You don’t need to be an economist to appreciate the chaos that unfolded during overtime between the Las Vegas Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday Night Football.
The stakes were clear enough for anyone to understand: the winner of the game advanced to the playoffs, the loser did not. Both could advance if they played to a tie. Which is exactly where the two AFC West rivals found themselves after four quarters and knotted at 29-29. It’s also exactly where economists who are football fans found themselves fully glued to the action.
The overtime period presented the NFL with its own Prisoner’s Dilemma—a classic game theory exercise. Here’s a very quick primer (from someone who took three whole Econ courses in college a decade ago):
Two people are arrested for a crime both committed and placed in separate rooms. If neither of the two cooperate with police, a lack of evidence will set them free. If one flips on the other, the snitch will be set free and the other will go to jail. If both flip on each other, both go to jail for shorter terms.
On Sunday we traded jail time for a playoff berths, separate rooms for opposing sidelines and prisoners for Brandon Staley and Rich Bisaccia—though you could argue the Steelers were the only prisoners here, since a tie kept them out of the playoffs.
Both teams kicked field goals on their first possession in OT until the Raiders were ready to run out the clock and send both teams to the postseason. Even after reaching midfield by the two-minute warning, Las Vegas seemed willing to putz around until the clock hit zeros.
But the Raiders still couldn’t know what the Chargers were thinking on the opposing side of the field. The dilemma was in full swing. A timeout by Los Angeles with 38 seconds remaining would decide who went home and who went to the playoffs.
Even though L.A. was just trying to set up its defense, a move made in self-interest caused the Raiders to react in kind. Las Vegas ran for a first down out of the timeout and kicked a 47-yard field goal for the win.
Bisaccia confirmed as much after the victory (h/t Pro Football Talk):
“We were certainly talking about it on the sideline. We wanted to see if they were gonna take a timeout or not on that run. They didn’t, so we thought they were thinking the same thing. And then we popped the run in there and gave us a chance to kick the field goal to win it. So, we were certainly talking about it.”
During his postgame interview on NBC, Raiders QB Derek Carr also said the timeout call changed their thinking.
Sure looks like Ekeler asked the Raiders if they were going to kneel it and they said yes..pic.twitter.com/GQaYPHjZ3V
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 10, 2022
As soon as Staley called timeout, Vegas had the indicator it needed to take control of the dilemma. It was a notion the Wall Street Journal‘s Andrew Beaton explored before the game kicked off. The consensus seemed to be that the lack of trust between the two actors would lead to self-interest winning out.
“There’s too much of a risk that the second coach won’t reciprocate,” David McAdams, an economics professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business told Beaton.
If there was any concern over whether or not Staley would go along with a tie, the timeout provided all the evidence the Raiders needed to abandon the plan and save themselves. It also happened to save sportsbooks more than $1 billion in payouts with a number of bettors wagering on a tie.
The situation isn’t unique to the NFL, football or even American football at that. A Prisoner’s Dilemma popped up during a 1982 FIFA World Cup match between West Germany and Austria—infamously known as The Disgrace of Gijón with teams ensured they’d advance to the next round.
Reality television often comes back to the Prisoner’s Dilemma as a guaranteed way to cause drama. The most recent season of Survivor used it to create a number of compelling storylines.
It’s also a major reason why numerous leagues make all teams begin their final matchup of the season at the exact same time. If the Chargers and Raiders were playing concurrent to the Colts and Jaguars, there’s a significantly less chance the teams would even consider playing for a tie (turning off league scoreboards inside stadiums would reduce that to near zero percent).
For The Win‘s Andrew Joseph laid out a very easy plan for the NFL to do this while keeping maximum viewership.
At the very least, teams may want to consider adding some economists to their coaching staff—though maybe that wouldn’t have helped the Chargers anyways.
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