Quote:
Originally Posted by BobJoeJim
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.
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.