3 - Does Paying Your Quarterback Lead to Winning? An Analysis of NFL
Team QB Spending and Success
qb <- read.csv("qb_spending_2021_2025.csv")
perf <- read.csv("team_performance_2021_2025.csv")
nfl_data <- merge(qb, perf, by = c("Team", "Season"))
summary(nfl_data) # avg qb : 19773107 avg wins: 8.469
## Team Season QB Wins
## Length:160 Min. :2021 Min. : 2622691 Min. : 2.000
## Class :character 1st Qu.:2022 1st Qu.:10250705 1st Qu.: 6.000
## Mode :character Median :2023 Median :16055578 Median : 9.000
## Mean :2023 Mean :19773107 Mean : 8.469
## 3rd Qu.:2024 3rd Qu.:28225764 3rd Qu.:11.000
## Max. :2025 Max. :52856419 Max. :15.000
## Points_For
## Min. :236.0
## 1st Qu.:330.0
## Median :376.0
## Mean :382.4
## 3rd Qu.:441.8
## Max. :564.0
Question 2: Do teams in the top quartile of quarterback spending win
significantly more games than teams in the bottom quartile?
nfl_data$spending_quartile <- ntile(nfl_data$QB, 4)
table(nfl_data$spending_quartile)
##
## 1 2 3 4
## 40 40 40 40
aggregate(Wins ~ spending_quartile, data = nfl_data, mean)
## spending_quartile Wins
## 1 1 7.350
## 2 2 8.825
## 3 3 8.700
## 4 4 9.000
ggplot(nfl_data, aes(x = factor(spending_quartile), y = Wins)) +
geom_boxplot(fill = "lightblue") +
labs(
title = "Wins by QB Spending Quartile",
x = "QB Spending Quartile (1 = Lowest, 4 = Highest)",
y = "Regular Season Wins"
) +
theme_minimal()

High QB spenders win about 1.6 more games than low spenders on
average.