What do you mean by "get away with it"? Not get fired midseason??? U guys are overestimating how much aggressive 4th down decisionmaking weakens an NFL coach's job security.

while a coach of an underachieving team who makes unconventional fourth down decisions is more likely to be fired than someone who follows mainstream thinking on an equally underachieving team, the increased chances of winning football games makes up for that to some degree.

Not really.. lets say over the course of the game you make decisions that give you a 10% edge in the game... but these decisions are commonly accepted as horrible.

You think you'll realize enough actual wins in your career to make up for that? You need to be completely established with complete job security to go that route.

A+

There are so many situations in life where people end up gambling more in their quest not to gamble.

God, the average fan tilts me so much. From another board:

Yeah, except for the best coach of the last 10 years who made the decision to go for it.

This whole episode proves beyond any doubt that most people, even very successful people, are ****ing ******ed and have no natural instinct towards critical thinking.

Yep, there's a very good chance that one of those controversial 10% edge calls will fail in a big situation, and that's all people will remember.

What do you think will happen when a coach who turns a 8-8 team in a 10-6 team makes a controversial decision in the conference championship game? He'll be blamed for ruining a 10-6 season, and get no credit for getting his team as far as he did.

You could have a coach with a team that has a horrible defense, but is capable of converting 70% of their 2-pt conversions, and the coach would still be crucified if he went for the winning 2-pt conversion at the end of the game and failed.

Right, a 10% edge in decisions alone is enormous.. but probably not worth it for most coaches. We aren't running 100 instances of a coaches career here.

this. i'm reminded of david sklansky's gem of a quote from a. alvarez's 'the biggest game in town', he said this in 1980:

"I [can't work in business because I] was always being told what to do by incompetent people, and I hated it. The world is full of idiots, and I can't handle it."

Eh. I've been following this board for years and understand and agree with the prevalent opinion regarding basically every 4th down decision yet at the time I thought it was the wrong call. Looking at the numbers now I see that it was actually correct, but it was close enough either way that it's going to be tough to sway people from their initial feeling.

It's quite incredible. I'm in an email thread with some friends of mine, all of whom are incredibly smart and even critical thinkers of some sort. 1 is a Lawyer, 1 got 1600 SATs, 1 is football nut and 800 math SAT. Way above your typical sports mouthbreathers. First email was how horrible the decision was, and LOL Belichick. I show them the numbers (came up with on my own, and were even more slanted towards Indy than the website linked here), and it still came up as an easy decision. All three are telling me that the stats mean nothing, it was all emotion, and Indy scores 100% of the time after they fail when going for it. You cannot give them the ball on the 28, no matter what. "Even if it is 4th and 1 inch, and you will make it 95% of the time?" Yes, even then it's foolish, you cannot take that chance.

Absolutely amazing what a different mindset there is out there. We will never understand it. And even if they are smart people, that mindset of being able to gamble when it makes sense just is not there. People do not want to make decisions that could result in bad things, and will make alternate worse decisions, as long as the bad consequences are more "indirect".

The fact that most people form a snap opinion based on selective biases and then will never deviate from that opinion regardless of what a more thoughtful analysis is pretty much exactly what Riverman is talking about. It's not that people thought that it was a slightly bad decision, they practically called the greatest coach of the past 10 years a giant flaming ****** who is barely smart enough to tie his own shoes, and then refuse to even back down an inch.

Wow, that's a ****ing solid quote. I've been waiting for this moment for a long time to see how terribad the reaction would be. Inevitably, a coach that really understands football would finally make this play and it would blow up. I just can't believe it finally happened. The reaction is almost like a nuclear holocaust of critical thinking.

I'm solidly with you. **** BB but now I think he's awesome.



I think I agree with this but I'm not sure that two short pass plays is worse than something involving running. We'd need to know a distribution of each play. That reminds me that somebody like the advancednflstats guy should be the guy deciding which plays to call. I'm not saying the offensive coordinator because there's more to it than that but it seems like an algorithm that picks the plays (or at least suggests one) by using their results distributions could be better than any coach just choosing the plays without that.

The part in reference to me is debatable and I kinda agree.. but using a timeout and not trying to run the play immediately before Indy was prepared was clearly worse. He simply didn't have a plan for when they failed on 3rd down. Not even taking playcalls into account.

On a similar note, I am also reminded of Sklansky's gem of a quote from TPFAP:

Yeah Wisenhunt would def. consider doing it...he also loves trick plays
Esp if it was like in the playoffs vs. an offense like New Orleans etc.

What would be a sick sick play call is if it is the same type of setup...4th and 1
You run the play from several years ago where Warner pretends like he is just trying to get the offsides, then acts like he is walking off the field but he is actually going in motion - direct snap it to Beanie/Hightower...1st down.

I'd say it is
BB
McDaniels def.
Wisenhunt
Sean Peyton maybe
Tomlin?

Almost certainly not Tomlin.

That's awesome. Is that from the chapter about only he's allowed to fold aces preflop?

isn't that play illegal now?

He might if his defense was really bad. But he loves defense and would trust it 100000000000000% to stop them.

Doesn't BB have a mathematician/stat-guy in the booth? I remember hearing that he his main 'advisor' at game time was a number cruncher.

I did too at the time, mainly because the Colts had been sputtering throughout the game and I put their chance at making a mistake much higher with the longer field. But looking at the numbers there's really no way to make them work out in favor of punting.

BB has definitely read the studies about 4th down, and based on this, apparently taken it to heart.

I really don't think it was that bad of a call.

I don't need no stinking math problem to tell me to play the percentages