the jets have an analytics guy who understands and uses fancy stats?
I've never talked to the guy but I know someone who did. He never asked directly those types of questions but from what my friend told me it seemed like the guy knew the existence of Corsi numbers but wasn't really in depth knowledgable on what's going on with the analytical blogging world and some of the stuff being done with the data.
This is sort of the feeling I got from Cheveldayoff's interview from Tait on analytics.
There's pros and cons to all types of data currently available to both the pros and amateurs. The big convenience with Corsi data is two fold:
1) League wide data. This is huge. Without it you can't really do much in terms of contextual studies. We know Stuart and Thorburn have poor Corsi numbers, but without league context it would be near impossible to accurately determine whether their numbers are okay relative to depth in position and usage. We wouldn't know that Stuart's numbers are about average for bottom 1/6th of defenders (ie: he is an okay number six in that regards) and that Thorburn's numbers are terrible even for a 4th line player.
2) Open source studies. One thing we'll start to notice as more bloggers get picked up or go dark is the slow down of discoveries. The online community creates a large think tank where new ideas were constantly tested and re-evaluated. Of course for teams the opportunity cost is huge as other teams also benefit from this type of arrangement.