PDA

View Full Version : Chiefs I love the fact that Todd goes for it on 4th down


Fat Elvis
11-01-2010, 09:18 AM
I didn't really care for him as a coach until he started to do it on a regular basis. He plays to win. He is the anti-Marty who played not to lose. We saw how far that got us, we became the very definition of mediocre. My only gripe with going for it on 4th downs is that Wies continually calls a freakin' pass play on 4th down. Todd needs to kick Charlie in the nuts and tell him to dance with the date that gets him somewhere: the run.

The Bad Guy
11-01-2010, 09:23 AM
I agree that he's the Anti Marty and completely a 180 from Herm.

I really think this guy can be the coach here for a long, long time.

jiveturkey
11-01-2010, 09:25 AM
I also agree.

threebag
11-01-2010, 09:28 AM
This

mikeyis4dcats.
11-01-2010, 09:28 AM
I agree to an extent. I love aggressiveness, but it must be tempered at times with common sense.

Red Dawg
11-01-2010, 09:28 AM
I thought he should have taken the points. This was a call that came close to costing us the game. There were other things as well but the most direct was not getting that 4 and 2. At least he should not put that ball in Matt's hands. Run Charles or Jones on a toss.

Bane
11-01-2010, 09:29 AM
I agree that he's the Anti Marty and completely a 180 from Herm.

I really think this guy can be the coach here for a long, long time.

He seems like a totally different coach with some actual help.

PRIEST
11-01-2010, 09:30 AM
I agree . Shannarat would do it all the time & it worked ,pissed me off . I am glad we have a coach who wants to win :evil:

Huffman83
11-01-2010, 09:30 AM
It's made the games have high drama! Sometimes I just can't see the point in doing it so early in games though. I understand if you're at a 50 plus yard FG with high winds and your short 2 yards.

But I've yet to understand the play calling on 4th down.

luv
11-01-2010, 09:32 AM
Depends on the team we're playing. Someone like Indy, where a FG is not going to win the game for us, sure. Someone like Buffalo, you take the points. While I like that he's not afraid to go for it, I really wish he would have taken the FG early in the second quarter. Wouldn't have been such a heart attack of a game.

Micjones
11-01-2010, 09:33 AM
I'm fine with it when it doesn't cost us points. Refusing to take FG's isn't smart.

Frazod
11-01-2010, 09:37 AM
I agree to an extent. I love aggressiveness, but it must be tempered at times with common sense.

This. As I said in another thread, balls is one thing - but some of things Haley's doing now are just nuts.

Those three points we left on the field in the first quarter would have kept the game from going to overtime, where we really should have lost. No reason not to kick a field goal against the BILLS in the first quarter.

KC-TBB
11-01-2010, 09:38 AM
I agree...Succop is good but not worth betting the farm on. I like the agressive play calling and Chiefsball is fun to watch again!

Graystoke
11-01-2010, 09:38 AM
It isnt Martyball correct...but oh so dangerous

Chiefnj2
11-01-2010, 09:42 AM
I don't understand why he chooses to go for it in certain situations, but not others.

Punt from the Buffalo 33 on the first drive, yet give up a chance at an easy 3 in a scoreless game 2 drives later?

If you are going to go for it with a river boat gambler mentality in the last few games, then why risk giving the Bills the ball back with 1 1/2 minutes? Go for it on 4th and 1, especially with the bizarre series of events leading up to that punt.

38yrsfan
11-01-2010, 09:44 AM
This. As I said in another thread, balls is one thing - but some of things Haley's doing now are just nuts.

Those three points we left on the field in the first quarter would have kept the game from going to overtime, where we really should have lost. No reason not to kick a field goal against the BILLS in the first quarter.

Completely agree, there are times when it is better to take the points.

The best thing I like about it is how it has to be very frustrating to a defense knowing three downs isn't going to do it - you have to play all four downs all the way down the field .... obviously it is very tiring on a defense physically and mentally.

Chiefnj2
11-01-2010, 09:46 AM
As good as KC's rushing game is, in short yardage situations it leaves a lot to be desired.

