also they never had like a 4th and 6 from there own 20, like all season... because if he went for it there that's pretty crazy, if you have a state championship caliber team, just missing a punter get some soccer kid to come punt for you, i'm sure you can find someone

I've always thought that going for onside kicks is a better strategy than a lot of people think, especially at the collegiate level, especially in games that are offensive shootouts. When both teams are putting up points like crazy, like we saw in the Big XII South this year, it seems that getting an extra possession is way more valuable than giving up 25-30 yards of field position.

If his offense could truly convert 50% of 4th and 8th, what were they doing the first 3 downs?

It only happens 12.5% of the time, ducy?

I'm definitely more interested in the onside kicks than the never punting thing. With punting, I'm inclined to agree it's probably not right to go for it from your own five on 4th and 8, but as others have already covered if the offense is this good it probably isn't that -ev, might even be marginally +ev, and in the end doesn't really matter because even if the ev is -7 points (absolute worst case scenario), one or two touchdowns over the course of a full season probably wasn't going to change the fate of a team this good.

Now, the onsides however, are interesting. I'm really curious what their conversion rate was. I think the onside every time is clearly -ev for a "regular" team, with the standard conversion rates from NFL or college. How much time do teams spend practicing the play, though? And if you significantly increased that practice time, how much room is there to improve your conversion rate? I've seen a ton of failed onside kicks where the kicker just kicks it straight into the receiving team and there's no chance. If you had a designated onside kicker, who spent as much time practicing (and got as much coaching for) onside kicks as your punter normally gets to work on punting, how good could he get? I'd think it would probably possible to get to where he gets off a kick that gives you a chance to recover almost every time, and conversion rates could get a lot better just from that. Add in an actual playbook of different onside kicks and actual team practice time devoted to them, and how high could you get your conversion rates?

I have no idea what the answer is, but I'm intrigued by the question. I could definitely imagine it being possible to get the conversion rate high enough that the ev calculations on an onside vs. a regular kickoff at least would get very interesting.

speaking of gimmicks, what about going for 2 point conversion instead of 1 unless it was an obvious situation where going for 1 is the correct play.

Have they written a Moneyball for football yet?

The "sabermetrics" may be a little flawed, but you got to applaud a guy willing to turn the game upside down like that.

I think the never punting could apply as high up as the pros depending on the situation. Like if an NFL team decided to implement a policy that whenever they were in their opponents territory and facing a 4th down of less than 3 yards, they had to go for it unless the clock or score dictated otherwise. Regardless if they were on the 49 or 2 yard line.

The problem is that if the ball doesn't touch the ground then the receiving team can call a fair catch and the onside kick team gets penalized for hitting him (or the ball I think) before he is given an opportunity to catch it (fair catch interference). If the receiving team is expecting the kick they will almost always have someone in position to signal a fair catch and try to catch it so that's why you see so many teams try the bounce it off the ground just in front of the tee method.

p.s. props on the new posting style.

the onsides thing is a no brainer because he said on average the other team starts at its own 37 on a regular kick which doesn't seem surprising at the hs level. 12 yds of field position doesn't require much of a success rate.

strategy wouldn' t work at higher levels where avg starting field position is much worse and they don't kick off from the 40.

doesnt that defeat the whole point of "never punting"

what you described is what every team does now...go for it except for the times that you dont want to go for it

I can't believe you guys don't love the "never punt" thing.

Don't any of you ever play Madden? Do you routinely punt on 4th and 3 from your own 35? Because I don't. It's just too easy to pick up three yards.

If you play Madden, and if you've never considered going for it in less than obvious spots, try going for it next time you play. You'll be shocked at how often you convert. And as the coach in the story says, it really opens up the playbook on 3rd-and-long when you don't have to get all the yards on that particular play. The defense is so intent on stopping the third down conversion, they give up a lot underneath, and you can pick up most of it, and then finish the job on fourth down.

If you fail? So what? Yeah, it's a turnover, but so is a punt!

