Comments on Advanced NFL Stats: The Two-Minute Drill

The reason why people think teams do so much bette...

2009-11-25T18:47:15.103-05:00

The reason why people think teams do so much better in the last two minutes is the availability heuristic; i.e., people remember the exciting TD drives and forget the plain vanilla defensive stops.

I'm sorry. I meant to respond to this yesterday. H...

2009-11-18T22:03:16.986-05:00

I'm sorry. I meant to respond to this yesterday. Here is the comparison you're looking for.

http://www.advancednflstats.com/2009/01/drive-results.html

I second Jeff's request. It has often seemed to me...

2009-11-18T21:29:17.552-05:00

I second Jeff's request. It has often seemed to me that teams are much more effective in situations in which they "need" to score than they are at other points in the game. I have witnessed plenty of games in which a team struggles to move the ball throughout the contest, but then marches down the field to score when the game or half is near the end. In these situations, I find

A perfect game for comparison is the 2006 AFC Cham...

2009-11-18T14:28:14.485-05:00

A perfect game for comparison is the 2006 AFC Championship (a bit different but I haven't seen it mentioned much)

NE leads Indy by 3 with 2:20 to play, 4th & 4 at their own 46 and Indy with 1 timeout. Belichick elects to punt, which goes for a touchback.

Indy drives and scores a TD in 1:30 to win the game and go to the superbowl.

No one crucified

Well yes the first thing I thought of was SB X as ...

2009-11-18T09:44:34.449-05:00

Well yes the first thing I thought of was SB X as I was a young pittsburgh fan. I recalled the ball being more at midfield, and as it turned out Staubach wound up getting two passes into the endzone, the second one being picked off by Glen Edwards I think.

But the other game I thought of was the Green Bay Packers next to last regular season game of the 1967 season. They lost to the

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Super Bowl X ye...

2009-11-17T23:00:32.906-05:00

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Super Bowl X yet.

From Wikipedia:

"After Gerry Mullins recovered Dallas' onside kick attempt, the Steelers then tried to run out the clock on the next drive with four straight running plays, but the Cowboys defense stopped them on fourth down at their 39-yard line, giving Dallas one more chance to win. Some questioned why

"It looks like roughly 50% chance of making a 26-3...

2009-11-17T21:34:14.854-05:00

"It looks like roughly 50% chance of making a 26-30 yd TD and roughly 22% chance of making a 66-70 yd TD based on the graph."

It looks like you're using the blue line -- the black linear approximation is better and appears to be what Burke used in his analysis of the Pats/Colts game.

It looks like roughly 50% chance of making a 26-30...

2009-11-17T19:54:36.681-05:00

It looks like roughly 50% chance of making a 26-30 yd TD and roughly 22% chance of making a 66-70 yd TD based on the graph.

So assuming 60% chance of converting a 4th and 2, the Belichek equation becomes:

.6 + (.4*.5) = 80% chance of winning.

Punting would result in a 78% chance of winning based on the chart.

Basically a wash.

The decision

Alchemist, I actually feel pretty optimistic abou...

2009-11-17T15:15:12.747-05:00

Alchemist,

I actually feel pretty optimistic about the whole long term effects of this. The knowledge of the math has been seeping into the coaching pool and they are going more often. The knee jerk "omigod what was he thinking" story was printed a lot. On the other hand, the math on our side was printed a lot as well. I think that will force coaches to think about it in

What are the percentages when the game is tied? Al...

2009-11-17T11:24:59.869-05:00

What are the percentages when the game is tied? Also, how often does the other team get the ball in these situations and score to win the game?

What are the raw #s for those percentages? And wh...

2009-11-17T11:14:03.506-05:00

What are the raw #s for those percentages? And what games were they?

I wonder if that lower red zone touchdown percenta...

2009-11-17T10:05:35.530-05:00

I wonder if that lower red zone touchdown percentage is at least in part because it is possible to get to 4th down with 1:45 left and still have three time outs. I think there are plently of coaches that would make the irrational decision to kick a field goal thinking they could get the ball back to win the game.

Although you had alluded to those scoring percenta...

2009-11-17T09:05:12.186-05:00

Although you had alluded to those scoring percentages in previous posts, seeing them graphed out is compelling. In the wake of the Great Belichick Blunder of 2009 (as the pundits would have us believe), this whole topic is receiving massive attention.

I would really like to say, as Jeff does above, that this will lead to more logical go-for-it decisions in the future. But the whole

Yes....Thank you for posting this. There was a wh...

2009-11-17T01:13:08.768-05:00

Yes....Thank you for posting this. There was a whole lot of talk today and I saw your site referenced in quite a few different places.

It seemed like you were the lead person in the go-for-it debate. I sort of believe that eventually teams will play more 4 down football. At some point, the tipping point will be reached and the default will be to go for it. Teams will still punt

In the absence of a definitive statistical analysi...

2009-11-17T01:05:33.854-05:00

In the absence of a definitive statistical analysis, it would seem easy enough to conjure up an intuitive guess. My gut instinct is that the average # of timeouts would be no more than one, since the team getting the ball may have used all of its timeouts on defense. Then perhaps use that to apply incremental adjustments.

I was surprised that the percentages are this high. Awesome

People were dismayed at the TD % you used for the ...

2009-11-17T00:41:36.832-05:00

People were dismayed at the TD % you used for the Colts/Pats if the Pats were to punt but it makes sense: Off the top of my head I can think of 3 games this year (SD/NY, Cin/Bal, Minn/SF) that ended just that way. I bet I'm skipping one or two and I bet just as many teams failed to score, but that's what the numbers say will (would? should?) happen.

Glad your blog got some

I meant to mention that. No, unfortunately this do...

2009-11-17T00:19:57.828-05:00

I meant to mention that. No, unfortunately this does not factor in varying numbers of timeouts remaining. Consider it an average of a typical number of TOs left. We know more timeouts is better, and fewer is worse, but I can't say exactly how much with out a much, much deeper analysis.

Excellent work. Do these graphs take timeouts int...

2009-11-17T00:07:17.546-05:00

Excellent work.

Do these graphs take timeouts into context? I don't know how much time is usually saved by an offensive team taking a timeout, but suppose it is 15 seconds. In other words, a team with 3 timeout effectively has 45 more seconds with which to work. This data would seem more complete if it would at least list the average # of timeouts that an offensive team starts