Revisiting Romer: Digging Deeper Into Influences on NFL Managerial Decisions

Abstract

Using Romer’s framework as the starting point, we examine the decisions by National Football League (NFL) coaches to “go for it” on fourth down with an expanded sample drawn from 12 years (2002-2013) of NFL play-by-play data. Our expanded results generally confirm Romer’s finding of divergence from expected point maximization or win maximization. However, unlike Romer, by estimating forecast errors for points and wins and related risk premia along with logistic regression estimates of the influences on fourth down decisions, we find strong indications that risk aversion rather than incorrect information processing likely accounts for a substantial part of the divergence.