SPRING 2024

AUTHOR

Amrit Vignesh, Seminole High School

ABSTRACT

The quarterback of a football team is typically described to be the leader of an offense as their performance and playstyle can highly impact the characteristics of an offense in comparison to other positions. The aggressiveness of a quarterback in terms of their tendency to pass deep in any certain play can be determined by multiple factors related to situation (down, yard line, etc.) but also be affected by an inherent factor of trust in the system around them. Using an XGBoost model with a dataset split into training data from the 2014 to 2020 NFL season and test data from the 2021 to 2023 season for an approximate 70:30 split, the aggressiveness of a quarterback was quantified using the amount of air yards they generate per pass attempt compared to their expected amount influenced by the situational and system factors described previously. This helps transcend the use of just raw statistics related to air yards by accounting for various factors to give a more accurate statistical definition of aggressiveness.