Frazod
11-01-2010, 09:48 AM
I wonder if these calls are a result of Haley kicking himself over not going for it on 4th and 2 at the end of the Houston game?

luv
11-01-2010, 09:51 AM
I wonder if these calls are a result of Haley kicking himself over not going for it on 4th and 2 at the end of the Houston game?

He was doing it before that.

Fish
11-01-2010, 09:59 AM
I'm fine with it when it doesn't cost us points. Refusing to take FG's isn't smart.

When making the decision in the middle of the game, how would you expect to know whether or not it would cost you points?

Fat Elvis
11-01-2010, 10:04 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/sports/football/05romer.html

In the N.F.L. on Fourth Down, Romer Says Go for It
By ERIC DASH
Published: September 4, 2010



David H. Romer is a respected economist whose ideas influence central bankers and governments hoping to pull out of a recession. He was an early adviser to the Obama campaign along with his wife and frequent collaborator, Christina, who spent the last two years as President Obama’s chief economist.

David H. Romer said he came up with the idea to rigorously examine fourth-down plays after listening to a radio broadcast of an Oakland Raiders game in his car about a decade ago.

But on any given Sunday, Romer is better known as the brains behind a different kind of policy advice: what should N.F.L. teams do on fourth down?

Should they punt and try to leave their opponent with lousy field position? Settle for an easy field goal? Or take a chance by going for a first down or even a touchdown?

In a seminal 2002 research paper, Romer captured the attention of football writers, sports nerds and even Coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots after he crunched the numbers and concluded that N.F.L. coaches made the wrong decision a shockingly large percentage of the time. Teams should try for a touchdown far more often than they actually do, he found.

“This pushes for more high-stakes plays,” Romer said in a recent telephone interview, suggesting that N.F.L. coaches might also want to attempt onside kicks more frequently and call for more deep passing routes. “The football analytics push you to a more aggressive, exciting game.”

Romer, a lifelong sports fan who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, came up with the idea to rigorously examine fourth-down plays after listening to a radio broadcast of an Oakland Raiders game in his car about a decade ago. Although the Raiders had the ball in striking distance of the end zone, one of the commentators remarked that they would be smarter to kick a near-certain field goal rather risk going for a touchdown.

“I am pretty analytic,” Romer recalled telling himself. “That is a pretty shallow way of thinking about it.”

So, after stewing over the idea for a couple of years, he set out to tackle the great fourth-down debate. Armed with high-octane statistical tools, Romer and a group of Berkeley students analyzed the results of thousands of plays from more than 700 N.F.L. games. The research team encountered data issues that most economists never face.

At one meeting, for example, the group debated how to handle fourth-down plays when there was a penalty before the snap. (They were excluded.) Romer also reached out to coaches for advice. He met with Cal’s offensive coordinator as well as members of the San Francisco 49ers’ coaching staff.

His wife joked that the study was his answer to a midlife crisis. “Other men, when they turn 40, buy a red convertible,” Christina Romer is fond of telling friends. “My husband, when he turns 40, writes about football.”

Even before it was published in the Journal of Political Economy, the study was an instant sensation among sports journalists, armchair economists and football nuts. At a sports and economics conference, Romer took the stage alongside other leading gurus, like Bill James, the dean of baseball statisticians, and Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics’ general manager who famously built his team by relying on analytics rather than instincts.

Today, college students in his economics seminars quiz him about controversial fourth-down calls. Fans stop him on the street.

“It feels like I am getting my 15 minutes of fame infinitely repeated,” Romer said.

But the two groups perhaps most affected by his work initially brushed it aside. Fellow academics were skeptical that N.F.L. coaches would act as irrationally as the study concluded.

“Economists don’t tend to believe professionals get stuff as wrong as this,” said Richard H. Thaler, a University of Chicago economics professor who has used similar statistical techniques to analyze how N.F.L. teams make draft picks. (Swayed by the data, many have since come around.)

But N.F.L. coaches, for their part, dismissed the findings as ivory tower nonsense.

“If we all listened to the professor, we may be all looking for professor jobs,” Bill Cowher, a former Pittsburgh Steelers coach, once remarked in ESPN The Magazine. Romer said he had never gotten so much as a phone call from anyone affiliated with the N.F.L. — and seems astonished by the disregard.

“These guys do everything they can to win,” he said. “Why not look into it?”

