[sabotai]

Some early numbers of the play calling front. Right now I'm using 2014's numbers because that's the last year of Football Outsiders play-by-play that I bought.

Their charting hase several directions for runs: Left End, Left Tackle, Left Guard, Middle, Right Guard, Right Tackle and Right End. For the purpose of this sim, I'm counting runs to the tackles as "Outside Runs". Use your own imagination as to whether that means an Off Tackle, Outside Zone, Sweeps, Tosses, etc. run while playing.

And as it turns out, runs in almost all situations have a slight preference to Outside Runs. About a 52%/48% between Outside and Inside. (Had I counted runs to the Tackles as "Inside Runs", it would have been 25%/75%).

The only exceptions are on 3rd or 4th and 1. Then it's 35% Outside / 65% Inside. Yes, even on 3rd and 2, the distribution goes back to the 52/48 ratio. 4th and 2 is too low of a sample size, but even that was 8 runs to the inside, 19 runs to the outside.

Granted, there is going to probably be a big swing in the distribution when I look at it team-by-team, but for now I'm just interested in league averages.


As for Run / Pass, on 1st and 10, that's very near a 50/50 split.

For 2nd and 10, it jumps to 60% passes, 40% runs (when a team is on their side of the 50). Most 2nd and YTG (outside of the red zone) plays are around the 60/40 split, until we get down to 2nd and 4. That's close to 50/50, 2nd and 2-3 are 40/60, 2nd and 1 30/70. So for all that talk you'll hear from announcers that "teams love to throw on 2nd and 1. They're entire play book opens up on 2nd and 1" .... yeah, they still usually just run the ball.

The 2nd and 10 passing percentage also goes up as teams get to midfield and their opponent's side of the field, and it drops a bit if a team is inside their own 20.

And of course, once it's 2nd and 11, the pass percentage jumps up quickly. 2nd and 11 is 75/25, slowly increasing to 80/20 by 2nd and 15

On 3rd downs, teams pass it 85-90% of the time on 3rd and 3 or longer. 3rd and 2 is 75% passes, and 3rd and 1 is 30% passes (These numbers are for when a team is on their side of the 50). When deep in their own territory, 3rd and 1 passes drop even more to just ~15%.

But opposite of 2nd downs, where teams start throwing it a bit more, they get more conservative on 3rd downs as they move down the field. At midfield, 3rd and 1 sees 25% passes, 65% on 3rd and 2, but at 3rd and 3 it's back to 85-90%. And then when a team is in enemy territory (21-40 yard line), 3rd and 1 just sees 20% passing, 3rd and 2 is at 60%, 3rd and 3 at 80% and 3rd and 4th and higher is back to 85-90%.

And lastly, 4th down numbers mirror 3rd down numbers, except the jump up on passes is stronger. 4th and 1 is usually a run, 4th and 2 is about 80% passes, longer than 3 yards to go on 4th down is almost always a pass (95%+).

Sorry if this post is pretty scatterbrained. Just trying to collect my thoughts in one place and show you guys what the numbers show. I'll look at red zone play calling and passing distances tomorrow.