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ShareThisCheckdowns: Smart Football Retrospective on 4th-and-2-gate
One of my favorite football blogs is Chris Brown's Smart Football, and yesterday he had a very thoughtful post about Bill Belichick's controversial decision:
"It’s not really fair to pick on Tony Dungy, who was an excellent football coach, because his excellence had nothing to do with any training in statistics or probability. But his comment that 'you have to play the percentages and punt' is symptomatic of a wider issue, which is that when something 'feels horribly wrong' we inherently want the evidence to comport with that feeling and we convince ourselves that it does. Dungy is a conservative guy, he likely would say that punting gives him plenty of chances to win, he’s a defensive coach so he has no qualms about showing faith in his defense, and, bottom line, the idea of putting that much significance on one play just didn’t sit well with him. That’s all fine, but it has nothing to do with the percentages. Yet his brain and experience had told him that somehow the percentages supported it too, and thus Belichick’s move was the 'risky gamble.'"
You already know how us stat geeks feel about Belichick's call, but it's nice to see someone with a great deal of expertise in the X's and O's also think critically about the decision to go for it.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Checkdowns, Coaches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Dungy's comment is interesting. It sounds like he's looking at it from the standpoint that anything can happen on any given play. Although statistically, the Pats have converted on 4th and short at greater than 50%, he probably views it as a coin flip on a single play. But, if you punt, then you have multiple plays to get a turnover or cause a stop. I know that doesn't agree with the math that's been presented here at PFR and elsewhere, but the math is really impossible to quantify to a single play.
Larry:
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Except that even then the math doesn't add up at all.
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If you go for it and fail, you are STILL going to get multiple oportunities to get a turnover or cause a stop.
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Conversely, if you punt, you are giving them a lot more oportunities (based on number of plays needed to drive 70 yards as opposed to 28), to simply break a long one and score.
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So, even if you view every single play as an opportunity, the odds are still in favor of going for it.
Well, a 70 yard drive could (and if the defense is playing their scheme correctly, should) give 8-10 plays to get that turnover. A 29 yard drive would probably give anywhere from 3-6 plays. If there were as many as 6, I'd expect that at least 2 of those would be runs, which is harder to force a turnover, if the ball carrier does a good job protecting the ball.
But, I will say this. I think that this call just shows that Belichick didn't believe that he had the personnel to stop Manning, regardless. He doesn't have Asante Samuel ballhawking anymore, and he doesn't have the defense that he had in '03-'04 that was experienced enough to run all of the things that he used to do to confuse Manning. Could be that the loss of his "Spygate" advantage impacted his thoughts on it as well, who knows.
The whole excercise is a good example of subjective impression vs. data. we "feel" that punting was the right thing to do, and even debate it when the #'s don't support it. As a psychologist, I know from the literature how these subjective judgments run against what the data supports. And people still try to rationalize it, or come up with non sequiturs to justify it. Regarding Larry's comments--which are good to have and are welcome--certainly single case events (a particular play) would undo the argument, except that the occurrence of a single winning play (or a series of play leading to that winning play) are probabilistic. That's why numerical analysis can be helpful (if not always definitive). I have yet to see a numerical analysis that supports not going for it on 4th down, as Bellicheck chose to do.
When you look at normal 3rd downs and 4th down conversions, most of the time the game is not on the line on that particular play. On this particular play a 1st down wins the game, so the defense plays more similarly to 4th down and goal @ the 2+. Anyone claiming results using normal 3rd down and short or 4th down and short are way off the mark. The Colts D also has an advantage as they are almost certain that BB is not calling a running play or QB draw in that situation.
The Pats success rate in that particular situation is likely less then 50%. Noting the emotional swing of failure and BB's apparent lack of confidence in his own defense. Upon failure, Indy scores a TD around 90% of the time. So BB was gambling on numbers which basically added up to a coin flip. Which still is better then letting Manning try to score. Indy wins the game approx 65% of the time if BB punts. A lot closer decision then you stat geeks (not stat nerds) are trying to make it look like.
Going for it seems to be the best chance for the team to win. So why was it a terrible call? Because BB showed no confidence in his defense. The defense no longer feels the coach has their back or trusts them. When playing D, confidence and trust is everything.
Missed one thing.
Even if the pats won, this decision would have stuck with the D the rest of the year and affected their play. Most likely negative, but I can see a unit getting fired up after a win.
Since they lost, the decision is going to a very negative implications for the rest of the season. BB didn't trust his D and his D failed and lost the game. As a unit, I don't think they will recover.
For coaching staff,certain players, etc...a decision like that creates lasting disention.
Tim (and others)--a couple of numbers to analyze that I have not seen published anywhere--although one stat comes from Bill Simmons' article today on ESPN.
