Quote:
Originally Posted by natediggity
You lose basically every time you fail???? The other team is scoring a TD and making the PAT basically every time???
Sorry, shorthand. We are assuming only the universe where the other team scores an answering TD. The times when they fail means our PAT decision was meaningless. Similar to how the analysis on whether to go for 2 after a TD when we were down 14 late should only focus on outcomes when we score another subsequent TD and opp doesn't score again, b/c otherwise it's moot.
So let's play PAT at 100% and 2PC at 50%, which is close enough. If we kick first, we win 50% and lose 50% of those trials where opp answers and goes for 2. So we win 50% of the time.
If we go for 2 first, we succeed half the time. Of those, half the time our opp succeeds as well, and we go into sudden death with the ball. The other half, we lose to their PAT.
So EVEN IF WE WIN SUDDEN DEATH 100% OF THE TIME, that only breaks even with kicking first. Winning any less than 100% in sudden death makes going for 2 first a loser.
Now, there may be crazy outliers where a team has an injured kicker or is for some reason WAY more likely to make a 2PC than their opponent. But the huge majority of the time, going for 2 after the initial TD is just idiotic, just like it would be in college for the team that scores first.