Ok I'm taking him off ignore. If I live to regret this I blame you.

Note that I qualified the statement and made no promises it continues.

Yeah and B is related to C in that there's a relationship between how hard it is to score a TD from say 60 yards out vs. 30 yards out. I would guess that C**1/2 = B. Anyway Belichek clearly made the right choice and I was positive that most on this forum would see choice was right and not that hard to justify in reality. Some guy wrote a book on football game management strategy using math and statistics that Belichek readily admits he has read and agrees with most of it.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news...ts_at_halftime

just happened to tell my boss about this - ugh - he said there is too much randomness in games to use probabilities....punt.

this has really been shocking to me - otherwise, in this case, he's a pretty smart guy. i didn't realize how rare it is to think about things from a probability perspective - and how much people would resist it even when explained to them.

Not sure if this has been mentioned but this made #2 on some guys all-time worst coaching decisions (lol)

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/pgStory...photo=10388818

yea, a 65-70 yard TD drive is probably even less than double as difficult as a 30 yard drive, and even if it were double as difficult then Brady converting 50% of the time would be the break even point between the two decisions

Minnesota Vikings coaches should dominate this list.

the comments are golden too:

I think it'd be interesting to calculate the probability by using variances of each statistic. Obviously, there are going to be more punting data available than 4th and 2.

In other words, I think your boss kind of points out something very important when trying to calculate this answer. The variance could be pretty large to give us a +/-X where X is too big to make this mathematical calculation anything but significant.

Furthermore, the stats would obviously change based upon being on the road or not, indoor or outdoor, patriots or colts etc etc.

I'm looking forward to future information regarding this matter and possibly someone calculating it in a better, more accurate, fashion.

I just don't know if the figures calculated can even be considered "ball park" figures because they fail to recognize the uncertainty.

This is like saying "my opponent's range for shoving preflop could contain any pocket pair. I could be behind 80-20 or ahead 20-80, and I don't know exactly how often I'm ahead or behind, so I should default to folding my jacks." Just because you'll never know the "true" probability doesn't make it wrong to try to use an estimate.

ANFL's baseline stats gave a pretty big edge in favor of going for it; you'd need to find multiple adjustments (or one really big adjustment) to swing it in favor of punting.

the new simmons is up.

i'm a fan of simmons and generally i laugh and gloss over his more questionable stuff.

this article is horrible. horrible. i'm actually a little heated right now.

I knew the same would happen to me when I read the start:

so I stopped.

that may actually be the worst article he's ever written, which is quite a statement

omg

He's so overrated on this forum. He should stick to pop culture references and trying to be clever.

wow. this is amazing. this is better than i ever could have hoped. i only read simmons after a calamity befalls one of his teams, and he rarely disappoints.

victor - yeah, that was the worst bit. just a complete lack of understanding.

he makes some good points in the final section, but they were pretty obvious ones anyway.

The funny part about Simmons is last week he was dreading this game because of Manning. He said something like "You can't bet against Manning at night on national TV! He will somehow win this game, you just know it!". Then this week he says "You need to punt! Manning can't drive 60-70 yards!".

People shouldn't hate on Simmons though. He's honest about how he feels when it comes to his sports teams. He's better than being some schill like Heyman or Morosi.

no - simmons gets away with laughably bad analysis and ridiculous comments (e.g. the colts lost on purpose in 2007 so they wouldn't have to face the patriots) because he writes like he's joe fan.

simmons is a huge clown

does he have a comment section - or did he turn it off?

the stat simmons cites that the pats only win 92% of the time if they convert is a giant WTF - that is moronically low

"Career security can be damaging in one of two ways: either you stop taking chances, or you feel emboldened and start taking too many of them."

which bill are we talking about here, mr. sports guy?

Fixed.

I don't think he ever had a comments section.