"While the sabermetrics revolution in baseball is now fully institutionalized, other sports have embraced data analysis more slowly-especially American football. Yet thirty-five years ago, Bob Carroll, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer were laying the groundwork for the transformation of the sport when they wrote The Hidden Game of Football. Readers in 1988 found this book to be staggering, with myths and misconceptions "left strewn in the wake of their analysis like the Columbia University secondary after a running play" (Allen Barra). Today, with statistical analysis becoming more widely accepted across the NFL, the book seems prescient and influential--as Aaron Schatz notes in his new foreword"--
The 1988 cult classic behind football’s data analytics revolution, now back in print with a new foreword and preface.
Data analytics have revolutionized football. With play sheets informed by advanced statistical analysis, today’s coaches pass more, kick less, and go for more two-point or fourth-down conversions than ever before. In 1988, sportswriters Bob Carroll, Pete Palmer, and John Thorn proposed just this style of play in The Hidden Game of Football, but at the time baffled readers scoffed at such a heartless approach to the game. Football was the ultimate team sport and unlike baseball could not be reduced to pure probabilities. Nevertheless, the book developed a cult following among analysts who, inspired by its unorthodox methods, went on to develop the core metrics of football analytics used today: win probability, expected points, QBR, and more. With a new preface by Thorn and Palmer and a new foreword by Football Outsiders’s Aaron Schatz, The Hidden Game of Football remains an essential resource for armchair coaches, fantasy managers, and fans of all stripes.
