In the sport of American football, the quarterback (QB) is the player almost always responsible for throwing the ball downfield to an open receiver. That important throw requires him to make a split second decision to launch the ball at the correct speed and angle to guarantee it lands directly into the hands of the receiver. In this paper we model the decision for two cases. The authors first consider the case of a receiver running at constant acceleration and find that, for a successful throw, the ball's launch angle depends only on the receiver's constant acceleration while the ball's initial speed is not a factor. Secondly, the article discusses the more realistic case of a receiver running at a variable acceleration showing that the QB can perform a successful throw for various angle/ball's initial speed combinations in which the angle and speed are approximately linearly related.
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