--Number of times in the last 5 years that a team has scored 3 long TD drives in the 4th quarter to come back and win AFTER being behind by double digits--now FIVE. In other words, it happens once out of every 256 games.
Number of plays PM would have taken to drive down the field if the Pats had punted--six or seven. (I base this on the fact that the other two 4th Q TD drives took six plays each.)
Now--since everyone has been looking at percentages, what would be the percentages that the Colts string together multiple successful plays that would result in the go-ahead TD????? Sure the Colts have a better than average offense, but since the average ppg for the NFL (losers and winners) is around 21 ppg, let's say 3 offensive TD's per game is average. Let's give PM & the Colts 4 (ie., 33% above average.--I don't think their offense is THAT much better than average--but for the sake of argument, OK). Now they already have 4. What are the chances of #5???--not to mention the time element--which I don't believe would have been a big factor, but it is A factor.
Now for a poker (Texas hold-em style often seen on TV) analogy--since oftentimes there is a lot of math and percentages involved in whether to call/raise/fold etc--not to mention your opponent's tendencies. Most people have compared his win probabilities, etc. One could rationally argue that he lost on a "bad beat" (which is when your opponent gets lucky when the math is in your favor). My analogical argument is this: You have 60% of the chips--your opponent (heads-up-play) has 40%. He goes all-in. For the sake of argument, you know that (pre-flop) the percentages are in your favor--70% of the time you win the hand (and the tournament)--30% you lose and give him a commanding chip lead. Now, he doesn't have the tournament won, but he does get a commanding advantage. DO YOU CALL HIS ALL-IN, or do you fold, giving up some chips, but living to play more hands--and hopefully still winning the tournament in the process?
Note: in this analogy, you still have the chip lead--just 57% to 43%--and all percentages in this analogy are approximate.
Man, Joseph, you have the Gambler's Fallacy working overtime there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy
bill, the Patriots currently rank 9th in ANYA on defense. I've got you down for a collapse due to mental weakness and that they find the lack of faith disturbing. I'm going to say they finish in the top 11 at season's end (allowing for a little natural regression) because they will play roughly like they have til now.
And I'm still pissed that Vermeil didn't show more disrespect to the defense from 2002-2004.
When I read that, all I can hear is Darth Vader.
I totally support Belichick's decision to go for it, but know that I do so semi-emotionally simply because he was making an unorthodox decision. In reality, punting would not have been a bad choice, either.
The Smart Football post does touch upon a question that I haven't seen addressed. What is the likelihood that Belichick would have made that same decision in an AFC Championship game? I believe it's quite unlikely, because even the most unemotional observer would probably sense that the stakes are higher in the postseason, rendering the conservative (i.e. popular, traditional) call the best alternative.
Hmm... I'm not convinced he wouldn't have gone for it in the AFC championship game. The risk may be higher, but on the other hand, two yards separate you from a Superbowl...
"When I read that, all I can hear is Darth Vader."
completely random and unintended, I sure you. I'm now off to bulls-eye some womp rats in Beggar's Canyon.
Jason Lisk. Your nothing but a patriots homer and BB hero worshiper.
If BB thought his D would stop the Colts he would have punted. He didn't look up all these statistic you retards keep spewing that don't even apply to the situation. He FELT like that was his best option to win the game.
"Jason Lisk. Your nothing but a patriots homer and BB hero worshiper."
LOL, JKL is actually a Chiefs fan, he and the other guys on the blog hate the Pats with a passion. Basically, I'm the only one here that you could legitimately accuse of being a Patriots homer and BB hero worshiper.
If only it were Chase...
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=232
Tim, Sorry to be late getting back into the conversation here. Just to clarify, my main point was to try to illustrate why Dungy may have said you have to play the percentages, even though every statistical discussion that we've seen favors going for it. The reason that I said that I think that it's impossible to quantify the percentages in a single play have more to do with the fact that if it goes against the percentages, it breaks the argument. In football, there are so many variables on any given play, that I think statistics of this sort can become meaningless. Just because the conversion rate on 3rd or 4th and 2 yards is a certain percentage in the last 30, 40, or 50 years does not mean that it is the probability of success on this play. For example, what about these questions: How many of those examples feature teams where the offense in question is rated much higher than the defense in question? How many at home vs. on the road? How many on the opponent's side of the field vs. on the attempting team's side? How often was the team ahead vs. behind? I'm sure there are any number of situations that could be looked at. But, to absolutely know the probability of success on a given play, I think that you'd need a large enough sample size of plays in that exact situation. Since this may have been the first time anyone's gone for it on 4th and 2 from their own 28 up by 6, that makes it a little hard to have a sample size.