I can't even imagine how football writers would handle something like the sabermetrics community. Football people have been far more accepting of weird/'out there" stats in general though. Like who the hell can make sense of passer rating? And it gets cited with regularity by anybody and everyone(not to say anything of how good or bad of a stat it is) and has been for decades. I just don't think it's that comparable. Stats just don't play as major a role in football as they do in baseball. I'd even argue that baseball is fairly unique in having such a stats heavy focus. One of the least appealing things about football, at least for me, tends to be how traditionalist so much of the football media tends to skew. It feels like such a meatball heavy sport most of the time.