Fourth Down Decision Making

by Akula Wolf on May 28, 2010 8:00 AM EDT

I've got a lot of work to get to yet--it was about halfway through this exercise when I realized there were so many ways in which to split the data that steam started coming out of my ears. Decision percentages based on yards to go in each quarter; decision percentages based on yards to go and score margin; decision percentages based on yards to go, time and score, etc. etc. etc. None of that addresses field position and whoops I've gone cross-eyed.

So here's a rough look at how the coaches handled fourth downs in 2009, broken down into general categories. More to come on this if it doesn't kill me.

Situation	FG%	Punt%	Go%
1Q	11.8	76.5	11.6
2Q	27.3	59.1	13.6
3Q	11.8	82.4	5.9
4Q	4.2	37.5	58.3
1 Score	11.8	68.6	19.6
2 Scores	30	60	10
3+ Scores	10.5	42.1	47.4
1-5 yds	7.7	61.5	30.8
6-10 yds	11.1	70.4	18.5
11+yds	22.2	51.9	25.9

FG% = FGAs/4th downs in each situation. Same deal with the other columns.
1Q/2Q/etc = decision percentages broken down by quarter.
Score categories: If State had a 4th down while up or down one score, that fell into the 1 Score category, etc. Still need to separate out the situations where we're up a score, down a score...
Yardage categories: decision percentages based on the number of yards needed for a first down.

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You can just look at those Go%

for the 4th quarter and the 3+ score differential and guess that State was a pretty bad team last year.

I am interested to see how you tease all this informattion out, there is a lot of aliasing going on for sure.

by PACKHOOLIGAN on May 28, 2010 8:36 AM EDT reply actions

Scoring categories

Just one suggestion (which you may hate as it adds more categories :) ), but it seems that you would want to break out whether you are up by 1, 2 or 3+ scores or down by the same numbers. If you’re up by 3+ scores, you’re very unlikely to go for it on 4th down, unless you’re just running the clock out and in the other team’s endzone. If your down by 3+, you’re much more likely to go for it. For that matter, if you’re up at all, you are probably less likely to go for it.

by WolfpackSteelersFan on May 28, 2010 5:33 PM EDT reply actions

yeah, i'm planning on those breakdowns

There were some extreme cases where we went for it on 4th despite being up big—against the I-AA teams, naturally. This one’s all kinds of unfortunate for poor Murray State:

4th-&-16 from Murray 39; :44 seconds left in 2nd Q; NCSU ahead 38-0. Wilson hit Baker for a TD. That’s cold, coach.

I may just throw out the 4th downs that occur when a game is well out of hand. Haven’t decided yet.

Backing The Pack

by Akula Wolf on May 28, 2010 6:43 PM EDT up reply actions