National Football League

Why football nerds love Chargers coach Brandon Staley

Published Dec. 23, 2021 1:26 p.m. ET

By Eric D. Williams
FOX Sports NFL Writer

Los Angeles Chargers head coach Brandon Staley does not care what you think about his fourth-down decision-making.

"The real football people understand that what I’m doing is playing to the strengths of our football team," Staley told reporters the day after his team’s entertaining, overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs after three failed fourth-down attempts in scoring position. "What I’m doing is I’m trying to make the decisions that I think are going to win us the game. … I’m ready to live with all the smoke that comes with it."

Count Frank Frigo among the football analytics crowd celebrating Staley’s fourth-down aggressiveness.

Frigo is the co-founder of EdjSports, an analytics company that has consulted with NFL teams using more than 20 years of historical, play-by-play NFL data. For the past five weeks, Staley has sat atop EdjSports’ weekly rankings of NFL head coaches’ fourth-down calls.

"Guys like Staley get it," Frigo said. "It’s not an accident, what he’s doing. He knows the math, and he apparently must have the buy-in from ownership and management, which is true of some of the other, better NFL teams, where they are telling him, ‘Do the right thing. We’re not going to second-guess you.’

"Sometimes it’s going to work. Sometimes it doesn’t. But on average, you’re going to boost your winning chances. And I think he’s subscribed to that, and he’s staying true to that."

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In L.A.’s 34-28 OT loss to the Chiefs, the Chargers finished 2-for-5 on fourth down. Staley went for it twice inside the 6-yard line, including once at the end of the first half. Both times, the Chargers failed to convert.

Staley also went for it on fourth-and-2 from Kansas City’s 28-yard line midway through the third quarter, an incomplete pass to tight end Jared Cook.

"That’s what they do. And they do it with everybody, not just us," Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. "We knew that coming into the game. I mean, the head coach has said it — it’s like third down to them, right? But you’ve got to stop them. So our guys got enough of those to help."

Frigo said his company’s modeling had only a minor quibble with the decision to go for it on fourth down at the end of the first half because the Chargers did not get the benefit of Kansas City taking over on offense deep in their own territory.

But Staley’s failed decisions created a fiery back-and-forth on social media. The debate pitted old-school NFL analysts and fans chastising Staley for not taking the points by kicking field goals against football nerds praising Staley for giving his team a better chance to win the game, based on win probability.

Some NFL observers called it the biggest football analytics discussion in NFL history.

"Ten years ago what Staley is doing would have been considered a fireable offense," Michael Lombardi wrote on Twitter.

Put more succinctly by ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon: "These are the dumbest decisions I've ever seen. The dumbest."

But Frigo sees the contentious conversation as analytics making more headway into mainstream NFL conversations. He describes win probability like a tug of war.

"At the start of the game, you’ve got two evenly matched teams that are sort of 50-50," he said. "The inevitability is at some point at the end of the game, one team will be at 100% win probability, and one team will be at zero, with the rare exception of ties."

Frigo said changes in variables such as the clock, the score, field position, yards to first down and timeouts can affect win probability, which can be adjusted for in his company’s modeling.

"The most important factor in all of these models, including ours, is targeted on the metric of win probability," Frigo said. "And when that is the metric that drives your decisions, you can do things that look very counterintuitive, and that’s what makes people’s heads explode — like traditional, old-school fans and coaches.

"The models are saying: If you choose this path in this situation and do something more aggressive, the simulations show that you win the game more often on average. You actually boost your win probabilities."

Over the past decade, the use of analytics has caused NFL coaches to go for it more on fourth down. According to the Associated Press, fourth-down attempts increased by more than 10% from 2019 to 2020. They are up an additional 16% though the first nine weeks of this NFL season.

However, even the most successful of coaches have not fully bought in to the analytics revolution. Six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick has a bad rating when it comes to using analytics in his in-game decision-making, according to Frigo.

"Belichick is an enigma," Frigo said. "We spent a lot of time with Belichick 10 years ago. He was at the forefront then. But Belichick has regressed.

"Belichick is great at so much of the game. It would be sacrilegious to say that guy is not an amazing coach. He’s really good at exploiting weaknesses. But when it comes to these in-game risk-management decisions, in his current state, he’s actually really poor."

Frigo points to Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh as the Godfather of analytics among NFL coaches. Harbaugh used the unique skill set of quarterback Lamar Jackson to engineer 17 successful fourth-down attempts in 2019.

"I would put Harbaugh at the very top of the heap," Frigo said. "He follows the math. … one of the interesting phenomena when we grade coaches on fourth-down decisions is that higher-powered offenses are under a much greater scrutiny. So when you’ve got Lamar Jackson, there are a lot of situations where our model is saying, ‘Hey, it’s fourth-and-3 in your own territory. It will actually boost your win probability by going for it.'

"Harbaugh has a lot more opportunities to err than a lot of coaches do because of that. … [He] is really out there as a leader in the space."

However, even coaches such as Harbaugh sometimes stub their toes when it comes to fourth-down decision-making. Frigo did not love Harbaugh’s decision last week to go for two at the end of the game for the second time in three weeks in a 31-30 loss to the Green Bay Packers.

Frigo said the Ravens should've gone for the two-point conversion earlier in the game, when Baltimore was down 14, as it would've given them two shots to win or tie.

Said Frigo: "If you know you are going for the win in regulation, why wouldn’t you attempt the two-point conversion at the first opportunity?"

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Still, more and more NFL coaches, like Staley, are heeding Frigo's advice and leaning on analytics to help them make tough decisions quickly in high-leverage situations.

That suits players such as Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen just fine. He’d rather be on the field with one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL in Justin Herbert to determine the outcome of the game than leave the result up to a kicker.

That’s understandable, considering that the Chargers have cycled through nine kickers since moving to Los Angeles.

"Leave the game in our hands," Allen said. "I don’t want us to kick the ball, watch it and hope. I’d rather stay out there and let us do it."

As for the old-school coaches and fans who eschew analytics, Frigo says they will come around.

"It’s silly," he said. "Someone that’s saying, ‘I don’t subscribe to analytics’ is like saying, ‘I don’t subscribe to making informed decisions,' right? The data is there. You can interpret it how you want. You can choose your play choices on a fourth-and-short.

"Because it’s focused so much on win probability, [the model is] not concerned about being embarrassed on a failure. It’s just saying: On average, you’re going to win the game a lot more often.

"You’re a favorite to convert these fourth-and-shorts."

Eric D. Williams has reported on the NFL for more than a decade, covering the Los Angeles Rams for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Chargers for ESPN and the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune. Follow him on Twitter @eric_d_williams.