Defense vs Offense: A Chicago Bears Coaching Transition

In January 2013, the +Chicago Bears  made the largest coaching philosophy transition when they fired Lovie Smith after a 10-6 season and hired Marc Trestman from the CFL.  

How did their back-to-back seasons compare? Check out the viz below for more information.

UPDATE: As pointed out by my brother +Matt Montgomery , there are two other reasons to be excited for the +Chicago Bears that I will try to incorporate into the viz.
1. Top Offenses > Top Defenses via AdvancedNFLStats
2. Offense is more consistent than Defense, year to year via FootballOutsiders

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A Single Pixel (Or Hide) Can Save Your Tableau Viz

UPDATE: After posting this in the Tableau Tips and Tricks community, +Shawn Wallwork pointed out an alternative to my solution that is built right into Tableau.  It was a lesson for me, so I wanted to share it here as well.

While working on my Mike Ditka dashboard (here and on Tableau Public), I had an interesting idea for 'Da Coach' viz: While showing a timeline of a particular coaches season records over time, I would also indicate if the coach had won a Super Bowl that year.

I had found a great site that had images of the Super Bowl logos and used a Chrome extension to download all of the them.  After making a shapes folder for the Super Bowl images in my Tableau Repository, I mapping the images to the coach-season combination that was appropriate.  This layered on top of a line chart started to become....

Ugh...so close, yet so far away

not what I was hoping for.  There were far more 'Null' values than images to display, and if I made the sizing smaller, the Super Bowl logos would not show up.

NEW METHOD: Tableau builds in a way to accomplish hiding the unwanted shapes.  

First, select (left click) the shape you want to hide.  This is CRITICAL because jumping this step will not get you the menu options you want.

Second, right click on the object you want to hide and check 'Hide'

REMEMBER: You will only see this option if you select the object to hide first!

If you ever need to see the data that you have hidden, you can select the drop down of the shape card, and select 'Show Hidden Data'

This accomplishes the same task as the original method, while also providing some additional space in the Viz.  But be sure to remember what you've hidden so you don't loose track of your data. 

ORIGINAL METHOD: Epiphany: what if I made the image for 'Null' values a single pixel?  That way, it will be so small it won't be seen as an image, and even if I need to make it bigger, it still will not be noticed.  

Sure enough, a website hosts an image of a transparent single pixel.  After downloading the image and saving it to my shapes folder, it was easy enough to assign: just hovering over they general area Tableau gave me a easy-to-select box.

Selecting a transparent single pixel inside of Tableau

Worksheet updated!

In the end this gave me the worksheet I was hoping for all along.  Maybe this will help you too in your next viz!  Take care.

Viz of the Day!

Today I was very honored to find out I had won Tableau Public's Viz of the Day, a daily selection of cool dashboards built and hosted on Tableau Public. I am very excited to get the Mike Ditka dashboard up and in front of people, showing the impact of a Chicago Bears legend.

I even got to go to the game last night to watch his number get retired at the game with my dad!  It was bitterly cold, but a fantastic 45-28 win over the Cowboys.

My Dad and I at the Bears-Cowboys game, 12/9/2013. Ditka's number was retired at halftime.

Thank you everyone who liked and shared the viz.  It has been a crazy couple of days, but very exciting.  Take care.

Mike Ditka: A Look Back On A Chicago Bears Legend

With the latest round of commercials of the Super-fans raving about "Dit-ka" and the seemingly never ending stream of advertisements with his face on it, it can be easy to forget how much of a dominant force Mike Ditka was when he was on the field: both revolutionizing playing the Tight End position and coaching one of the most well know Super Bowl teams in the history of the NFL, the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Ditka's triumphs have stood the test of time, and he will be recognized of that on Monday December 9th, when the Chicago Bears organization will retire #89 in honor of his lasting achievements in football.  

While no one post/article/interview can ever quite capture what Mike Ditka meant to the Chicago Bears and the NFL, I have taken an attempt to showcase some of what he has accomplished and how it is still competitive with modern day talents.

To a Chicago Bears legend from a life-long Chicago Bears fan: Thank you!

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