Quarterbacking - The Impact of Pay and Play on NFL Team Success

Abstract

The NFL (National Football League) is the most watched and profitable sports league in the United States. In the past few decades, the industry of sports analytics has snowballed in importance. Teams and coaches realized that analyzing data and understanding what worked and what didn’t from past games could given them a competitive edge in the future. Now, teams across the NFL employ data analysts to try and truly understand the trends that drive success in football. As such, there are now a multitude of common statistical measures such as win probability, expected points, and expected points added that allow teams and coaches to dive deeper than ever into the sport. Many teams now rely on their analytical work to drive their decision making during games. As such, a particular focus has been shined on the most important position on the team - the quarterback. The quarterback is the single most valuable piece to an NFL team. He works as the central focus to every team’s offense, as a player that touches the football every offensive single play, and as the primary decision-maker for the offense. While data analytics has also found its way into measuring quarterback performance, with measures such as yards per attempt, quarterback rating, and completion percentage, these methods and metrics all lack a key, pragmatic consideration: money. As the most important player on the team, the quarterback is generally paid the most money. Because of the salary cap which limits how much money a team can spend to pay all of its players, there has always been a debate regarding quarterback pay in the NFL. Should a team pay a lesser quarterback less money and have more to spend on other positions, or should a team pay a great quarterback a significant amount of money due to the position’s importance? Which type of team is actually more likely to win the Super Bowl or experience success? These are questions that many people who follow football have, as it directly pertains to the management and roster of an NFL team. Hence, we strive to incorporate all the metrics currently used as well as the pay of the quarterback in order to create a iii novel approach in evaluating quarterbacking. This will allow us to truly understand how the pay and play of quarterbacks combine to impact success in the NFL.