Before we dive into Aaron Rodgers, let me preface this post with a little rant. There are few things more over-rated in sports than a comeback. I’m not talking about the inspirational comeback a player has from injury. I’m referring to a team coming back from a large deficit in a game to win at the last moment. I mean, what’s fun to watch about an overly lopsided first half, then an inversely lopsided second half?

Football is a game of knowing your opponent and taking advantage of mismatches. This is a big reason why players and coaches study film. Everyone has tendencies and identifying them before they happen in a game is a huge advantage. That is why I wanted to dive into offensive play-calling to highlight play-calling tendencies. Can we accurately predict if a team is going to run or pass purely on the game situation?

Analytics is taking over football. That much I am sure about. This means we can expect new, innovative ways to coach and manage teams going forward. Panthers owner David Tepper has spoken about being innovative in his approach to filling the head coach role, but also his front office staff. Even ex-GB coach Mike McCarthy has re-branded himself as analytically-minded in hopes of getting a job in 2020. Part of the many, many benefits of analytics taking over football is the ability for teams to optimize play calling and game planning strategies.

I’ve always heard “the team that commits the least amount of penalties wins the game.” It makes sense, but I wanted to dig deeper. Not every penalty is created equal, so which ones truly “penalize” the team chances of winning? How much impact does having less penalties than the opponent? Let’s find out. First, let’s take a look at the Win Probability Added (WPA) from penalties. This measures how much the win probability model from NFLScrapR increases or decreases after the penalty is committed.

If I were to ask which types of throws Pat Mahomes was the best at in 2018, many would say the deep ball…or the no-look pass…or the left-handed pass…or any other ridiculous pass he made. Not many would think it was the short pass. Actually the shortest pass of all. The Chiefs were by far and away the best team when it came to passes at or behind the line of scrimmage.

Everyone knows, or should know by now, that passing is more effective than running. This has been proven time and again. What I wanted to know was if teams tended to be more conservative by running the ball more often by field position. More specifically, where are teams running the ball more on third down and why. The below graph show yards to goal line broken down by distance to go over the past 5 years.