Omaha 1.11.0
Released 15 September 2026
On second and twelve, teams throw. The simulation was calling it the same way it calls second and eight, because it could not see how far there was to go.
How to read these numbers
Every figure below compares the simulation against a player’s own season average so far, scaled to how much of the game is left, roughly what a reader could work out without us. Zero means we add nothing over that. Positive means we beat it; negative means we are worse than it.
Measured across the 2024 season, weeks 1–18, rebuilding the model each week using only what was known at the time. 400 simulations per situation.
The change column is simply this version’s accuracy minus 1.10.0’s, each measured across everything that version covers, so the two columns you can see always account for it. We also measure the change on shared situations alone, which is a more sensitive test; where the two disagree we publish this one.
Accuracy by stat
| Stat | vs. season average | Change from 1.10.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving touchdownsrare event | +20.3% | +0.24−0.11 to +0.15 |
| Rushing touchdownsrare event | +18.0% | +0.14−0.17 to +0.15 |
| Receiving yards | +13.8% | +0.08+0.03 to +0.11 |
| Pass attempts | +12.9% | −0.07−0.37 to +0.23 |
| Rushing yards | +12.5% | +0.06+0.02 to +0.14 |
| Passing yards | +11.0% | +0.04−0.25 to +0.28 |
| Completions | +9.7% | −0.03−0.34 to +0.26 |
| Passing touchdownsrare event | +7.0% | +0.05−1.02 to −0.49 |
| Rush attempts | +3.9% | +0.10+0.01 to +0.18 |
| Targets | +1.5% | −0.05−0.13 to +0.01 |
| Receptions | +1.4% | +0.15+0.06 to +0.19 |
| Average across all figures | +10.2% |
The average is an unweighted mean across the figures above. It is a summary of how we are doing, not a single score for the model: yards and counts are not measured in the same units, so combining them any more cleverly than this would just let passing yards decide the answer.
Each change carries the range the measurement can actually support. A change whose range crosses zero is shown in neutral rather than as a gain: we cannot tell it apart from no change, and we are not claiming it as one.
What changed
How far a team has to go is most of what decides whether it throws. The simulation knew the down, the field position, the score and the clock, and the only place it knew the distance was third down. So second and twelve was called like second and eight, and fourth and fifteen like fourth and four. It ran the ball far too often in exactly the spots where real teams have given up on running.
With eleven or more to go, real teams throw on 78.9% of snaps. The simulation threw on 65.3%. It now throws on 75.2%. At seven to nine yards the gap closes from 5.5 points to 1.9.
Calling the right kind of play moves the ball between the quarterback and the backfield, so a correction to play calling reaches the running stats as well as the passing ones.
Receptions, rush attempts, rushing yards and receiving yards all improved by a significant margin, and nothing we measure got worse. The published average moved from 10.1% to 10.2% better than a season average.
We deliberately left it alone. With one yard to go the simulation throws on about half of snaps where real teams throw on a quarter, and that is the single biggest gap we know about. The fix for it is built and measured, and it made our rushing touchdown numbers worse twice, so it is not shipped. We would rather carry a known error than trade it for a worse one.
With one yard to go, real teams throw on 27.4% of snaps and the simulation throws on 50.6%. That figure is unchanged in this release.
What this version still gets wrong
- The gain is small. Correcting long yardage moves how often the ball is thrown in those situations, but a projection covers a whole rest of a game, and across sixty plays the mix of situations averages much of it out. We expected that before we measured it.
- One yard to go is untouched and remains our largest known error.
- There is a second problem at one yard that this does not address either: even with the right play called, the simulation expects about sixteen percent more yardage than those plays really gain.
- We do not yet understand why fixing short yardage costs us on rushing touchdowns. Until we do, that fix stays off.