Easterbrook argues a lot of things. Some of them clearly make sense (coaches punt more often than optimal for winning); some of them are clearly just personal prejudices supported by cherry picked anecdotes (blitzing is always bad! As demonstrated by these three plays picked from the set of plays in the last week where blitzing didn’t work.). Since every time he’s mentioned anything non-football related that I know something about, he’s been mostly wrong, I assume any assertion of his that doesn’t have strong logic and data to support it is in the second category.
So I’m not sure why a rushing play is so much more exhausting for the defense than a passing play (particularly for defensive backs, which is where the breakdowns happened for the Bears); nor am I completely convinced that exhaustion is more of a concern for the defense than for the offense (though I’ll grant it’s a plausible hypothesis at least as in most sports playing defense is generally more tiring than playing offense). But I’m willing to be convinced on both.
Is there any data that shows that offenses generally become more effective late in the game, (with a larger effect in games with more plays, or in hot conditions or other conditions where fatigue is a larger factor)? It’s a little tricky, because garbage time is going to skew the data, so we’d probably want to stick to close games, but should be do-able. And, is there any data that this effect becomes more pronounced with offenses that rush more?
I’m not sure if this matters much, but with a busted passing play, the clock stops. Defense gets a minute more to catch it’s breath. They don’t get it with a rush unless the rusher goes out of bounds. (or there’s a flag)
The play clock (which would be more important, in this case) runs off 40 seconds after every down or 25 seconds after time outs, flags, and any other administrative type clock stoppages.
For what it’s worth, there’s a lot more contact in run defense and having to chase down the ball carrier. That does wear on players.
This type of fatigue also affects offensive linemen. Some lines are better at pass protection than run blocking and vice-versa. There’s somewhat different skill sets and conditioning involved.
I think you’re leaving out perhaps the biggest factor and the one that Easterbrook starts with, which is that Denver’s opponents keep going into the prevent defense at the end of games. The defense will indeed be pretty tired at the end of the game, true, but having the safeties play so deep opens up more passing lanes, which is what Tebow is taking advantage of. Earlier in the game either the routes are not open or the windows are much tighter and he struggles. When things open up late and there is hardly any pressure he plays well. There is probably also a confidence boost involved towards the end of games that feeds into it as well, so after the first couple of completions, he can go on and lead the drive the rest of the way.
Easterbrook thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is when it comes to statistics and logic. For example, he might be right about coaches punting more often than they need to, but his arguments to back that up are flawed. He pulls out variants on “the average running gain on fourth down is three yards, so on fourth-and-three if you run you’re going to make it half of the time” repeatedly. Of course, if you know the difference between mean and median, you’ll know that the fact that the average running play is three yards has little to do with whether it works half of the time or not. A (typical) sorted segment of ten running plays on fourth down might gain -1, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 8, and 11 yards. That works out to an average of three yards, yes, but only 30% of those plays actually gained three yards. Running a play with a positive outcome of 30% is obviously a lot more risky than running one with a positive outcome of 50%.
Oh, and one more strike against that Easterbrook column: once again he brings up the old chestnut about how colleges are horribly failing their athletes by only graduating 62% of its players (in this case it’s African-American football players from Alabama, but it could be just about anywhere). Well…colleges graduate less than 62% of their non-athletes too. Low graduation rates are an issue everywhere, not just in the sector of students who wear sports clothing.
If Tebow had a Warren Moon thorwing motion it would not be a good “see how a kick ass” spectacle. If you simply help the rally great, it ain’t a miracle.
Any yardage gained over 3 yards is meaningless as applied to the probability of converting a 4th and 3. You have to look at it as the number of times you gained 3 or more yards and the number of times you didn’t gain 3 or more yards. That is the framework for determining the probability of succeeding on a 4th and 3. Gaining 99 yards on 4th and 3 (not that a team would “go for it” on 4th and 3 from their own 1 yard line, or that that situation is even possible) is the same as gaining 3 yards. That Easterbrook apparently doesn’t recognize that is enough to make his musings suspect. He’s using meaningless statistics to support his position.
They’re not meaningless statistics. They’re just not as convincing as they appear to be. The fact that every NFL team averages 4 yards per rush doesn’t mean they should all go for it on 4th and 3, but it might mean they should all do it on 4th and 1.
You’re falling into the same trap as Easterbrook. In my segment of potential rushing totals on fourth down (-1, 0, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 8, and 11 yards) the failure rate on fourth-and-1 is 20%, not zero percent. And, anyway, although the league average per rush might be 4 yards in all situations, it’s less on fourth down when the opposing team knows you’re stacking the line.
Easterbrook sometimes talks as if coaches should always bet on everything that has more than a 50% chance of success, which is of course baloney. You don’t bet $10 to get $1 when you have an 80% chance of success, and that would be the equivalent of going on fourth-and-1 from your own 20 or less.
Nobody claimed that coaches aren’t conservative. The claim is that Easterbrook’s numbers and reasoning to support that assertion are questionable. Your conclusions can still be correct, even if your reasoning is bunk.
Easterbrook is an entertaining read, but his articles still need to be fact checked and edited more effectively.
If you look at his other columns, he sometimes brings up a series of projections he asked AccuScore to run. Something like 10,000 simulated NFL games. Not punting on 4th and 2 or less resulted in an average of 3 extra points against and 6 extra points for, or something along those lines.
That’s all well and good, but, again, nobody is denying that he’s right in arguing that NFL coaches punt too often. The argument is that he doesn’t know why he’s right. It’s no wonder that his other arguments such as “blitzing never works” sound like guesses–“coaches punt too often” is simply a guess that happened to be correct.