How many more Belichick fails do we need before people start questioning their "math"

Small sample size ldo. We need to wait until the sample is sufficient enough to negate the variance.

One thing math guys like to do is act like humans are emotionless robots. Example: clutch doesn't exist. The notion that everyone performs exactly the same with pressure/no pressure is laughable (keep in mind this is an argument that some perform worse with added pressure, I can't see how any would perform better with pressure, but "clutch" would still exist in this case because of people who are anti-clutch)

However, head coaches tend to overvalue things like this, and I'd say the math side is closer to the truth in the vast majority of cases. And this doesn't say at all that a random math nerd knows more about football than a head coach.


Definitely not an open invitation to discuss "clutch."

Any pressure the offense feels would also presumably be felt by the defense, so I don't know how you'd quantify that.

I agree with this. But the opposite is also true. Stating that "Always going for it on 4th and short is right" like it is one of Thremp's Ten Commandments is also based on a small, selective sample size that is proving itself to be insufficient.

well, some are effected more by pressure than others

It's fair to say Mariano Rivera is less prone to be effected by pressure than a random hitter trying to stay in the bigs. But when that hitter gets a 6 year contract maybe he will feel less pressure (but maybe his work ethic will drop too.)

Yes, it's hard to quantify, but like I said it's laughable to assume pressure impacts everyone equally.

So far, it has been statistically proven that pressure does not impact anyone. People that are considered "clutch" or "not-clutch" just don't have a big enough sample size to prove otherwise.

Baseball is a great example of this, as it is very streaky. People put way too much empathis on the short-term. However, the stats have shown that given enough "high pressure" games, the athletes tend to perform extremely close to how their career stats would indicate.

Therefore, the best way to predict how "clutch" someone is, is based on their career stats.

lame, you quoted me before I could change "then" to "than"

but no, it has not been statistically proven that pressure does not impact anyone, at least not in all sports, that's an insane claim

should pros be impacted less than college players? yes. college than HS players? yes

as players gain more experience will they be less prone to pressure? yes, that's what you'd expect

You need to be a lot more careful with your words because this is ridiculous.

and btw, this argument is useless and only a small part of what I'm talking about

Hitting streaks alone are enough to prove my point (hot/cold streaks as opposed to players performing like the random generator, which one study proved)

So hot/cold streaks accurately predict the future? WOW. I guess I should quit my job and become a professional sports bettor.

I am having trouble locating hos either a "then" or a "than" would make difference in anything I'm quoting, so I am hoping you are talking to someone else. I'm not calming to be an english expert though.

uh, did you even read my post? My point was humans are not emotionless robots, not clutch exists.

It doesn't make a difference. I just am a slow post editor and that part was a joke.

I'm not sure what you mean. Everything I have seen indicates that your "clutch" stats will end up being pretty much the same as your career stats, given enough opportunities.

Being "clutch" just means you were lucky enough to run good at the right time.

I agree with this, but statistically, it has yet to be proven that emotion actually has an impact on performance.

Or perhaps it is that those who cannot handle the pressure just plain suck. Thus why some high schoolers do not make it to college, and why some college players do not make the pro's? Is it because they cannot handle pressure, or that they just aren't as good?

That being said, GM's can also make the same mistakes by acquiring bad players who over-perform in a clutch situation or vice versa.

assuming the studies on hot/cold streaks are correct (which is what you'd expect anyway) humans are impacted by a lot of different factors and do not perform like the random number generator, hence emotion has an impact on performance

Think about what you were trying to say and what you actually said.

Plz to be explaining what you are talking about here. Find the 4th and short conversion rates across the league this year and prove that it is not worth going for it. Should be easy since you have just claimed that it is not, right?

Please substantiate any of this. Or is this going to be the nth time is as many attempts where the phrase "rape pozz" comes into play.

What about yesterday's 4th down decisions? The first one he punted and I thought he should have gone for that one. The second one he went for it and I thought he should have taken the field goal.

Reducing kurtosis is an important aspect when calculating WinExp, a better team with the lead should be punting more often than league average whereas the worse team or a team trailing should be taking going for it more often.

Before anyone accuses me of being a psuedo expert... an actual expert, Chris Brown, wrote about this. As if I had any original ideas.

Good post, and very true in many aspects of upper level management. That is, all the time people rise to CEO with little direct experience in some aspect of the organization. The title doesn't make the CEO suddenly more knowledgeable on said aspect than the specialist.