IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jqsprt/v19y2023i3p171-185n2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investigating trade-offs made by American football linebackers using tracking data

Author

Listed:
  • Eager Eric
  • Seth Tej

    (SumerSports, Palm Beach, USA)

Abstract

In recent years, the game of football has made a shift towards being more quantitative. With the advent of charting and tracking data, player evaluation is able to be studied from several different angles. In this paper, we build and refine two novel metrics: Bite Distance Under Expected (BDUE) and Ground Covered Over Expected (GCOE) for the evaluation of linebackers in the National Football League (NFL). Here, we show that these metrics are heavily correlated with each other, which demonstrates the trade-off linebackers have to make between being aggressive against the run and being effective when the opposing offense is using play-action. We also show that these metrics are more stable than those in the public space. Finally, we show how these metrics measure deception by opposing offenses.

Suggested Citation

  • Eager Eric & Seth Tej, 2023. "Investigating trade-offs made by American football linebackers using tracking data," Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, De Gruyter, vol. 19(3), pages 171-185, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:19:y:2023:i:3:p:171-185:n:2
    DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2022-0091
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jqas-2022-0091
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jqas-2022-0091?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:19:y:2023:i:3:p:171-185:n:2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.