''The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics'' is a book on
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
statistics published in 1988 and written by
Bob Carroll,
John Thorn
John A. Thorn (born April 17, 1947) is a German-born sports historian, author, publisher, and cultural commentator. Since March 1, 2011, he has been the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball.
Personal profile
Thorn was born in ...
, and
Pete Palmer
Pete Palmer (born January 30, 1938) is an American sports statistician and encyclopedia editor. He is a major contributor to the applied mathematical field referred to as sabermetrics. Along with the Bill James '' Baseball Abstracts'', Palmer ...
. It was the first systematic statistical approach to analyzing
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
in a book.
Original publication
The original was published in 1988. The purpose of the book is to look at the statistics of football and how they change the game based on coaching decision and player selection.
Updated edition
In 1998, a new version title ''The Hidden Game Of Football: The Next Edition'' was published by the authors. The new version is updated and includes more commentary on past statistics. A 2023 edition, with a foreword by
Aaron Schatz
Football Outsiders (FO) is a website started in July 2003 which focuses on advanced statistical analysis of the NFL. The site is run by a staff of regular writers, who produce a series of weekly columns using both the site's in-house statistics ...
, is being published by
University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...
.
Reception
The book received mixed reviews at the time of its original publication, but has been assessed more positively by retrospective reviews. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in a 1988 review for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', found the application of statistics to football "cumbersome." By contrast, Shane Richmond of ''Pigskin Books'' wrote that "it’s likely that the book changed the way teams themselves think about the game; it certainly changed how the smarter sportswriters and analysts looked at it."
Rustin Dodd, in a retrospective article in ''
The Athletic
''The Athletic'' is a subscription-based sports website that provides national and local coverage in 47 North American cities as well as the United Kingdom. ''The Athletic'' also covers national stories from top professional and college sports ...
,'' described the book as "a seminal work of football analytics" in 2022.
The book inspired Aaron Schatz to found
Football Outsiders
Football Outsiders (FO) is a website started in July 2003 which focuses on advanced statistical analysis of the NFL. The site is run by a staff of regular writers, who produce a series of weekly columns using both the site's in-house statistics ...
, and develop the Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) statistic.
See also
*
Advanced statistics in basketball
Advanced statistics (also known as analytics or APBRmetrics) in basketball refers to analyzing basketball statistics through objective evidence. APBRmetrics is a cousin to the study of baseball statistics, known as sabermetrics, and similarly tak ...
, statistical analysis of basketball.
*
Analytics (ice hockey)
In ice hockey, analytics is the analysis of the characteristics of hockey players and teams through the use of statistics and other tools to gain a greater understanding of the effects of their performance. Three commonly used basic statistics in i ...
, statistical analysis of ice hockey.
*
Advanced Football Analytics
Advanced Football Analytics (formerly Advanced NFL Stats) was a website dedicated to the analysis of the National Football League (NFL) using mathematical and statistical methods. The site's lead author was noted football researcher and analyst Bri ...
, website dedicated to the statistical analysis of the NFL.
*
Ernie Adams, a
Phillips Academy
("Not for Self") la, Finis Origine Pendet ("The End Depends Upon the Beginning") Youth From Every Quarter Knowledge and Goodness
, address = 180 Main Street
, city = Andover
, state = Ma ...
classmate of
Bill Belichick
William Stephen Belichick (; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who is the head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Additionally, he exercises extensive authority over the Patri ...
whose role with the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
is compared to
Bill James
George William James (born October 5, 1949) is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. ...
's role with the
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight ...
.
*
Football Outsiders
Football Outsiders (FO) is a website started in July 2003 which focuses on advanced statistical analysis of the NFL. The site is run by a staff of regular writers, who produce a series of weekly columns using both the site's in-house statistics ...
, a website dedicated to the statistical analysis of football based on some of the concepts from ''The Hidden Game of Football''.
*
Sabermetrics
Sabermetrics, or originally SABRmetrics, is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific ques ...
, statistical analysis of baseball.
*
Sean Lahman
Sean Lahman (born June 9, 1968) (pronounced "lay-men") is an author and journalist. He is currently a reporter for the USA Today Network and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and frequently makes public appearances to speak about database journalism ...
, creator of the ''
Pro Football Prospectus
''Pro Football Prospectus'' was an annual book series published from 2002 to 2008. It reviewed the previous NFL season and previewed the upcoming season. Its brand of statistical analysis set it apart from the annual magazines that covered the sa ...
'' series, author of ''The Pro Football Historical Abstract'', and editor of ''ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia''.
*
Sports rating system
A sports rating system is a system that analyzes the results of sports competitions to provide ratings for each team or player. Common systems include polls of expert voters, crowdsourcing non-expert voters, betting markets, and computer systems. R ...
*
Win probability Win probability is a statistical tool which suggests a sports team's chances of winning at any given point in a game, based on the performance of historical teams in the same situation. The art of estimating win probability involves choosing which p ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hidden Game of Football
American football strategy