A Game-Theoretic Approach to Personnel Decisions in American Football
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Erin McGough
The aim of this paper is to develop a game-theoretic framework to study the impact of player personnel changes on offensive productivity in American football. We develop a new model, the improvement in passing model, which is used to determine the optimal proportion of run and pass plays that a team should call. The model determines the optimal run/pass balance in terms of parameters that reflect a recent change (generally, in our case, an increase) in efficacy of a team's passing offense. The model assumes a residual positive effect on the team's running game occurs as a result of the improved passing attack. Several conclusions are drawn, most surprisingly that improvements in a team's expected gains via the passing game imply that the team should, in fact, run more frequently to optimize their overall offensive productivity. We conclude with an example studying the 2009 acquisition of Jay Cutler by the Chicago Bears.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- A Game-Theoretic Approach to Personnel Decisions in American Football
- Evaluation of Individual and Team Judo Strengths Using AHP Technique and Team Competition Data
- Relationship between the Opponent Block and the Hitter in Elite Male Volleyball
- Who Deserved the 2008-2009 Belgian Football Champion Title? A Semiparametric Answer
- From One-and-Done to Seasoned Veterans: A Demographic Analysis of Individual Career Length in Major League Soccer
- A Markov Process Model of the Number of Years Spent in Major League Baseball
- That's the Second-Biggest Hitting Streak I've Ever Seen! Verifying Simulated Historical Extremes in Baseball
- Using the Count to Measure Pitching Performance
- A Closer Look at the Relative Age Effect in the National Hockey League
- Structural Analysis of Action and Time in Sports: Judo
- A Simplified Analysis of Contemporary Defensive Performance in the National Football League
