Like many football fans, Aaron Schatz will spend Monday reflecting what Saturday night's Denver Broncos-New England Patriots playoff game means.

Unlike most, Schatz has a sizable post-game audience for his findings and commentary.

The 1992 Sharon High School graduate is the creator and editor-in-chief of Football Outsiders, which offers in-depth statistics and analysis on its website.

"I had always been a fan of Bill James, the baseball stat guru," Schatz says.

"And like a lot of people around here, I became more and more of a football fan after Drew Bledsoe and Bill Parcells showed up in the early 90s.

"So I went looking to see if there was similar advanced stats work for football, and there wasn't much, just this book, 'The Hidden Game of Football.' I took some of the ideas from that book as a jumping off point, started playing with some stats from 2002, and that's how it all got started."

This interview was conducted by e-mail.

SHARON PATCH

What's a typical day like for you?'

AARON SCHATZ

It depends.

During the season, there's a set rhythm.

Monday mornings, I break down stats from the week, start coming up with writing ideas for later in the week.

Tuesdays are the full stat breakdown and writing the weekly ratings commentary.

Wednesdays I drive down to Bristol, to ESPN headquarters, where I'm doing a TV show called "Numbers Never Lie" on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

After the show tapes, I work on the Thursday column that goes up on ESPN each week.

Friday is mostly e-mail answering, cleaning up data, and charting game tape.

In the offseason, February and March are usually dedicated to improving our methods, doing new research. April we put together the projections for the next season, and May and June we write our annual book, Football Outsiders Almanac, which comes out in early July. Plus I do the fantasy football projections that we sell in July and August, that's a large part of my income.

SHARON PATCH

How often do you watch games for fun rather than work?

AARON SCHATZ

There really isn't a distinction. Watching games is fun, but it is also part of work. I'm lucky enough that what other people like to talk about at parties for fun happens to be my job.

SHARON PATCH

How often do players and agents ask about your site's findings?

AARON SCHATZ

Oh, not very often. I haven't really talked to players much.

I get a lot more contact with team executives. There are some teams that have started doing research similar to what I do, I talk to those folks sometimes, share ideas. I go to the combine in Indianapolis every February, it's a good hang where I can share stories and ideas with some of the execs and assistant coaches I know.

SHARON PATCH

How can fans best use your site during the playoffs?

AARON SCHATZ

Well, we run a lot of our usual content during the playoffs, ratings after each week's games. But the biggest thing during the playoffs is our big playoff previews we run on Friday afternoons, chock full of all our stats for the matchups in each weekend's games.