One coach who did acknowledge reading Romer’s report was Belichick, who holds a degree in economics and coincidentally found himself under fire last season for an ill-fated fourth-down call.

With a 34-28 lead over the Indianapolis Colts and a little more than two minutes to play, Belichick opted to forgo punting on fourth-and-2 with the ball on his team’s 28. When the subsequent play was broken up, the Colts took possession with excellent field position and plenty of time for Peyton Manning to lead a game-winning touchdown drive.

Belichick has said that he trusted his gut, not an academic paper, when he made the decision for the Patriots to go for first down. Even so, Romer said that his read of the data suggested the odds were in Belichick’s favor when he made the call.

“It’s complicated, but Belichick probably made the right decision,” he said.

Romer, who grew up a Miami Dolphins fan during the Don Shula era of the 1970s and ’80s, said that the goal of his study was not to “replace coaching decisions with a computer” but to inform their understanding of the game. “You ought to know when you are making these decisions what the statistics say, on average,” he said.

Besides, Romer added, knowing the probabilities can make watching the games more fun for armchair quarterbacks like himself.

Romer routinely tunes in to radio broadcasts on Sunday afternoons, but he has given up on rooting for teams to lose close games when they do not go for it on fourth down.

“At this point, I kind of like the Raiders because they are so hopeless,” he said. “They just do their own thing.”

Fat Elvis
11-01-2010, 10:05 AM
I'm fine with it when it doesn't cost us points. Refusing to take FG's isn't smart.

With yesterday's swirling winds, those FGs weren't automatic points....

Dave Lane
11-01-2010, 01:07 PM
you take the points.

There is no lock for "taking" points. You can say make a field goal attempt but they don't just give you points for being close. You have to attempt a kick and there is a better chance you don't make that than not making 2 yards.

BigRedChief
11-01-2010, 06:10 PM
I can deal with going for it on 4th down but not with an empty backfield and the putting the ball in Cassel's hands. Not even a play action fake?

TimeForWasp
11-02-2010, 06:10 AM
Now for some good news. There's a high school in Arkansas that has made the most significant football innovation we've seen since the veer option. This high school is tearing up its state and is on the verge of revolutionizing the way football is played. TMQ suspects that within a few years, the phrase "Pulaski theory" will be as widely known as the phrase "shotgun spread." In a copycat sport, Pulaski Academy of Little Rock has devised an offensive philosophy that is genuinely new, and it's winning games left and right.


AP Photo/Danny Johnston
Pulaski football -- at the cutting edge of sports innovation.
Pulaski Academy does not punt.
I first heard about Pulaski from Peter Giovannini of Morrilton, Ark., a high school football official who wrote me to report in astonishment that he had just worked a conference championship game in which the winning team never punted, even going for a first down on fourth-and-6 from its own 5-yard line early in the game. "As a devotee of TMQ, I thought you might like to know at least one coach in the vast football universe has experienced the epiphany and refuses to punt the ball away," Giovannini wrote.

That team was Pulaski -- 9-1-1 after having just won its opening-round game in the Arkansas 5A playoffs. Coach Kevin Kelley reports that he stopped punting in 2005 -- after reading an academic study on the statistical consequences of going for the first down versus handing possession to the other team, plus reading Tuesday Morning Quarterback's relentless examples of when punting backfires but going for the first down works. In 2005, Pulaski reached the state quarterfinals by rarely punting. In 2006, Pulaski reached the state championship game, losing by one point -- and in the state championship game, Pulaski never punted, converting nine of 10 fourth-down attempts. Since the start of the 2006 season, Pulaski has had no punting unit and never practices punts. This year, Pulaski has punted just twice, both times when leading by a large margin and trying to hold down the final score. In its playoff victory Friday night, Pulaski did not punt, converting three of four fourth-down tries.

"They give you four downs, not three," Kelley told TMQ. "You should take advantage. Suppose we had punted from our own 5. The odds are the opposition will take over at about the 35, and from there the stats say they have an 80 percent chance of scoring. So even if you only have a 50 percent chance of converting the first down, isn't that better than giving the other side an 80 percent chance of scoring?" For fourth-and-short attempts, the odds of converting are a lot better than 50 percent.

