 The Passing Premium Puzzle RevisitedJournal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2008, vol. 4, issue 2, 13 Abstract: The passing premium puzzle states that NFL teams do not call enough passing plays, despite rule changes since the late 1970's that have increased the expected return to passing. This paper develops a simple portfolio model to determine how a coach could determine an optimal share of running and passing plays to maximize the expected yardage return from the portfolio. Coaches are assumed to be risk-averse so that they perceive a tradeoff between a higher expected return to passing and running, and a higher variance of yardage to each. The model is tested by computing the optimal share of running plays and comparing to the actual share of running plays for the 2006 NFL season. It is also demonstrated that a tradeoff does exist between expected yardage return and risk which is the basis for the portfolio model. Finally, portfolio selection is shown to, at least partly, determine winning percentage. Keywords: NFL; passing; portfolio (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:4:y:2008:i:2:n:9 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports is currently edited by Mark Glickman More articles in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports from De Gruyter |
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