sports.
Eventually he was using data students found in his classroom in team meetings and on the football field, and he got on the radar of the Minnesota Vikings, who shared a practice field with Minnesota State at the time.
Eayrs worked on the Vikings coaching staff for 16 years, and became a favorite of Coach Bud Grant for his insights and novel approaches.
He then got poached by the Vikings' fierce rival, the Packers, and head coach Mike Sherman. And Green Bay liked Eayrs so much they kept him on staff when the Mike McCarthy regime came in.
Eayrs' impact on Aaron Rodgers
Eayrs convinced McCarthy to give his players more autonomy, allowing Aaron Rodgers to develop a system of hand signals and linebacker A.J. Hawk to design quick word association methods so defenders could easily change the call from one to another.
He also did a deep dive on the 2011 Steelers defensive schemes, and found that defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau played Cover 3 on 91 percent of their snaps in base personnel. The Packers used all of this detailed analytical information to beat the Steelers 31 to 25 in Super Bowl 45.
Aaron Rodgers might not be the biggest fan of science, but he sure owes a lot to math, and stats guru Mike Eayrs, for helping him earn his lone Super Bowl ring!
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