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

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 today: 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.

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.

Pete Palmer is a statistician, baseball analyst, and former consultant to Sports Information Center.

John Thorn has been the official historian for Major League Baseball since 2011.

Aaron Schatz is editor-in-chief of Football Outsiders. He created many original statistical methods for NFL analysis such as DVOA and DYAR. The lead writer and editor on Football Outsiders Almanac, Aaron also writes for ESPN.com and ESPN+, and appears weekly during the NFL season on the Off The Charts podcast. He has written on sports, politics, and taxes for a number of publications including The New Republic, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Slate, The American Prospect, and the Boston Phoenix.