Football and baseball don’t have that much in common, but one thing they do have is “rules that limit opportunity.” In baseball, it’s the limit of three outs per inning, and in football, it’s the limit of four downs per ten(plus) yards. When I first started writing, I was mostly a baseball writer, heavily influenced by Baseball Prospectus, Moneyball, and the mid-Sabermetrics era, and I’ve always viewed the offenses of both baseball and football as a tension between low-risk, high percentage plays and high-risk, big plays. Baseball is a bit different, as for some players, walking and hitting home runs can be complementary rather than contradictory, but generally, trying to hit for more power will always result in more strikeouts.

In football, using one of your four (and really, three) down

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