The folks over at Football Outsiders recently ranked all head coaches in the NFL based on their aggressiveness on fourth downs in 2022, and Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel finished in the top 10.
According to Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz, Vrabel finished as the ninth-most aggressive head coach on fourth downs last season based on the outlet’s “Aggressiveness Index”.
Here’s the kinds of fourth-down situations the “Aggressiveness Index” methodology excludes in order to be more accurate, per FO:
Aggressiveness Index excludes obvious catch-up situations: third quarter, trailing by 15 or more points; fourth quarter, trailing by nine or more points; and in the last five minutes of the game, trailing by any amount. It also excludes the last 10 seconds of the first half, and it adjusts for when a play doesn’t actually record as fourth-and-short because of one of those bogus delay of game penalties that moves the punter back five yards. Only the regular season is included.
Based on that approach, the Titans went for it 12 times in 110 qualifying opportunities, a rate of 10.9 percent. That helped land Vrabel a 1.24 in the “Aggressiveness Index”.
Being more aggressive on fourth downs is sometimes tied to an increased use of analytics.
It isn’t clear how heavily analytics played a role in Vrabel’s decision-making, but back in 2018 he did say the numbers have to line up with his instincts as a head coach, so chances are analytics aren’t driving the bus.
Adding to that, the Titans were the last team in the NFL to hire someone with an analytics-based title, something they did in 2021, and general manager Jon Robinson wasn’t a big fan of analytics during his time in Nashville.
Regardless, in an era where teams are going for it more on fourth downs, Vrabel is right there with the trend.