As TMQ endlessly notes, NFL teams convert about 75 percent of fourth-and-1 tries. Yet highly paid professional coaches endlessly send in the punt unit on fourth-and-1, handing a scoring opportunity to the opposition. In the 2006 edition of my annual don't-punt column, I summarized the odds this way: "Nearly three-quarters of fourth-and-1 attempts succeed, while around one-third of possessions result in scores. Think about those fractions. Go for it four times on fourth-and-1: Odds are you will keep the ball three times, and three kept possessions each with a one-third chance of a score results in your team scoring once more than it otherwise would have. Punt the ball on all four fourth-and-1s, and you've given the opponents three additional possessions. (It would have gotten one possession anyway when you missed one of your fourth-and-1s.) Those three extra possessions, divided by the one-third chance to score, give the opponent an extra score."

Kelley says that when he began to shun the punt, people thought he was crazy: "It's like brainwashing, people believe you are required to punt." Players and the home crowd needed to get acclimated to it. "When we first started going on every fourth down," he says, "our home crowd would boo and the players would be distressed. You need to become accustomed to the philosophy and buy into the idea. Now our crowd and our players expect us to go for it, and get excited when no punting team comes onto the field. When my 10-year-old son sees NFL teams punting on short yardage on television, he gets upset because he's grown up with the idea that punting is usually bad."

Preparing the players for the no-punting future of football is a practical concern. If a coach unexpectedly kept his offense in on fourth down in his own territory, and failed to convert, the crowd would boo and the defensive players become demoralized. If the defensive players understood that a no-punting philosophy occasionally would hand great field position to the other side but overall would keep the other side off the field, they would buy into the idea. Imagine, in turn, the demoralizing effect on the opposition if its defense stops its opponent after three downs, only to realize that no punt will follow. For the 2007 edition of my anti-punting column, the stats service AccuScore did thousands of computer simulations based on 2006 NFL games and found that, on average, rarely punting added one point per game to the score of the teams that didn't punt, while not adding any points to their opponents' final scores. Computer simulations showed that rarely punting amounted to roughly one additional victory per season at the NFL level. At the college and high school levels, the bonus might be even higher.

Why do coaches punt on fourth-and-short -- and worse, when trailing or in opposition territory? "Most punting is so the coach can avoid criticism," says Kelley, who has coached Pulaski for five years and got his start in high school coaching in football-crazed Texas. "If you go for it and fail, the first question in the postgame press conference will be, 'Aren't you to blame for losing the game because you didn't punt?' If the coach orders a punt, the media will blame the defense." TMQ has always speculated that the desire to shift blame explains why big-college and NFL coaches send in the punting team. But take note, these days, the media and the postgame news conference are factors even at the high school level.

Pulaski Academy is providing real-world evidence of the future of football. The most important innovation in years is being field-tested by the Pulaski Bruins, and the test is going quite well. But don't just take Kelley's word for it. The decisive snap of Illinois' upset of No. 1 Ohio State on Saturday came when the Illini, leading 28-21 with six minutes remaining, went for it on fourth-and-1 in their own territory. Sports radio generally called this a huge gamble. Actually, it was playing the percentages; Illinois converted and held the ball for the remainder of the game. Had Illinois boomed a punt, the Buckeyes would have been in business. On Sunday, while trailing at Washington, Philadelphia went for it on fourth-and-1 in its own territory in the second half -- Fox television announcer Daryl Johnston called this "a huge gamble!" It was playing the percentages; the Eagles converted, and they scored a touchdown on the possession, igniting a comeback. Trailing 10-2, Buffalo went for it on fourth-and-1 from the Dolphins' 24 in the fourth quarter: a conversion, followed by a touchdown on the possession, keyed the Bills' comeback. Leading defending champion Indianapolis 16-0, San Diego went for it on fourth-and-2 at the Indianapolis 37, converted and scored a touchdown on the possession, going on to win by two points. Three times Jacksonville went for it on fourth-and-short in Tennessee territory, all three times converting and going on to score touchdowns; the Titans went for it on fourth-and-short twice in return, once failing and once scoring a touchdown. As noted by reader Rene Derken of Leuth, the Netherlands, Green Bay went for it twice on fourth-and-short in Minnesota territory, both times scoring on the possession -- but Minnesota punted from the Green Bay 42. Carolina went for it on fourth-and-1 from the Atlanta 20, and the play reached the Falcons' 2 before the Panthers' runner fumbled. Yes, New Orleans failed on a fourth-and-1 attempt in its own territory and went on to lose, and San Francisco failed on a fourth-and-1 on the Seattle 2-yard line when trailing big. But of the high-profile fourth-down tries in the NFL and in the Illinois-Ohio State game this past weekend, 10 were a total success, one a qualified success and three a failure. Not too shabby, compared with passively punting the ball.

