I was just wondering if anyone has done a serious analysis of the expected value (in yardage, say) of a timeout in (American) football. It seems to me that if you’re behind late, then a timeout is pretty valuable – in most situations you’d gladly give up 5 or 10 yards in order to get another 25 seconds of time on the clock, at least if you’re on offense, and sometimes even if you’re on defense.
But in the non-late portions of the game, a team on offense will typically call time out rather than give up a delay of game penalty. I was wondering if this is really a worthwhile call? I mean, how much does giving up 5 yards in a typical offensive drive really lower your chances of winning? Naively it doesn’t seem high compared to how much another time out increases your chances of winning in a two-minute drill (multiplied by the chance thay you’ll actually be running a two-minute drill of course). Anyone seen an analysis?
This is a very interesting question that I have absolutely no ability to answer. But I’ve thought about the same issue sometimes. I would think the value of the timeout vs. the five yards would change based on field position, yards to first down, score, and time left in the game. Blowing a timeout early in a half generally seems like a bad idea to me, but QBs and coaches always seem to do it instead of just taking the penalty even though it could make the difference on a critical drive at the end of the half or the game. Do they think it’s too hard to make this decision on the fly? The only time you see a team deliberately take a delay of game penalty is when they are around midfield and planning to punt, which is a situation where the extra five yards might prevent a touchback.
The value of a timeout is to prevent something bad from happening. A delay of game penalty on 1st and 10 early in the second quarter of a tie game is a bad thing, so calling a timeout to avoid the penalty is a good use of a timeout.
Not every game comes down to a last minute drive where you need timeouts, so whatever the utility of having an extra timeout in that situation is, you have to reduce it by the likelihood of getting there in the first place.
Consider the above example in the second quarter. What if that drive leads to a touchdown thanks to a close 1st down conversion you wouldn’t have made if you saved the timeout to take the delay of game. Better to build up an early lead and not need the timeout later than save your timeouts only to need them in crunch time.
You may find interesting the following article from footballcommentary.com. http://www.footballcommentary.com/timeouts.htm (Weird, for some reason, the board isn’t letting me insert a link. EDIT: Looks like the links are coming through fine; I just can’t add them via the utility on the message window.)
The discussion section of the following post from advanced nfl stats, goes into a bit of thought about marginal value of timeouts. http://www.advancednflstats.com/2010/10/lovies-latest-blunder.html A search for timeout value pulls up additional blog posts/articles, with discussion of timeouts within their comments sections.
I couldn’t find anything in a brief search at footballoutsiders, but it looks like Krasker did use the outsiders’ data to write his article.
But clearly there are some situations where the five-yard penalty is only of marginal value. I’ve seen QBs call timeout before a third-and-fifteen play (is third and twenty really significantly worse?). I’ve seen it called before short field goals (the difference between a thirty-yard attempt and a thirty-five-yard attempt is virtually nil). Do that in, say, the early fourth quarter of a tie game, and it’s obviously a bad play.
The thing is that in the large, perhaps vast majority of situations, the five yards is worth more than the time out, and so coaches are going to teach players to call the TO rather than take the penalty. A heady player might sometimes know when to take the five yards (and I’ve seen it done), but it’s unrealistic to expect a player forced to make a split-second decision not to revert to his coaching – and really, you don’t want them doing it anyway.
In the NFL, the coach could tell the QB via his helmet speaker to: “Take the penalty! NO time out!”
This is an interesting topic. Posters have offered examples of situations where it would be good or bad to take the penalty, but those seemed to be obvious situations on the margins. I’d love to see some numbers on the actual value of a TO in yards and maybe even a TO’s value in downs.
Another reason this is interesting to me is because of the recent scientific analysis of the “go for it on 4th down instead of punt” situation. I guess it was maybe 3 or 4 years ago that some guy wrote a paper about the expected value of teams on 4th downs going for 1st down instead of punting or trying a FG in certain field positions.
Am I the only one who thinks he has noticed a greater frequency of NFL teams going for a 1st down on a 4th down play instead of punting (or FG try)???
Imho, a timeout saves time on the clock, which is essentially priceless at the end of a game.
Examples:
There are 5 seconds left on the clock. You need a minimum of 12 seconds to run your field goal unit out on the field, set up, and go for a field goal try. Without a timeout, there is no try.
Your team has to go 80 yards down the field with 5 seconds left. The fastest players in history run a 40 yard dash in 4 seconds.
