The Hidden Game of Football: A Revolutionary Approach to the Game and Its Statistics

by Bob Carroll, Pete Palmer, John Thorn

The 1988 cult classic behind football’s data analytics revolution, now back in print with a new foreword and preface.

Data analytics have revolutionized football. With play sheets informed by advanced statistical analysis, today’s coaches pass more, kick less, and go for more two-point or fourth-down conversions than ever before. In 1988, sportswriters Bob Carroll, Pete Palmer, and John Thorn proposed just this style of play in The Hidden Game of Football , but at the time baffled readers scoffed at such a heartless approach to the game. Football was the ultimate team sport and unlike baseball could not be reduced to pure probabilities. Nevertheless, the book developed a cult following among analysts who, inspired by its unorthodox methods, went on to develop the core metrics of football analytics used win probability, expected points, QBR, and more. With a new preface by Thorn and Palmer and a new foreword by Football Outsiders’s Aaron Schatz, The Hidden Game of Football remains an essential resource for armchair coaches, fantasy managers, and fans of all stripes.

Genres: Sports

415 pages, Paperback

Published February 27, 2023

About the author

Bob Carroll (1936–2009) was founder and executive director of the Professional Football Researchers Association and the author of more than twenty books, including When the Grass Was Real: Unitas, Brown, Lombardi, Sayers, Butkus, Namath, and All the Rest: The Best Ten Years of Pro Football.

Reviews

[Robert Pulvermacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first got this from a library when I was (I think) a pre-teen. At least a little bit it charted the course of my future, with a passion for football and statistics, both of which I spend a lot of my current day thinking about. This book directly led to football outsiders, and pff, and all the other ways we have of teasing out cause and effect of the most intricate, cross-dependent sport that exists. Slightly less revolutionary was the actual writing in this book, which comes off as very dad joke-ey and a little too nerdy. Still, changed me, changed the world a little bit.