And consider the punts that boomed when a play should have been run. Trailing 10-0, San Francisco (2-6) punted on fourth-and-1 from their 48-yard line and several minutes later was trailing 17-0. When the game was still tied, the Giants punted on fourth-and-2 from the Dallas 45. Not coincidentally, by game's end they were desperate for points.

TimeForWasp
11-02-2010, 06:13 AM
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/071113

Simply Red
11-02-2010, 07:10 AM
dude, he's a hipster, nothing new here, we've known he's been pimping for years. It's all in the 'tude' -- go on boy!

TimeForWasp
11-02-2010, 07:20 AM
When a football team fails to convert on third down, it usually punts. And when it punts, it is turning the ball over to the other team. So why isn't a punt considered a turnover, just like an interception or fumble?
I started with this simple idea and began exploring it as far and in as many different directions as it would take me. Over time, it has grown into a theory that redefines a turnover and uses this new definition to see what a team can do to improve their net turnovers and win more games. This theory presents two significant implications:
A team would win more games if they never punted, and
A team that never punts would not just be employing a different strategy but would approach the game in a fundamentally different way, which would further add to their success.
This is not about taking more risks and punting less often. That could cost you games depending on when you decided to punt and when you decided not to. The key is to never punt. Never punting takes away the risk because it allows the averages to work in your favor. It also opens you up to different play calling opportunities, primarily on third down. The two go together and are dependent on each other in order to make this work.
Thanks to Peter Watson for discussing these ideas with me and helping me get this theory this far.
Redefining The Turnover
Every once in a while you will hear a football announcer or commentator say that the outcome of a play on the field was, in effect, a turnover. What they are saying is that it is not a turnover -- at least by definition -- but had the same effect. For example, when a team goes for it on fourth down and fails, it is commonly called a turnover on downs -- but it is not counted as a turnover in the stats.
A turnover is traditionally defined as an interception or a lost fumble, and therefore those are the only events that are included in the turnover ratio. And because of that, it can sometimes be difficult to use the turnover ratio as an indication of how good a team is, considering that interceptions and fumbles are often the result of a bad bounce of the ball. A team may have a good record because of a few lucky bounces and not really because they are as good as their record. Interceptions and fumbles are looked at as momentum changers and turning points in games, and for good reason; they often involve good field position for the team forcing the turnover. But there is no fundamental difference between these events and a turnover on downs.
Or a punt for that matter. A punt may be a controlled turnover, done because of the perceived benefit in field position, but punting is giving the ball to the other team. And in fact it is common for people to say that a team forces the other team to punt. Not that they mean a punt is involuntary, but the effect is the same as forcing any other kind of turnover.
So let's redefine a turnover as ANY TIME a drive ends by giving the ball to the other team without scoring. This includes interceptions and lost fumbles along with punts, turnovers on downs, and missed (or blocked) field goals. It also includes a successful onside kick as a turnover against the receiving team (I will explain the reasoning for this later on). And so consider the following: If a turnover is defined as any time you give the ball to the other team without scoring, scoring is then defined as not turning the ball over. One or the other happens as the result of each drive. And so we can say that fewer turnovers equals more points, and also that fewer turnovers by the opposition equals more points against you. So then, since both teams have the same number of drives in a game (plus or minus one) the team that turns the ball over less by definition scores on more drives and so tends to win.

TimeForWasp
11-02-2010, 07:22 AM
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2006/never-punting

Blick
11-02-2010, 07:38 AM
I'm all for going for it on 4th down and trying to score TD's instead of FG's.

I think Haley thought that, because he was playing a team as bad as Buffalo, the Chiefs could overcome a failed 4th down conversion and a missed FG opportunity.