Very much this. You need to make up your decision before 3rd and play 3rd and 4th accordingly.

And letting them score is without a doubt the right play, with regards to the "heat of the battle" argument, in case some people missed it MJDs kneeling at the 1 was pretty sweet.

I think if you do both these right going for this is +EV, if not it's probably marginally +EV gut says it's pretty close.

Also this, certainly got a little more respect for BB after this game.

Wow, less close than I expected. Goes to show I'm bad with numbers. I've always wondered why no NFL team has any mathematicians on staff for this kind of stuff (up in the booth, dunno how many people are allowed to be in there etc. but it would certainly make sense)

lol @ pretending this is a poker problem

I agree the call was WAY closer than the media is making it.

It's a terrible call based upon the previous play calling as previously stated. I don't think anyone can disagree with that. Also, To have your offense start to walk off the field then turn around means this was a big surprise to them, which would lead me to believe this was a quick decision by Belichick.

I do think that if they converted then people would be praising this call a lot more than denouncing it.

The previous play calling has no impact on it at the point they decide to go for it, i.e. the coin has no memory. It may have been better to devise a two play set on 3rd down with the intention of going on 4th down, but once they get to 4th and 2, the numbers still support going for it.

Also, here is a gem from the AdvancedNFLStats site:

"I love how Trent Dilfer's holding onto his argument that going for it is dumb."

"Going for it is dumb. If the opposing quarterback is Trent Dilfer."

Peter King on math:

"Let's place the odds of Brady getting two yards at 60, 65 percent. The odds of Manning going 72 yards to score a touchdown in less than two minutes (given a punt) ... that's maybe 35 percent."

"All in all, I hated the call."

Can you find the flaw in this logic?

good call, and its not even close.

Once the conversion fails, who'd snapcall an all out blitz on the first play for the Colts? If it works great if not they burn you for a quick score and you let the O win it.

Link?

Listening to Chris Carter now on Mike & Mike, and he liked the call. He seems to sorta understand it.

Actually I'd rather punt because "less important players" would get injured on the punt compared to the 4th down play.

Yes this is a very good point as well.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...mqb/index.html

its a very interesting idea. Id have to think about it a little more. If your only outcomes were polarized to like sack, incompletion, TD, it would probably be good.

However, the Colts potential to get long non-TD plays might spoil this. And given that the Pats would prefer the Colts to score, the best Colts counterstrategy might be to complete the bomb then MJD it on the 1 inch line.

I think personally yes you have to get in there and take the points, it wasn't like the Jags were going to be up and the Jets had to score only a FG, now the Jets have to score a TD, remember John Carney after all those laterals and he missed the XP, it does happen.

Westbrook about 2-3 years ago did this same thing, he busted a big run and knelt down at the 2 to keep clock going. Difference was PHI was winning at the time.

I guess people just don't get it when they them selves are saying they would lose. If you think punting will lose the game, then why not try to end it and if you fail, more often than not, they will score quick enough that you will have another shot yourself. Just not here!!!!

For riverman,myturn2raise:

The officials did not blow the game. If you think it was a poor spot so be it, but he bobbled it, which if he didn't clearly it would have been 1st down, if they had a better plan on 3rd for 4th, instead of being so arrogant in thinking they have 1st down locked up on 3rd down, they wouldn't have blown the TO and had a chance to challenge.

While we're at it, let's check on Indy's decision making...
What's the chance of recovering an onside kick?

I'm not 100% sure about the clock+timeout situation but I think NE getting one first down after both timeouts burned would have clinched it so it seems that trying the onsidekick would have given Indy an extra chance to get the ball while not changing too much for the D.

Yeah maybe you'd need some special formation for this with like a deep guy on the one who flows to wherever the ball is tossed/ran, lets the guy run and tackles him into the endzone or smth. The anti-prevent.

It's just sort of bitter sweet as a Pats hater. Great that they lost, but my head is going to explode listening/reading any analysis from media donks.

And I'm going to laugh/cry and blame BB when Jauron punts on 4th&2 trailing by 10 with 7 minutes left. Oh wait he already did that this year, which induced crickets from espn.

great post.

the 4th down call was correct in a vaccuum, but the third down play was definitely bad.