The other team is winning and they are trying to run out the clock. Each down, they can waste 45 seconds, or a total of 2.5 minutes, plus whatever seconds it takes to run each play. If the opponent can call a time out, this saves 2.5 minutes of game time.
But statistically, if you wanted to gauge the value of a timeout, I would imagine the formula would include:
a. Whether you are ahead or behind in the score,
b. How much you are ahead or behind in the score,
c. How far you need to move the ball to get into scoring range,
d. The total remaining time.
The farther you are behind in the score and the more yards you have to move the ball, the higher a timeout’s value is. As the time gets lower and lower to around say 20-30 seconds left, this multiplies that value. However, with around say 10 seconds left, the value starts decreasing again, because a single play takes a minimum of 5-10 seconds to run anyway, so regardless of how many timeouts you have, you can only do 1 more play.
One of the more subtle effects of a timeout is on the playcalling. Without a timeout to work with, an offense under the gun is going to have to throw the ball and work the sidelines, and the defense knows that. If the offense does have a timeout, their opponent still has to defend the middle of the field. The offense doesn’t have to use it, but just having the option makes it easier to complete those sideline passes and get out of bounds to stop the clock.
With the right data, I guess you could try to quantify that difference. I think it would be significant.
Nope - the communication stops with 10 or 15 seconds on the play clock.
But how many drives are ended by a penalty or a tackle for a loss. A team can dominate a game by picking up 2 or 3 yards on first down, another 2 or 3 on second and having a short third down conversion. With a short third down the defense can’t pin their ears back and go for the sack because the team can run or throw a quick pass. Short third downs kill blitzing defenses because the hot read is enough for a first down.
Penalties, sack, tackles for a loss are all drive killers because it takes the offence off its schedule, constantly having to play catch up, it makes the offence one dimensional.
The time-out is much more valuable than the 5 yards. The 5 yards can be easily overcome by good offensive teams. They do it all the time with sacks and other penalties. The situation doesn’t occur enough and the 5 yards isn’t damaging enough to warrant giving up the time-out.
Save the time-out for confusion on 3rd (or 4th) and goal from the 1, confusion while attempting a 52-yard field goal, stopping the clock late, or reserving your ability to challenge a call. Each of these is worth much more than a meager 5 yards. Now if a team was getting confused every third play, then yes the aggregate loss of yards on penalties would warrant taking a time-out. But in that situation the team probably isn’t very good and won’t be winning much anyway, and if you burn time-outs to save a delay of game penalty, you can only do it to save 15 yards (I’m only considering the second half, the only one that would really matter in this scenario); it’s not that much.
Of course, quantifying this scenario seems impossible.
I disagree, Mince, in that I think you glossed right over sitchensis’ very valid point. While a timeout has potential to be extremely valuable, so does every yard.
To the OP, timeouts have a variable value, so you can’t just assign them a value in yards and call it a day. Interestingly, so do yards themselves. Sometimes a yard is the most valuable thing in the world, (4th & goal on the 1, down by 4, 5 seconds left in the game,) and sometimes a single yard doesn’t much matter.
What is 5 yards worth? On 1st & 10 it’s worth one thing, but on 3rd & 1 it’s worth something else entirely.
No, they’re not. They’re priceless at the end of some games-- and in fact very few.
Any given football game is more likely to wind up 27-17 than it is 31-30, and the go-ahead score is much more likely to be scored in the first half than it is in the last two minutes. Even in games that do go down to the wire, usually only one team needs the timeouts, and the other wants the clock running.
The last minute nail-biters are memorable, but they are the exception.
Somewhat (and I admit only somewhat) related. I’ve always wondered why teams use kneeling earlier than I think relevant to run out the clock. Why doesn’t the QB instead of kneeling immediately step back and wait for a few seconds before dropping to one knee. I’ve seen some college QBs do this but can’t recall any pro QBs doing it.
Iirc, in college the play clock is 30 seconds. In the pro’s it’s 45. Also, you get more clock stoppages in college (I’m told the clock stops when the chains need to be moved.)
There are other times when the coaching and instinct is not the optimum situation. When the Jets beat the Patriots a couple of weeks ago, Shonn Green scored a last minute touchdown. A smarter move would have been to stop just short of the goal line, run three plays to eat up the clock, then kick a field goal. The game would have been over then. Brady would not have had enough time for two scores.
But when a running back sees the goal line, he crosses it.
OTOH, a Patriot defender let Green score, knowing that tacking him short would help the Jets.
