LATEST ENTRY

LINKS | Noah Brier

Going for It

November 16, 2009 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 2 COMMENTS

There is a certain beauty to the contradictory nature of sports analysis. Everyone is sure they're right all the time. And thank goodness they are, if not what would they put on the radio during the day?

Anyhow, there's a nice analysis of the analysis from last night's game over at rc3.org. In case you missed it (like me), Bill Belichick decided to go for it on a fourth-and-two from the Patriots 28-yard-line with just over two minutes left in the game. They failed and the Colts scored and won the game 35 to 34. Belichick has been roundly criticized for the decision, which was clearly a gamble. However, as Advanced NFL Stats points out, the numbers work in favor of the decision:

Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it, and by a good amount. However, these numbers are baselines for the league as a whole. You'd have to expect the Colts had a better than a 30% chance of scoring from their 34, and an accordingly higher chance to score from the Pats' 28. But any adjustment in their likelihood of scoring from either field position increases the advantage of going for it. You can play with the numbers any way you like, but it's pretty hard to come up with a realistic combination of numbers that make punting the better option. At best, you could make it a wash.

Tags: football, sports, statistics


PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY

LEAVE A COMMENT

First name, first and last, whatever you feel like.

Required, but not displayed (so don't worry about spam).

If you've got one, flaunt it.

You can use some HTML (a's, br's, p's, oh my!) if you'd like, if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it.
REMEMBER ME?

COMMENTS

1Ryan McManus

Someone somewhere said that the best and the worst thing about Bill is that he doesn't give a shit about convention. Win or lose, he's the same. I can respect that, and it gives me a modicum of comfort in the loss.

Moroney is dead to me, though.

November 16, 2009

2Allen Singer

While I agree that the level of reporting you mentioned is not very thorough vs the posts below I think all of them miss something deeper. Sports is a mental game, the theme I heard resonate with the ex-player/analysts is the message you send to your defense. In essence you are telling them your coach doesn't believe you can stop Peyton Manning's offense. But the problem is if you are expecting to win a SuperBowl, eventually you will have to.

I could go on and on here but your insights are definitely thought provoking and look forward to reading more of them. Been keeping a journal myself and your site has inspired me to kick mine off.

Cheers
Allen

November 17, 2009