Environmental Economics

I agree and disagree with Wolfers.
First, Wolfers has some points in his article I don’t agree with. Specifically as it pertains to mixed strategy and the Seahawks where Wolfers states the following:
“A key reason that Lynch has been so successful is that his coach has been playing a mixed strategy all season. Lynch has accumulated impressive numbers in part because opposing defenses have had to be concerned about Russell Wilson’s passing.”
Unless he’s stating this in the absolute (i.e.:that no team runs the ball exclusively) he’s mistaken. During the 2014 regular season, Seattle ranked 27 out of 32 NFL teams in passing yards and dead-last in passing attempts. It should also be noted that Seattle ranked first in rushing yards and second in rushing attempts. Additionally, if we look at rushing and passing yards as a percentage of the summation of the two for each team individually, or attempts per play, the story is even further against the mixed strategy claim (note: I believe this approach might omit sacks). Seattle ranks first in the NFL for rushing attempts per play and rushing yards per total team yards (by extension, because the sum of the two ratios must equal to one, they also rank dead-last in passing for each). Again, mixed strategy as an absolute? Obviously (yet this is the case for every NFL team). But Seattle has one of the absolute least mixed strategies in all of the NFL. Why? because, contra-Wolfers, the Seahawks are built around Lynch. Lynch was much more responsible for any effectiveness Wilson displayed than vise-versa as claimed by Wolfers. Maybe it’s an Australian lost in translation thing?
However, I don’t think Carroll made a bad decision – a lot of the people commenting on this seem to misunderstand that a good decision & a bad outcome aren’t mutually exclusive. As a Seahawks fan, I definitely would’ve preferred to see a play action, but I don’t have an issue with a pass for that particular play. There have been some interesting analyses of the play call from a game theory perspective & I largely agree with those camps. However, I view Carroll’s call as a good one based off of it being an optimal approach to what is essentially a constrained optimization problem. Going with the approach of maximizing the number of attempts to the end zone given the constraints of a single timeout & the given time on the clock, a pass makes sense. So, to answer your question: “The Seahawks should have given the ball to Marshawn Lynch. What could go horribly wrong in that situation (he fumbles less than 3 times per year)?” You can ensure yourself three attempts at the endzone by passing first which also essentially provides you with a timeout to stop the clock that you don’t really have. This also severely limits (possibly prevents altogether) any time for NE if you score. That’s just my take on the issue.
Also, please feel free to check my math – it’s late which might exacerbate errors stemming from using the unfamiliar Macintosh spreadsheet software.