College Football Coaching Decisions, Graded

How to read it. +3.0 means the staff’s calls, taken together, left the team three points of win probability better off than the typical staff’s calls in the same situations would have. The ± is how sure that is: the run/pass mix is the least certain part, because what worked early in a game is thin evidence. The total is six families added up: play calling, passing strategy, fourth downs and two-point tries, clock and timeouts, personnel usage, and operations. Passing strategy is the staff and the quarterback together — the call sets the menu and the quarterback reads the coverage. Its depth part credits throwing where this offense beat this defense by more than usual, not throwing deep for its own sake: league-wide, deep throws look better partly because they are thrown when someone is open. Best counts fourth downs where the staff chose the option priced highest; bold counts calls that went against what most staffs do in that spot and priced out better for it.

Head coaches only. Where a coordinator calls the plays, the number describes the staff the head coach runs. *Pre-snap discipline — false starts and formation fouls — is shown and left out of the total: it belongs to the players as much as the sideline.

Each game’s recap carries the full list of graded calls.