I'm in the process of merging GDAnalyst capabilities into The Next Guess website. I'm doing this for 3 reasons. First, I think it will produce a better, more consistent, more integrated user experience. Second, it will save me about $24/month in hosting costs if I can deprecate GDAnalyst. Third, I enjoy the challenge.

If you are interested in trying out the new capabilities in beta, you may do so here.

List of capabilities that have been added to The Next Guess:

• Recruiting Cost Calculator (Navbar)
• Singe Game Analysis (Navbar)
• Favorites (Navbar) - you can save teams of your choice and the browser will store and preserve these favorites locally. More on saving favorites below.
• GDAnalyst world map view - when you view a world, at the top you will see GDAnalyst links to each division above the season selection table
• GDAnalyst team view - once you select a team from the map view or the drop-down, you will see the team on the map with table of schools with human coaches.
  • Favorites "heart" button - click this to save the school as a favorite. Then use the Favorites link on the Navbar to easily switch between your favorited teams.
  • Games tab - shows team schedule and allows you to select games to analyze. Select games and click the Analyze button. It will open an new tab and analyze the game results for selected games.
  • Roster tab - at the moment it only provides roster counts by position.
  • Guess Team History - shows the Guess team history for that team and provides links to view each season
• Guess Season Team Page View - if you are viewing a specific season for a specific team, there is a fourth RED button for GDAnalyst. Clicking this button will send you to the GDAnalyst page for that team.

Major to-do items:

• The Game Results Analysis is still a work in progress. It doesn't have all the same CX and filtering options as GDAnalyst does, But it is similar, and I will work to improve it.
• On the GDAnalyst style team view, I plan to pull in a few more data points from Guess team data.
• Add the ability to individually map a specific city of choice within the context of a given world and division.
• Before I kill the "old" GDAnalyst site, I will update the Browser plugins to point to the updated Guess links.
• Add a coachId page that shows active schools and potentially historical school data as well.

If you do try out the beta site, please feel free to let me know how it goes.

This is awesome!

Also, lmk if you wave any ideas to impetus the team ratings. I have a few ideas on simple aggregation that may help folks

Are you getting enough contribution money to continue to make this worth your efforts?

Posted by harriswb3 on 4/25/2025 5:52:00 PM (view original):
Are you getting enough contribution money to continue to make this worth your efforts?

This is a very good point. I'm astonished how often I use that website. I just sent a donation. Thank you for everything you do @ebzimny01

I don't do it for profit, but always greatly appreciate the donations to help offset the operational costs.

Last year I counted 18 unique individuals who donated. So far this calendar year I have received donations from 8 individuals.

For context on overall usage through website metrics, in the last 12 months, the 2 apps received a little over 300,000 page views, which comes to a little more than 800 page views per day on average.

Do you plan on adding in the ability to filter based on distance ranges into the new site like GD analyst?

It will include:

• the map view of each of World+Division
• the map of each school in relation to all other human coached teams; including table of distance away from each human-coached school
• (not built yet) ability to manually map a specific "city, ST" in a World+Division; including table of distance away from each human-coached school
• (not built yet) the browser extensions will be updated to hyperlink the city locations and display them in map view on Guess for the specific World+Division
• (not built yet) - I will also need to update the GDRecruit desktop application to properly link to Guess in order to map each recruit for the specific World+Division

Is that what you mean by filter based on distance ranges?

Sorry I just realized I wasn't specific at all lol I meant filtering based on distance ranges in the game analyzer. For example in the current game analyzer I can see the game data for less than or equal 4 yards or some other variation of that and then combine that with selecting a certain down is super helpful in gameplanning

Sounds great, thanks Ed!

patsrule - that detail helps. Agreed that down and distance filtering can be useful. I will make sure it is available.

I've published the core updates to the production The Next Guess website.

List of capabilities that have been added to The Next Guess:

• Recruiting Cost Calculator (Navbar)
• Singe Game Analysis (Navbar)
• Favorites (Navbar) - you can save teams of your choice and the browser will store and preserve these favorites locally. More on saving favorites below.
• GDAnalyst world view - when you view a world, at the top you will see GDAnalyst links to each division above the season selection table
• GDAnalyst world+division map view - once you select a world + division:
  • you see a map of all schools with the human-coached schools with red icons
  • there is a drop-down select box to select a school
  • there is a blue button that offers the ability to individually map a specific city of choice within the context of a given world and division.
• GDAnalyst team view - once you select a team from the map view or the drop-down, you will see the team on the map with table of schools with human coaches.
  • Favorites "heart" button - click this to save the school as a favorite. Then use the Favorites link on the Navbar to easily switch between your favorited teams.
  • Games tab - shows team schedule and allows you to select games to analyze. Select games and click the Analyze button. It will open an new tab and analyze the game results for selected games.
  • Roster tab - at the moment it only provides roster counts by position.
  • Guess Team History - shows the Guess team history for that team and provides links to view each season
• Guess Season Team Page View - if you are viewing a specific season for a specific team, there is a fourth RED button for GDAnalyst. Clicking this button will send you to the GDAnalyst page for that team.

Major to-do items:

• The Game Results Analysis is still a work in progress. It doesn't have all the same CX and filtering options as GDAnalyst does, But it is similar, and I will work to improve it.
• Updating browser plugins to use the new Guess functionality
• Updating GDRecruit desktop app to use the new Guess functionality

One thing I miss from the old game analyzer was the ability to move the columns. I like to have the OT vs DT right next to each other, as well as having the OPM vs DPM, and yards gained next to each other. I have also noticed that there is no total by Pass or Run in the play type like the old one. This was useful if I was in a pinch for game planning when I could see the run vs pass tendency totals per down without having to count them. Any chance they will be making an appearance in the new one?

herculoids, thank you for the feedback.
1. Column ordering - Being able to re-order the columns is on my list to implement.
2. Totals - I just happened to roll out an update last night that added totals based on what has been filtered. Check it out and let me know if that is what you are talking about.

When exporting data via CSV file, I noticed that the defensive formation field exports as a DATE format. So 3-4 comes out as March 4.

I assume you are using Excel to open the CSV. If so, it will try to auto-detect column data type definitions and for Def Formation it will detect incorrectly. One way around this is to do the following:
1. open a blank workbook
2. Select Data -> From Text/CSV menu option
3. Select the CSV file you downloaded
4. Should see a dialog to "Load" the CSV with some options
5. Should be an option about Data Type Detection - select "Do not detect data types"

Another alternative is to import into Google Sheets. When I tried that, it did not auto-convert defForm column into dates.