Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Ames
That is similar to a question those first two FG WPs brought to my mind. Long-term winning coaches as well as good (at the data point) teams might be assumed to make better decisions. Those decisions would be assumed to result in producing a contribution to wins and therefore to WP. Is there any attempt to account for this in the analysis? If not, there is a bit of a chicken/egg question here.
I have enough interest to ask the question but not enough to read about it in depth. I'm not really asking you to research it, but only posted it under your post in case you or someone else already knows the answer or does want to look into it.
I do not think there is any attempt to capture the difference between Andy Reid making the decision versus say someone like Frank Reich. I think that would be almost impossible to bake into a general model like that. With that said, career decisions from guys like Andy and McVay and Harbaugh and Gase and Reich and Rivera and all the other coaches are already baked in. The blended results should factor in both good and bad coaching decisions and converge to league average.
Is the fact those nuances can't be factored in enough to trust the model's results for a single sample? I still think so on a general basis. But the model is not going to be perfect.
There are also so many other variables and butterfly effect type decisions in any given game. Hindsight always gives the benefit of knowing the result, but today we could also be talking about how Dan chose to go for 3 on all three decisions and SF still came back and won. And like liga and others have posted, the FG make is not a guarantee.
While some may argue the missed 4th down conversion up 24-10 could have affected team morale, momentum, confidence, etc. that led to these next two plays, I think the unlucky ball to the DB facemask bounce and catch by Aiyuk and the subsequent Gibbs fumble had way more of an impact than the actual failed 4th down attempts.
And like revots just posted, if Reynolds actually makes the catch we are also having different conversations today.