11.29.07
Game Theory, NFL style
Shankar Vendatam reported in the Washington Post a while back about the pyschology of football coaches “going for it” on 4th down.
With just over five minutes to play in yesterday’s game against the New York Jets, the Washington Redskins found themselves on their own 23-yard line facing a fourth and one. The team, which was ahead by just three points, elected to do what teams normally do in such situations: They played it safe and punted rather than try to keep the drive alive.
The Jets promptly came back to kick a field goal, tying the game and sending it into overtime. While this particular story had a happy ending for Washington, which won, 23-20, it illustrated the value of an analysis by David Romer, an economist at the University of California, who has concluded that football teams are far too conservative in play calling in fourth-down situations.
You don’t have to be particularly interested in sports to find Romer’s conclusion intriguing: His hunch about human behavior in general was that although people say they have a certain goal and are willing to do everything they can to achieve it, their actual behavior regularly departs from the optimal path to reach that goal.
[…]
New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick is among those who has said he agrees with Romer, and Belichick happens to be one of the more successful coaches in the league. Two Sundays ago, as the Patriots were piling up an astronomical score against Washington, Belichick took a chance on a fourth-down play and got his team seven points instead of the three he might have gotten had the team tried a field goal.
The article goes on to say that most coaches have ignored Romer’s findings. Last week John Madden made a stir when he gave a game plan for the Eagles for their (then) upcoming game against the Patriots:
“I’m not a big guy for going for it on fourth down — but I think you have to go for it on fourth down [in this game] because you have to get touchdowns instead of field goals. It has to be a very, very aggressive approach because offensively, they’re going to take a very, very aggressive approach to you.”
In the middle of the first quarter of the game, the Eagles did go for it on 4th-and-1 at the New England 15. It was basically their first drive, as the Patriots had intercepted a pass three plays into their actual first drive. Generations of coaches have played it safe in similar situations (early in the game, already down 7), kicked a field goal, and tried again on the next drive. But converting the 4th down led to a touchdown which set the tone for the rest of the game: matching scores until the Patriots scored last and forced another two interceptions.
(HT: Sendhil)
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Tags: gametheory, football
Derek said,
December 2, 2007 at 9:55 am
In his very interesting book, The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki spends a few pages talking about Romer’s work and how NFL coaches routinely ignore his research-based advice to “go for it.” He notes that trying out a new strategy like this one is risky for NFL coaches, in part because if it fails, it will fail very publicly.
Surowiecki writes, “Under those conditions, sticking with the crowd and failing small, rather than trying to innovate and running the risk of failing big, makes not just emotional sense but professional sense.” He calls this phenomenon “herding.”