Daily Options Report

So it's an ageless question. Or at least it dates back to 2001. Should NFL coaches play more aggressively? The state of the art study on this still appears to be that piece from David Romer of UC Berkeley. Frontal Cortex does the explaining. Hat tip Abnormal Returns.

The question Romer was trying to answer is familiar to every NFL fan: what to do on 4th down? Is it better to bring on the kicking team for a punt or field-goal attempt? Under what conditions should coaches risk going for it?

To answer this immortal mystery, Romer analyzed every fourth down during the first quarter in every NFL game between 1998 and 2000. (He had help from a computer program.) The first thing Romer did was figure out the fluctuating value of a first down at each point on the football field. After all, a first down was more valuable for a team if it occurred on an opponents two yard line than on their own twenty yard line.

Then Romer calculated the statistical likelihood of going for it on fourth down under various circumstances and actually getting a first down. He also calculated the probability of kicking a successful field goal from various spots on the field. So let's say you are NFL coach, and you have a fourth and three on your opponent's 30 yard line. Romer could tell you that 1) you have a 60 percent chance of getting a first down, and that teams with 1st downs inside the thirty yard line score a touchdown 40 percent of the time, for an expected point value of 1.7 and 2) that field goal attempts from the 32 yard line failed almost 65 percent of the time, which meant that going for a field goal only had an expected point value of 1.05. In other words, it's almost twice as effective to go for it than to attempt a field goal.

Actually, not sure those numbers are right. Of the 60% of the time you don't get the TD, the vast majority will still result in FG attemts, so the expected points from going for it must be modestly higher. In addition, there must be some added value from the extra time you have the ball.

But even taking that all into consideration, few grand statistical studies in football or baseball ever seem to take game conditions into account. If your defense is basically unable to stop the other team's offense, you should go aggressive, Field position will mean little if they're going to score from pretty much any starting position. You should also onsides kick with some greater frequency. If it's the Bills/Browns 6-3 extravaganza from last week, then no, I don't care what the numbers say, punt the ball away.

The gist of the article is that coaches are too risk averse, and may make their team's 5% less likely to win by not making statistically correct calls. The risk aversion is understandable given that you're not going to see too many coaches citing expected gain and small sample size to justify a gamble or 2 that backfire. Better to conform.  But......they want to win, and at the end of the day the better one's will take shots when it makes sense to them. And by and large, each situation is unique in terms of score, weather, time remaining in the game, the quality of your offense, defense and special teams, the quality of their offense, defense, and special teams, yada yada yada. So yes, there are teams they are not aggressive enough, but I have always believed the numbers from this study exagerate the problem.