http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=892888

So this begs the obvious question...

Would this work in the NFL or NCAA? Or even for other HS teams?

only way this could be optimal is if your punter averaged under 25 yards a punt or something (guesstimate obv).

For the Onside kick, you'd have to have a really sick kicker, who can put the ball high and straight for it to be good i think.

ya could be that. i remember in our hs league extra point kicking was worth 2 points and running/passing was worth one...because the kickers sucked.

they do that until 8th grade here, iirc.

If your offense is good enough to win a state championship, it probably is good enough that you both rarely face fourth downs and when you do, it's likely that going for it is the right play anyways. Onside kicking though seems insane, unless high school recover rates are vastly different than college and the pros, you'd just be giving up tons of field position most of the time. Although there was one game I played in where the opposing team scored, kicked onsides, scored again, kicked onsides, and scored again before we finally recovered one to go on offense for the first time down 21, so who knows?

Most high school punters suck so it makes sense at that level

never punting is stupid, but teams should go for it more in general. going for it on 4th and 8 from your own 5 is stupid

this is a fail. he is only looking at the probability and not the expectation

expected # of points by his total by going for: td 90% of the time, and the vast majority of the time the opponent will score a fg otherwise (call it 95% of the times they don't score a td, and assume they always hit the fg) so

.9*7 +.095*3= 6.59 pts

at the 38 it's a td 77% of the time. idk what the fg conversion rates are from that distance in high school, but suppose it's 33% and also suppose they turn the ball over or punt 10% of the time (which i think are both generous), so the team kicks a fg 13% of the time

.77*7 +.13*.33*3= 5.4

common sense prevails here

awesome

lol

It's like this forum got together and started coaching a team!

This only works if your defense never gives up a yard right?

one thing he said that made a lot of sense is that the other teams had to spend a lot of time in practice preparing for their quirks, so they didn't have as much time to focus on other things. so this probably made their defense more effective, yes.

they also evidently had an amazing quarterback.

Except that only 50% of the time are they giving up possession by the coach's stats, causing the 6.59 pts to become 3.30 points. Now, obviously there's a chance that they turn the ball over during the drive anyway, but I can't imagine that would add up to over 2 additional points.

if ur Offense sucked, and your D was awesome, seems like u should play the field position battle and punt it as much as possible (lol). Now if your O is amazing and ur D sucks, it seems like you should almost always go for it? i might be wrong in this logic, someone help.

lol. can't believe i overlooked that

This post is a big ol bucket of fail.

The real thing to take from this is that supposedly his offense can convert 4th and 8 50% of the time, if you can pick up that kind of yardage that consistently, it really doesn't matter what type of strategy you use.

On the onside kicks, if they kick from the 40, then if you don't get it back they get the ball at midfield or so. If you kick deep, they might get the ball at the 25 (depends on your kicker), so you're trading 25 yards for a chance at the ball. I dunno what success rate makes you indifferent, but I'll bet it;s pretty low: 25 yards for a chance at an extra possession. Of course there are game-specific situations where this would be foolish.

i noticed it after the fact, but thanks

edit: i was initially mistaken about it being +ev in a vacuum, but it's not always going to be optimal in an actual game scenario.

ev calcs assume that games are played w/no time limit so that you're trying to score as many points as possible, but that may not necessarily be the case. at the end of a game for example, or in a blowout where fg's do little for your opponent

I can't remember our HS team hardly punting for this reason and we were not good. We had the all-state PK since he came over from the soccer team, but apparently no one on the team could punt.

Definitely like the 75% onside kick strategy and dont' necessarily think you have to have superior defense to make this worthwhile.

I believe this could possibly work at lower level college football perhaps all the way up to mid-majors. After that I'm not sure this would be viable but it could be closer than many people think. The idea of having several different types of onside kicks is a pretty obvious one that I don't know is very common. The technique of kicking it hard into the ground and hoping for a high spike is most common but also seems to have a lot of times where it doesn't work very well at all. I think many teams just continue to use it because it's what everyone else is using.

I always thought there should be more ways for a kicker to loft it higher into the air if he practiced it enough and create a better 'jump ball' situation than the hard-spike thing. Also definitely dig the helicopter kick.

As for never punting...meh, I don't know. As someone said, going for it on 4th and 8 from your own 5 just seems incredibly asinine and is probably more a matter of him stubbornly hanging onto his own fun strategy than truly considering what is best.

Texas TEch would be a prime candidate for this game plan in college football. Defensive minded teams with good special teams players and a lackluster O would hurt themselves doing this.,

from what i read it sounded like they would always overload one side of the field, but in college i thought you had to have at least 4 players on each side so that wouldnt work

-5 for incorrect use fo "beg the question".

-15 for assuming the no-punting policy is the reason they won the championship. Correlation != causation.

well there offense probably scored a td 90% plus... if there defense isn't good then an onside kick is the right play

that's what i used to do in 2002 madden, when defense was impossible to play