As mentioned in the Patriots thread, I'm so delighted that the NFL coach most likely to attempt a fourth down conversion, coaches my team.

I think this is great and could be +EV at the college and NFL levels for teams with great offenses and poor defenses.

yeah, similarly the last version i played had an unstoppable fake FG which was always good for a two-point conversion

.

In HS kids suck at punting / kickoff, so it makes way more sense. Also the team was probably really good.

Also the team prob would of won regardless of if they punted or not, because they were prob just way better than everybody else.

Yeah, right...nobody here plays Madden? Nobody has thoughts on the pros/cons of punting in that game?

Yes, I think the video game strategy considerations are relevant to the real-world considerations.

It's very difficult to figure the conversion rates because of the circumstances involved. The onsides kick at the end of the game when everyone knows it's coming has one success rate; the onsides kick to start the game trying to catch the other team off guard has another. It's similar to basketball, when one team needs to make a three-point shot to tie the game, you can't use the usual 3-pt. FGA to assume a chance for success. The defense will try to contest that shot and give up the dribble drive.
This team kicks onsides every time, so I suspect success rate isn't the only issue to them, it's the field position loss when it fails vs. the gain of possession on the turnover when it works.
A balanced strategy of sometimes kicking onsides and sometimes kicking deep would work best, but who knows what that percentage is. I agree, it is an interesting ev calc.

Well obviously all NFL teams should go for fake field goalzz then amirite????

Seriously, lol at the notion that what you do in Madden is relevant to real world discussion. Coaches should play on rookie level ldo.

Lots of HS have awful kickers that average like 20 yards a punt and 50 yards a kickoff, so this makes sense in some situations.

My HS team scored like 40 points a game and had a nuts offense, and very good defense, and it always pissed me off when we punted on 4th an anything shorter than 6 because our punter was awful.

Kickoffs were a different story, since we had two D-1 soccer players on our team, and we kicked a touchback every single time... but if your kickers and/or kick coverage were awful, I could see onside kicks making sense in HS, especially since you kick off from the 40.

Also, our offensive coordinator and o-line coach had PhD's from Caltech, so I mean come on if anybody's gonna do it it should have been them.

Also, in the 1st half of the WVU-Gtech Gator bowl or the 2005 or 2006 WVU-Louisville games, where both teams were clearly incapable of stopping the other, I felt like they should just kick onside kicks every time they scored because that was the only way they were going to prevent the other team from scoring.

I think the onside kick thing makes sense if your defense is really, really, really, really bad, unlike really good as some people have been suggesting.

both are interesting, the punting especially....... the onside kick must relate mostly to the level of play i.e. kickoff returns are highly risky for kicking team

somewhat similar story for punting. would be shocked if his net punting average would be more than 15 or 20 yards. i'd probably still punt from deep in my own end, maybe do something like quick kick....

a huge pet peeve of mine in the NFL is the punting from 37 yard line, punt almost always into end zone. so nice net 17 yard pickup... and i'm thinking some punt more closely in than that.

re: the madden and 4thand 3, nfl success rates on those types of plays seem to have got much much worse. someone suggested because the players are now so big on the D-Line. so alot more play action now which has execution risk.... i'm probably thinking closer than 4th and 3. surprised teams don't try to run wide on short yardage more.

why is everyone saying, "oh we had a good kicker in HS, cause he was from the soccer team"

Most schools have a kicker that also played soccer. That doesn't make him good, unless you are comparing his usefulness compared to a punter's, which of course has no bearing whether he played soccer or not.

Here is the rest of the story on Pulaski Academy. They are a private school playing in a public school league and give out "scholarships" to good athletes, such as former USC 5 star commit Broderick Green. They consistently produce 2 or 3 Division 1 players every year while most schools in 5A produce one player every 5-10 years. They won in spite of their coaching, not because of it. Last year when it blew up in their face, he wasn't such a genius.

I guess this is how they convert 50% on 4th and 8. If they recruited a great punter, would he have the same philosophy?