How good is your NFL coach on fourth-down calls? We rank all 32

The NFL is about to set a record for most fourth-down attempts in a season.

Again.

Coaches are on pace to dial up 838 fourth-down tries in 2021, up from 780 the year prior. (Even if this were a 16-game season, they'd be on track for 788 attempts.) It will mark the fourth consecutive year a new high has been established.

Not only are coaches going for it more on fourth down, they're getting better at making those calls that give them the best chance to win. According to ESPN Stats & Information research, the number of fourth-down errors has plummeted each of the past four seasons, reaching a new low of 951 leaguewide in 2020 and on pace for even fewer this season.

The increased application of analytics has changed the game on fourth down. Coaches across the league are being guided by game-management specialists who communicate the probabilities of an upcoming fourth-down try in real time.

The most famous example came in Super Bowl LII between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots. Before Eagles coach Doug Pederson had his sideline conversation with quarterback Nick Foles, leading to the decision to run the "Philly Special" late in the first half, Pederson spoke with Ryan Paganetti, the Dartmouth grad responsible for feeding Pederson math-based recommendations when it came to, among other things, going for it on fourth down.

Anticipating such a situation, Paganetti clicked into Pederson's headset prior to the Eagles' third-and-goal play against the Patriots and told him: If we get to fourth down, the light is green.

And the rest is history.

League sources estimate 28 of 32 head coaches have game-management specialists, with about 10 of those being members of the team's analytics department. The trend of teams being more aggressive on fourth down is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The practice is becoming more widely accepted and is likely to be commonplace before long.

Is your team ahead of the curve? Here's a look at how each head coach stacks up. -- Tim McManus

How we rank: To come up with our coaches ranking, we looked at all fourth-down calls made under the current head coach with his current team. (For example, for Mike McCarthy, we would only include fourth-down calls made with the Cowboys, not the Packers.) The timeframe was limited to 2017-21, when analytics were firmly established across the league. We relied on three metrics from the ESPN Analytics team:

1. Total win probability sacrificed through fourth-down errors


2. Difference in expected fourth-down conversion rates vs. actual rates


3. Non-obvious fourth-down error rate

These metrics are shown as per-season averages and measure whether the coach's decision agreed with our analytics model (accounting for two-thirds of the final ranking) as well as success in running fourth-down plays (one-third). All 32 coaches were sorted on those metrics and then those rankings were used to create the final order.

Jump to:br/>ARI | ATL | BAL | BUF | CAR | CHI | CINbr/>CLE | DAL | DEN | DET | GB | HOU | INDbr/>JAX | KC | LAC | LAR | LV | MIA | MINbr/>NE | NO | NYG | NYJ | PHI | PIT | SFbr/>SEA | TB | TEN | WSH

1. Kliff Kingsbury,Arizona Cardinals

Years covered: 2019-21