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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Trade Bait: Season 3, Ben Bagley
Trade Bait: Season 3, Ben Bagley
WWU Honors College Senior Projects
A 5-episode podcast series dissecting the use of statistics in the NFL and NFL Media
Fourth Down Decision Making: Challenging The Conservative Nature Of Nfl Coaches, Will Palmquist, Ryan Elmore, Benjamin Williams
Fourth Down Decision Making: Challenging The Conservative Nature Of Nfl Coaches, Will Palmquist, Ryan Elmore, Benjamin Williams
DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive
This thesis analyzes the hypothesis that coaches in the National Football League are often too conservative in their decision making on fourth downs. I used R Studio and NFL play-by-play data to simulate actual football plays and drives according to different fourth down strategies. By measuring expected points per drive over thousands of simulated drives, we are able to evaluate the effectiveness of different fourth down strategies. This research points to a number of conclusions regarding the nature of NFL coaches on fourth downs as well as the complexity of modeling and simulating decision making in a complex sport such …