Yeah he's the guy who randomly raises baby pots with air because he's vaguely aware that "aggression is good" but then when he has actual implied odds plus fold equity to shove in a monster pot, he folds his OESD because he's trusting his instincts and doesn't want his fate to come down to "chance".

The guy is such a Mike.

Poker analogies should be an instant ban.

mike tomlin is trying to make a mississippi bluff with a class 5 starting hand

Agreed! These fish all need to click their check/fold boxes.

I'm sitting out for this orbit.

Posters that make poker analogies are the nut low.

"We settled for field goals. You can't do that against good people in their place.'' - Mike Tomlin

Fold pre, not even close.

Then WHY DID YOU DO EXACTLY THAT?!

mike tomlin is the tiger woods of nfl coaches

It's like every coach is preparing to be a broadcaster some day.

The Browns are special

that article was excellent

How is this an interesting question to you?

(Hint: the answer depends entirely on how well you convert attemps)

No, because not all points are created equal, and some decisions you don't necessarily try to maximise pointEV, you just want to reach a certain number of points (i.e, you score a TD when down 6 very late. Your 2pt conv% is 80%, your XP is 100%, you still take the XP even though the 2pt conversion has a higher expected points of 1.6 points per attempt).

So, the question is really how many situations will you reach where 1pt is absolutely necessary, vs how many times a 1pt conversion is absolutely useless given the average scoring distribution of a game.

In the situation you describe, you can't really predict what is Absolutely Necessary at any point in the game flow, so yeah, you would default to the decision with the most EV overall, which depends on your conversion rates.

When we had the discussion, we assumed both options had the same ptEV (for the sake of the argument, 50% 2pt conversion and 100% XP). The argument without that clause is pretty simple I guess.

The conversation we ended up having was that I thought a "guaranteed" 1pt conversion would be way more useful/important a higher % of the time than what a 2pt conversion would ever be (getting to a score down 2, 5, up 1 would be more rare than scores level etc...).

Friend agreed that 1 point would likely be worth more than a 50% chance of 2 more often, but didn't want to have any scenarios where he needed two but elected to score only one. However, since this all happened outside the 2 minute warning, I thought this was similar to the "extending the game fallacy" in a way, since to take on his 2pt late tries, he has to by default take on earlier 2pt tries that he agreed would reduce WP% compared to only XP's, as well as go for two when leveling the scores etc...

I thought it was kind of interesting, those who would prefer to discuss/debate poker analogies probably wouldn't though.

As an aside, Tomlin has attempted more 2pt conversions through 11 games than any team has ever attempted in an entire season (Philadelphia attempted 8 in the first year of Chip, so far Pitt have attempted 9, batting at 0.6667, for comparison, Philly went 3/8).

would prolly be better if he knew why he was going for 2 each time

Shoot first, think never.

I'm inclined to say "go for 1" to take the consistent / reliable option, although the real answer, if you can change from game to game, is probably "choose 1 when a favorite and 2 when an underdog."

New England is 29th in the league in rushing. Denver is number 2 in rushing D.

IF BB wanted to make sure Denver did not get the ball back he needed to throw the ball.

NE rushing attack will likely prevent them from winning back to back SB. They have been struggling to close out close games against mediocre teams like Buffalo and the Giants. It finally cost them against a Broncos team playing with more injuries then NE. Denver played a 3rd string left tackle, back up QB, no D ware, no Clady, no vasquez, lost 3 d starters during the game.

BB knows NE can not run the ball. They have to pass even in obvious run out the clock situations.

Being down three or four of their top five pass catchers (and all five at various points in the season, assuming Gronk misses time) is going to be the bigger obstacle.

IIRC, that pass was a hail mary, or close to it, and the DPI gave them the ball at the one. It's a shame they left that out.

edit - Yeah, the throw was from the CLE32 and definitely hail mary-esque. Certainly adds to the LOLz

I will defend Tomlin and explain why his thought process was not as simple and bad as made out to be ITT.

It was 3rd and goal from the 10 with 3:45 left. Obviously a pass play is called. Tomlin is already mentally preparing to kick the field goal if they don't score as it would be 4th and 10 with 3:40 left.

Then Big Ben starts lumbering toward the end zone. Why? Who knows because he is never ever ever in a million tries scoring there. Tomlin was already in the field goal track in his mind as stated above. As the clock ticks down to 3:00 and the players get set he looked miserable like he was already regretting his decision. Should have called timeout but football coaches aren't the type to second guess themselves.

I believe if you gave him this exact situation on an exam he would answer correctly. But in the heat of the moment he failed to adjust to new information. He choked.