It’s 4th-down and 2 yards to go for a touchdown. Should you go for it or kick? A kick is almost a sure thing, but what about going for it? If one does a little homework, then they will find that the odds of success are 43 percent if a team decides to go for it. That doesn’t look promising. But is that the end of the story?

It turns out that kicking in a situation that I just described will decrease the chance of a team winning the game by 3 percent. Huh? How is that possible?

Just looking at odds of success for this one play is not enough. For example, if they decide to go for a touchdown, but don’t make it then look at where the opponent must start playing. They’ll be inside the 5-yard line, which is a whole lot worse field position than if the team had kicked a field goal.

The problem should be framed this way: Kick a field goal and give your opponent better field position or go for it and give your opponent lousy field position if you fail.

According to a study, when a team has the ball on its own half of the field, they should never kick the ball if there are less than 4 yards to go.

Read More…

No-punt coach and why

Football maverick. Numbers nut. Super successful. Persuasive. Fascinating.

Meet Kevin Kelley, the head football coach at Pulaski Academy, and an ardent advocate of NOT punting the football. Backed by studies from Harvard and Cal-Berkeley, his stat-backed pitch put the waffle in an old reporter weaned on Frank Broyles, Darrell Royal and other trumpeters of punting and field position.

That philosophy, ingrained over the years, is a mountain for Kelley to climb. Suppose, he said, that could be erased, that fans were raised on the notion that a team had four downs to make a first down and that failure hands the ball to the opposition.

“The first time we kicked the ball to the other team, they’d be booing, thinking, ‘Why are you giving up the ball,’” he said. “‘You didn’t make them work for it; you’re just giving it to them.’”

His team is simply trying to use all four downs provided by the rules.

Read More…

DO FIRMS MAXIMIZE? EVIDENCE FROM PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL

This paper examines a single, narrow decision—the choice on fourth down in the National Football League between kicking and trying for a first down—as a case study of the standard view that competition in the goods, capital, and labor markets leads firms to make maximizing choices. Play-by-play data and dynamic programming are used to estimate the average payoffs to kicking and trying for a first down under different circumstances. Examination of teams’ actual decisions shows systematic, clear-cut, and overwhelmingly statistically significant departures from the decisions that would maximize teams’ chances of winning. Possible reasons for the departures are considered.

Read More…

It’s Fourth Down and What Does the Bellman Equation Say?

No related posts.