Hacker News Reader

Comment by Uhhrrr | Hacker News Reader

Hm, so the data points for likelihood of getting another first down is based on data from the fourth downs that coaches actually attempted? It may be that the fourth downs they didn't attempt were not as propitious for some reason - wind (which the authors mention), injuries on key players, lateral positioning which doesn't favor one formation or another, etc.

View on HN

The choice to go for a 4th down conversion is more likely than not primarily decided by the current score and time left in the game. However, the success of a 4th down conversion probably isn't heavily influenced by those factors (other than perhaps player fatigue), which would suggest that coaches are indeed too conservative.

is more likely than not primarily

This seems pretty loose. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but the theoretic flaws in the data are such that you would want a pretty tight logic in your model to have any level of comfort with it. The proportion of the state-space that is unobserved seems ~large and critically relevant.

Agreed. The sample is very likely tainted by factors that made success much more likely than average if we believe that NFL coaches are both conservative (they forgo punts only when the odds are much in their favor) and rational (they are win maximizing).

Still, there is probably a case to be made that coaches should be a bit more aggressive, but that edge could be small enough that other factors (like perceived incompetence) dominate it.

No, it's based on third down data. The likelihood of converting 3rd and 1 is probably similar to that of converting 4th and 1.

Thanks! I read poorly the first time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com