yeah i would obv be the woat nfl head coach by a huge margin but if any non-belichick coach let me make all his 4th down decisions for him he would instantly become better.
lol

def

Agree

Except saints offense so good giving it to them with decent field position in OT really sucks

Going for it clearly is not awful and is likely (barring some additional piece of very strong evidence) the correct decision. The strength of the Saints' offense only increases the gap between Saints' win expectancy on the Falcons' 29 and on their own 33, pushing the calculations further in favor of going for it. I agree with those who question the playcall, though - anecdotally it seems that sneaks are much more frequently successful, in my eyes to a degree that far outweighs the results of Ryan's nine previous sneaks. It would be interesting to see some hard data on sneaks vs more traditional runs on 3rd/4th and 1, though (although it would be hard to account for the fact that the frequency of sneaks increases as the distance of the "and 1" decreases.)

i figured that would be his take, only thing i strongly disagree with is the 82% wp for the saints-- i think they are much higher when they get the ball on the 30

edit: but that just takes it from correct/neutral to not that big of an error


edit2: realize he said even if failing confirmed a loss you should go for it. not sure i agree w/that obv it's what his #'s say, but begging the question etc. enough to say that it's close

http://wp.advancednflstats.com/4thdncalc1.php

This tool seems really neat.

it was really really windy here so mebbe a 48 yarder was prohibitive.

damn das boot hath spoken, but i was gunna say it sure felt rite to me.

From Bill Barnwell

I have a feeling that data is skewed by the fact that an inch and a yard are statistically the same in the NFL.

Ya, that's true for sure and Das Boot mentioned that in his post.

I am sure those %'s are correct, but most NFL QBs are more athletic than Matt Ryan. The ones that aren't almost never run a sneak.

Someone like Brady is an excellent QB sneaker and he is a worse athlete than Matt Ryan. I realize how much this sounds like casualfan.jpeg, but seriously these guys are world class athletes and can't fall forward, I really find that hard to believe.

I feel like the QB sneak vs RB run is more on the G-C-G vs NT than on the QB.

Unrelated, but a bad coaching decision I always see. I hate when coaches kick it through the endzone after a personal foul from the scoring team. You are at the 50 yard line, squib it, kick it onside, pop it up in the air, do anything outside of getting an auto touchback.

I'm not saying they aren't world class athletes, but clearly a Cam Newton QB sneak>>>>> a Matt Ryan QB sneak.

I always hated this. Anyone remember the Pats-Ravens game (from the 18-1 season) where after the Pats late touchdown, Ravens got called for multiple unsportsmanlike conduct penalties that all got enforced, and NE wound up kicking off from the BAL 30 or something wacky like that? Seems like a no-brainer to onside kick it and take a shot at ending the game right there, since there's no downside (when the Ravens recover it'll be the same as a touchback). Instead, Belichick basically decided to blast the ball into the stands.

Or hit it out of bounds since that makes the kick an automatic 30yd kick

Every piece of evidence I've seen suggests that coaches live in fear of kickoff returns.

Hawks committed a PF on a PAT that had Baltimore kicking off from the 50 when they were down. It has to be worth it to try and onside in that spot a lot of hte time, but it never happens.

Yeah instead of on-sides kicking it, I would try to kick it towards one of the sidelines and deep. If it rolls out of bounds the other team gets it at the 20 or where it goes out of bounds, from what I'm led to understand from the NFL rulebook.

You are mistaken, they get the ball at the 40.

belichick actually mentioned after the game he did consider onsiding and by his tone it seemed he knew it was "correct"

Maybe you should look things up first.

"When a kickoff goes out of bounds between the goal lines without being touched by the receiving team, the ball belongs to the receivers 30 yards from the spot of the kick or at the out-of-bounds spot unless the ball went out-of-bounds the first time an onside kick was attempted. In this case, the kicking team is penalized five yards and the ball must be kicked again."

From this: http://www.nfl.com/rulebook/kickoff

Unless they changed it to 'the team gets the ball on the 40 yard line' this off-season when they moved the kickoff back to the 35 yard line, and didn't edit their own website to reflect that. According to this, the team would get the ball either at the 20 or where the ball went out of bounds.

sounds about right

They really need to update the nfl rulebook website, how many years has it been since onside kicks resulted in a rekick?