Big Ten Championship - 4th downs
Here’s a quick breakdown of two critical 4th down decisions from Saturday’s Big Ten Championship.
In both cases, Coach Day made the right call according to the analytics — but neither play worked out.
The point is:
✅ The best decision doesn’t always lead to a successfully executed play. Every play has two parts: the decision and the execution. For the decision piece, the goal is to make the ones that (based on the match up) give your team the best chance to win the game — and that’s exactly what Coach Day did.
4th Down Decision #1
Scoreboard (i): Q3 | 1:38 | 4th & 1 | Ball on IU 5 | OSU down by 3 (10–13)
Recommendation: Go for it (green bars)
At 4th & 1, it’s a “hard GO”— the best option by a margin of more than 5%:
Go for it → 51.6% chance to go on to win the game
FG attempt → 46.4% chance to go on to win the game
+5.2% decision edge for going for it (ii)
4th Down Decision #2
Scoreboard (i): Q4 | 2:51 | 4th & 1 | Ball on IU 9 | OSU down by 3 (10–13)
Recommendation: FG attempt (yellow bars)
At 4th & 1, it’s a “coin flip”— the difference between options is less than 1%:
FG attempt → 43.8% chance to go on to win the game
Go for it → 43.4% chance to go on to win the game
+0.4% decision edge for FG attempt (ii)