Neanderball with math
In our pursuit of a money-ball solution to football we consider a team built around power sets and run game who chased the math on deep pass attempts.
If Billy Beane or a likeminded fellow with a team of brilliant analytics fellows were trying to money-ball college football and turn a school like, let’s say Oregon State, into a collegiate superpower. How would they do it?
In the last article on this sort of “how do you money-ball the game of college football” series, I pointed out the following, perhaps not this succinctly.
The most efficient way to score and win games is to be very good at throwing it deep for touchdowns.
Throwing deep for touchdowns does tend to require a bit of quality at left tackle and deep threat receiver, unless you have great max protection sets and play-action.
Space force players (Left tackle, outside receiver, cornerback, Edge, D-tackle) do not come cheap in the modern era of above board player payments.
The best way to money-ball the sport would be to find undervalued players that produce winning but come cheap.
Run blocking and run game personnel do come cheap.
Game theory suggests that the best way to open up opportunities down the field may not be spreading the field, even with the extreme angles Art Briles used, but instead luring defenders into a box. You do that with bigger sets.
So, what if we had a college football offense that was designed to lure defenders into the box and tight proximity with a heavy run game, yet also pursued the deep passing game and did so at highly inconvenient times in embrace of an up-tempo, higher scoring contest?
What if we had neanderball with math?