The Invisible Hand of Herm Edwards

Like everyone else watching Sunday night’s NFL matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Las Vegas Raiders, a big part of me was rooting for a tie. For one, a tie would have kept the Steelers out of the playoffs, and the world does not need to see Ben Roethlisberger in another postseason game. But I was also compelled by the remarkably weird incentives of the game itself: Both teams would make the playoffs with a tie; otherwise, the loser would get eliminated.

Indeed, a part of me wanted to make some cockamamie point about how playing for the tie was actually the “pro-solidarity” strategy, since it would be the best outcome for both teams. But I couldn’t really convince myself of that argument. You’re supposed to try to win, and let things like playoff appearances, seeding, and draft order sort themselves out afterwards. Fundamentally, I believe Herm Edwards was right: “You play to win the game.”

People often accuse teams of “playing not to lose instead of playing to win” but never have I seen that so literally true as Sunday night. You could see in both teams’ overtime strategies that they were caught because playing to win (which they knew they were supposed to do) and playing for the tie (which they knew would have been best for their playoff chances). The teams traded drives of mostly short passes and runs up the middle—steering clear of any big plays and extending the game as both kicked field goals on their opening drives.

Then, with two minutes left, the Raiders had the ball at midfield, and it certainly seemed like they were content to run out the clock—and that the Chargers were willing to let them. First Josh Jacobs ran for a one-yard loss, and Vegas let the play clock run all the way down. Then they handed it to Jacobs again, who ran outside this time and picked up seven yards. Again they let the clock run all the way down, but this time Chargers Head Coach Brandon Staley called timeout, to get his defense set.

There’s some debate about the wisdom of this timeout. In the broadcast booth, Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth were incredulous. In a postgame interview, Derek Carr said the timeout “definitely” changed the Raiders’ strategy. And people on Twitter killed the move.

Except it’s not exactly clear how the timeout changed anything. It did not extend the game—the play cock was already near zero when Staley called it—and the Raiders ended up giving the ball to Jacobs yet again even after the timeout, so it doesn’t seem like it changed the play call that much.

But I think that debate sort of misses the point. What made watching this whole sequence, including the timeout, fascinating was trying to divine the intent behind every decision. In a sense, it was a version of the prisoner’s dilemma, where two sides end up in an outcome neither wants because they can’t coordinate or be sure of the other side’s plans. Staley said after the game that he called timeout because he was worried the Raiders would try to kick a field, and he wanted his best defense in to prevent them from making the field goal any closer. In other words, he wasn’t sure he could trust that the Raiders were really running out the clock.

And I’m not sure either. The real tragedy is that the Raiders then picked up ten yards, setting up a relatively easy 47-yard field goal to in the game.* Because now we’ll never know what the Raiders would have done had the field goal attempt been just a few yards longer. Anything can happen on plays like that, and the temptation to let the clock run out would be pretty strong.

*Of course, they STILL probably shouldn’t have kicked it. You generally expect an NFL kicker to make a 47-yard field, but it’s not a guarantee, and the upside wasn’t really worth the risk of a blocked kick or something. But at that range, you can’t really justify NOT kicking it unless you explicitly say you don’t care about winning the game.

And as much as I was rooting for the tie, I’m glad they resisted that temptation. In his postgame interview, Carr said that the Raiders were playing for the win. That’s obviously just something you say, but it’s also a fundamental premise of the game. What made watching overtime on Sunday so fun (at least for non-Steelers fan) was how WEIRD it is to watch teams that aren’t really trying to win. You are supposed to try to win. Doing anything else is unnatural and confusing. It’s why fans hate tanking and load management and resting starters once you’ve clinched a playoff berth and all the other things that are part of sports but still offend basic notions of playing to win the game.

At first glance, this might seem like an almost laissez-faire capitalist argument in favor of the pursuit of self-interest. When people invoke “the invisible hand,” they are usually trying to make a free market case against intervention or regulation in the economy. This is not really how Adam Smith himself ever used the phrase, though, and I don’t think the case is primarily an economic one. As the Chargers-Raiders game shows, “the invisible hand” has a psychological appeal. It offers clarity. The world is full of hard choices. Should you support local business or save money and buy on Amazon? Should you take out a student loan to go to college? Should you call timeout to prevent the Raiders from picking up the first down? These are tough questions, and it’s nice to simply believe that pursuing your own self-interest is the way to answer them—that you can never go wrong playing to win the game.

Obviously, in real life, that doesn’t really work. Even hardcore libertarians have to make vague gestures to charity in order to imagine an invisible hand that doesn’t leave the sick or the disabled to die in the street. But we don’t have to pretend it’s a viable economic theory to recognize the seductive appeal of its simple philosophy. And sports are an artifice, so we can indulge this temptation. As Sunday’s game showed, it truly is better for everyone if you play to win the game.