All of the world is starving for sports. Earlier this week, the Houston Texans traded DeAndre Hopkins and a 2020 fourth-round draft pick to the Arizona Cardinals in return for David Johnson, as well as a 2020 second-round pick and a 2021 fourth-round pick. For those of you unfamiliar with the NFL, DeAndre Hopkins is widely considered one of the best receivers in the league along with Julio Jones, Mike Evans and Michael Thomas. David Johnson, a running back, was not even a top 10 player at his position this past year. This could be viewed as a very lopsided trade.
With that said, I thought it would be interesting to get a read on how people were reacting to this trade by conducting an emotional sentiment analysis on tweets reacting to this trade. For the sentiment analysis, I used the NRC Emotion Lexicon; a list of English words and their associations with eight basic emotions (anger, anticipation, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and trust.) as well as two basic sentiments positive and negative. I downloaded 3,200 tweets per topic, then conducted sentiment analysis by graphing and analyzing the results.
First, here is a look at what people were saying about the personnel move by the Texans.
The Texans fans appeared to have a lot to say about the move today. Texans fans have mixed emotions about this trade which makes sense, as they just traded away DeAndre Hopkins. They did get a couple draft picks and a running back that once was elite, which could explain the high amount of trust. We will dive more into the Texans’ move later.
Next ,here is a look to the reactions involving the other team involved, the Arizona Cardinals
Everyone on twitter appeared to have positive things to say about the trade that was executed by the Cardinals. The Cardinals also franchise tagged Kenyan Drake which most people would agree is a great move after how well he performed after a mid-season trade from Miami to Arizona. Looks like the cardinals did a great job today!
When comparing the two graphs the negative sentiment on the Texans is much larger than that of the Cardinals.
So, before we tear into the Texans, here is a look at what people said about David Johnson
I believe that most people tweeting about David Johnson would be very happy about it. The Cardinal fans are happy about trading him away in return for a future replacement to the great Larry Fitzgerald. The Texans fans that liked the trade believed that it is a very good move.
Here is how people feel about DeAndre Hopkins on twitter following the trade
It is important to remember that there are two fan bases affected by this robbery. One fan base walked away with one of the best receivers in the game leading to a much more positive sentiment and a lot of trust. The other fanbase appears to be very upset about giving up one of the best receivers in the game and fearful of what general manager Bill O’Brien was thinking.
Which leads me to my next topic of the General Manager and Head Coach Bill O’Brien.
Surprising at first is the amount of trust that the Texans fan base tweeted about their support of Bill O’Brien. Upon more thought, the Texans are returning quarterback Deshaun Watson, along with two great wide out stars in Kenny Stills and Will Fuller. If David Johnson returns to his old form as a power back, the Texans could turn into a very powerful offense even without Deandre Hopkins. Nonetheless, it is Deandre Hopkins that they traded away. The Texans also received a 2020 second round draft pick so perhaps fans feel confident in the process. It should come to no surprise that the Negative sentiment is the highest score with Disgust coming in at third place.
UPDATE:
Micheal Irvin appeared on Get Up, a morning sports talk show this morning, March 18th, to discuss the DeAndre Hopkins trade. The information that he shared regarding the Deandre Hopkins trade did not put Bill O’Brien in a good spot. With this new information I wanted to see how the sentiment analysis has changed.
As I struggle to understand where any positive or trust would come from in the tweets going on today about Bill O’Brien, my only guess is that it comes from shows and reporters tweeting out the information trying to be neutral and get the first scoop. Also there is a lot of speculation on whether or not Micheal Irvin report is true which could skew the trust value. On the lighter side here is a word cloud of the tweets so far today about Bill O’Brien.
Closing out I’d like to shout out my bandwagon Texans fan Mark who must feel pretty happy that he chose to purchase a Deshaun Watson Jersey. It’s also very clear that most people had very strong feelings on twitter about how the Texans navigated their first move in free agency.
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