If he was thinking along those lines at all, I would guess that he wanted to put Bork out there with the score tied rather than forcing him to go out and quite possibly start OT playing from behind.

Both D's were gassed, a lot of the good PEDs/andrenaline dump wears off after 3 hours i'm sure

these guys are conditoned to play for 3 hours their whole lives and now we're into hour 4, I just think it is hard to factor that in but seems like no one is even trying to grasp that point because it can't really be quantified

This seems pretty reasonable. But of course doesn't factor in giving Mahomes 4 downs.

You can get whatever results you want if you get to choose the parameters.

Why would this guy go thru sharing this when he misses KC playing 4 downs?

I remember PhDs arguing about the Monty Hall problem insisting the auto switch offered no advantage.

I’ve tried to avoid this thread and the SB thread being as how I’m still not over this

I still think there’s far more nuance to all this than strictly focusing on analytics. Not going for it on 4th down seems kinda telling that as much faith as Kyle had in Bork there’s no way he was ready to find himself in a situation where mahomes scores first and it’s one drive for the Super Bowl with Bork. Start OT with Bork and there’s less pressure on him and you have a margin of error. Kick the ball off to mahomes and all the pressure is on a 24 year old who is one ****up away from losing the Super Bowl

If Kyle has mahomes there’s no doubt in my mind he kicks it off. He doesn’t. He picked the route that was the most likely to lead to success given the level of risk he was willing to engage in

I think it does. Unless you're talking about Mahomes specifically.

Why not go for the result that is most likely to lead to success and ignore the risk tolerance noise.

Right or wrong I think this is where Kyle’s career failures dictate his risk tolerance

I really think the guy is just shook at this point. I don’t advocate his firing but here he is now at the 3rd major Super Bowl collapse of his career without a ring and I can’t possibly imagine that doesn’t factor into it

Cognitive dissonance ftw

The first drive not being 4 down territory tells you everything you need to know about his mindset heading into OT. It was a broken mindset, but he knew exactly what he was doing and why. He wanted his defense to win the game, he didn’t want Bork to win it

This has been my belief consistently here. It can't be more obvious when he chooses to pocket his TOs end of 1H.

Ya this

Between the end of the first half and not going for it on 4th down it was incredibly clear he wanted to get at least 3 and put it on the defense to walk it off

I hate that mindset so much but if you look at it through that lens the analytics are completely irrelevant. He made up his mind

Which is exactly what cognitive dissonance describes.

It's the old school mindset, e.g. "that's not who we are as a team", and the other jibberish these clowns roll out.

I don’t disagree at all. I just think attacking Kyle for the coinflip choice completely misses the point. His general conservatism and shookness is what makes him thread title worthy, his decision to take the ball is completely irrelevant by comparison

I am talking about Mahomes specifically. The guy who's 7 for 7* with less than a minute left in the playoffs, down 7 or less, while the rest of the league is batting 40%.

* To be fair one of those drives is the Cincy AFCCG, where Mahomes could have won it with a TD, but had to settle for a FG, then failed to score with the ball first in OT.

Shanny's biggest mistake was having his defense play super soft at the end of reg and in OT. Can't think of a single tough pass Mahomes had to make, they were all underneath throws to wide open guys in soft coverage. I guess Wilks gets a lot of the blame there but it comes down to the head coach.

As far as OT I mean no matter how you feel about the coin toss, the defense did in fact have a several chances to win it after they scored the FG. There was the 2nd and 13 or whatever it was, where they basically gave Mahomes a free completion underneath for like 8yds. There were a couple of 3rd and longs, again easy underneath passes to wide open receivers. There was also the 4th and inches that could've ended the game, but they were never stopping that one.

This is pretty standard in football. It irks me all the time. I think it's for a few reasons:

a) guys don't want to get beat deep to end the game

b) coaches don't want a

c) defense is tired

Yards always seem easy to come by on the late drives. And I don't buy hurry-up offense as a valid reason for easy yards because if that was true, should do hurry-up offense every drive.

Especially in this game, knowing they less to a TD, they give up easy yards so long as they don't get beat, hoping a FG will be the end result. Of course if you give up enough easy yards and now they are 1st and goal at the 5, it's going to be difficult to stop them.

Hard to argue with giving KC the short and easy completions that bled the clock at the end of regulation.

Drive started with almost two minutes on the clock and 2 TO for KC. Making them kick the FG after getting only one shot at the end zone seems to be an above average result, considering your defense is toast and they have Mahomes on the other side.

OT seems to be far more complicated because that was the first time ever a team had 4 downs no matter field position without the clock playing any role. In normal games, if a team has to score or the game is over, the clock always plays a significant factor.

Then again, we don't even know if everyone on the 49ers was aware of the fact that the game wouldn't be over when the clock hit zeros?

No it's not. Mahomes what what one good drive all game before that? It was 19-16 and KC has scored a TD off of a fumbled punt where they had to go about 10 yards.

I'm far from a football expert but I don't understand why at the end of games in close games teams that have been playing good defense all game just give up a bunch of free yards because all of the sudden they're scared of a 60 yard pass.

based solely on heuristics watching hundreds of end games, i'm skeptical of that flow chart and curious what data they sampled to "stitch together". i don't know if it's fatigue, overly conservative defensive play calling, or offenses skewing toward higher ypa passing plays in these end game scenarios (probably all 3), but it's farcically easier to score at the end of games.

the idea chiefs would score FG+ on only a third of possessions after niners don't score -- and only half after niners score 3 and they're working with 4 downs -- seems absurd to me. i'd take the over all day and don't think hindsight bias factors in the least.

would be interested if anyone has live in-game odds data after niners kicked the field goal. would be surprised if the o/u was squarely at 41.5.

Other than that 16 yd TD they scored FGs on two of the other 3 prior drives. I doubt many people thought KC wouldn't score there at all.

God damn this ****ing thread for existing

League average to score is 37.x% IIRC. So 1/3 sounds definitely way too low and it should also be substantially above the 37%.

They also can't really model for game flow. It's obviously more likely for the Chiefs or Pats to score a TD in OT after both teams combined for 38 points in the 4th quarter than for two teams who go to OT at 6-6 (like LSU and Bama). TBH I'm not even sure how they factor in kicking performances. Both Chiefs and 49ers would certainly have kicked from 60 on something like 4th&10 from the 33. KC indicated they would have gone from even longer after Butker easily nailed 70 yarders (obv. without D) during warm-ups. That's a very different situation from the LSU - Bama game where Bama kickers went 2/6 on FG attempts.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/...anahan-mistake

If kick/receive is truly 50/50 seems the correct option would actually be to defer. If the game is still tied after 2OT, you get to receive the ball in sudden death 3OT which is clearly an advantage!

Yeah the argument would be that no game has ever gone to 3OT. But also we've never had these rules before.

Chiefs/Miami in 1971 is the closest it's ever come, ending halfway through the 2nd OT. I was two years old for that game, but my uncle told me the story so many times I feel like I watched it.

But still, I think 51/49 would be enough to sway you to not defer.