Estimating the Scoring Output of National Football League Teams During a Season Using Economic Production Functions

Abstract

This paper estimates a series of production functions that explain the number of points a National Football League team will score during a season based on six measures of its offensive performance. The models that are estimated are linear and Cobb-Douglas production functions, using data for each team for each season from 2000 to 2018. Additionally, separate production functions are estimated for two sub-periods to determine whether the production functions vary over time and an accuracy check is performed at the end of the paper, where each team’s actual points are compared to its predicted points for the 2018 season.