Quantifying pass creativity as the difference between the expected usefulness of a player's actual passing decision and the expected usefulness of the most likely (typical) pass in that game state. Creativity = novel + useful. A pass to an unexpected location that generates high value is creative; an unexpected pass that fails is just unusual. The model separates conception quality (choosing the right pass) from execution quality (completing it).
(1) Model the probability distribution of pass destinations for each game state (pass-originality-modeling). (2) Identify the "typical" pass as the single most likely action. (3) Creative decision rating = E(value of actual pass choice) - E(value of typical pass). Players who consistently choose higher-value destinations than the typical player in the same situation score highly.
A player with high creative decision rating but low completion has high ambition and low execution β these are different coaching problems. Penalizing completion suppresses the creative decisions themselves.