I think the goal line stand is way closer than you think though. P(Driving the ball decently far with no timeouts + converting FG) and P(stopping the colts 4 times from the 4 yd line) arent too far apart id imagine.

With BB's decision, the Pats get two chances to win. The attempt can succeed and then they basically just win outright, or it can fail and the Pats can successfully defend

With a punt, your only chance is to defend

A good sports bettor could work the odds of all that out to pretty accurate percentages

I'm sure BB has a team of guys in his ear doing the same thing

No doubt that he made the right call, really

Thx bschr04. LOL Peter Kingaments.

He starts out on the right path by assigning the 60 to 65% for converting, and then 35% for the Colts scoring after a punt. But then rationalizes it all with "the cost of missing it is too great." Hmm, great jump from point A to point D. Actually, I probably have to give Peter some credit because I'm not sure most people make it beyond than the dogmatic snap-punt mentality.

The real reason he went for it is that if he loses he can double the intensity during practice because neither O nor D can complain about extra workouts because both failed to win it.

Genius ;P

I hope this is a level. LETTING them score? Gotta be a level.

LOL on First Take's 1st and 10 on ESPN Jay Crawford says that "the percentages CLEARLY say that you should punt there." Uh, no. And then the topic is not "do you you agree with the 4th down decision" but rather "how dumb was the 4th down decision?" I mean, really?

haha yea at least he is trying. He just drew the wrong conclusions from his own thoughts:

P(Pats fail to convert)= 35%
and
P(Colts score Given punt)= 35%

then going for it is better since the colts obv arent scoring 100% of the time the Pats miss. It seems to me that when p<100% ...

(.35)(p)< (.35)
(pats miss and colts score)< (Pats punt and colts score)

...Colts win less often when pats go for it.

i could be wrong though. im better at math than i am at hand waving.

Also, I'd like to point out that Colin Cowherd is an idiot as well. He just said, "You can say 'They convert on 4th down 70% of the time...' but what matters is WHERE you go for it. There's a reason why you go for it on their one yard line and not your own one yard line." And it doesn't even occur to him that it's more complicated than this. Seems like it would be really frustrating if you were decently intelligent and part of the sports broadcasting community. He read my email on the air by cherry-picking the parts he wanted to disagree with and ignoring the part where I say the analysis ACCOUNTS FOR where the ball is. Pretty sure Michelle Beadle from SportsNation knows more about sports.

I knew last night that talk radio was going to drive me crazy by listening to the Belichick bashing and so far I've been right. My head exploded on the drive to class this morning listening to Boston sports talk on weei. The hosts and everyone calling in were crucifying Belichick. The hosts quoted "the one person defending BB" who wrote an article for providence journal providing statistical evidence for Belichick's call being slightly correct and the moron's laughed at it. Who ever mentioned most media being results oriented and mathematically impair was right.

This is like the end of the innocence in assuming certain sports personalities (including former coaches and players) have a brain. When the play happened my immediate reaction was like" "That's a very interesting call, I bet the numbers support it." Then, right after the game everyone is like "wtf, BB is insane!"

The next couple of days will allow me to reevaluate my preferences in the sports media. That alone is valuable. My guess now is that Bill Simmons supports the call and Tony Kornheiser finds it close. I think most of these donks will say it's terribad. It's ironic, because this would be a great chance for Skip Bayless to push his standard contrarian view, but I think I just heard him from the other room jumping on the omgwtflolbbq BB bandwagon.

(BTW, I don't even like BB, but I would trade my coach and a 1st round draft choice for him.)

lol truth.

I'm surprised 14% think it was a good call on ESPN, I figured it would be much lower.

You have any idea how large the error bars are on this kind of simple EV calculation? Given uncertainty U_1, the uncertainty in the first calculation increases by approximately U_1 {X + Y}/ {XY}; for example, given 5% error in the initial estimates you've divined, you should find an uncertainty of greater than 0.05 * (0.85 / 0.15) ~ 30% in your answer, more than the percentage difference in the EVs -- (0.18 - 0.15) / 0.15 = 20% -- of your "clear" decision. You're not going to answer this question analytically.