… and then throws FIVE touchdown passes. 
He’ll get away with that against the Chargers. Those kinds of throws will have consequences against the better teams of the NFL, though.
How long does Dan Quinn last?
The Chiefs are now the first team to go 4 - 0 in four consecutive seasons.
If just one play or two had gone the other way in that 2018 AFC Championship Game, we’d be talking right now about a potential Chiefs three-peat.
We still might be next season.
Ugh. Don’t remind me. If a Chiefs defensive lineman hadn’t lined up offsides on a crucial play, KC would have won the game.
But two results of that game were the firing of the Chiefs defensive coordinator and the upgrade of the defense. KC’s D looked pretty good last night, albeit against two backup QBs.
I disagree. I feel a team should do the hardest thing as soon as possible. It’s a matter of game management.
Let’s use the example of a team that’s down fifteen points in the fourth quarter. To get at least a tie, they need to score two touchdowns, an extra point, and a conversion. And the conversion is more difficult than the extra point. For that reason, I feel they should try for the conversion before they try for the extra point.
Let’s say they make the first touchdown and kick the extra point with four minutes on the clock. The game continues and they make the second touchdown when there’s thirty seconds on the clock - and then miss the conversion. They’re not going to score again with only thirty seconds left.
If they had made that first touchdown at four minutes and missed the conversion, they still would have faced the problem of needing to score two more times. But they would have four minutes to work with rather than thirty seconds.
Think of it as Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is the difficult plan that involves making the conversion. Plan B is the really difficult plan that involves recovering from a missed conversion. If the circumstances force you to switch from Plan A to Plan B, you want to do it as early as possible.
Super Bowl XXXVIII (Panthers-Patriots) is a good example of why not to go for 2 points too early.
The Patriots led 21-10, but Carolina scored a touchdown to cut it to 21-16. The Panthers then went for two, failed, and the score remained 21-16. Carolina then scored another touchdown, went for two again, and failed, and the score was 22-21 in favor of Carolina.
Had the Panthers just gone for the one-point conversion both times, they would have held a 24-21 lead over New England, instead of just 22-21. That was crucial because those two points ultimately ended up being the difference between victory and defeat (or at least, victory and a tie.) Had the Panthers led 24-21, then when New England scored its subsequent touchdown it would have been only a 28-24 lead for the Patriots, instead of a 29-22 lead for the Patriots. Then Carolina’s last touchdown of the game would have been for a 31-28 lead instead of a 29-29 tie.
I feel that’s a different issue. You’re talking about making a choice between going for an extra point or going for a conversion. In the scenario I was discussing, you needed to go for both the extra point and the conversion and the choice involved was which order you tried to do them in.
Agreed. Note that during this successful second touchdown drive, they used up 3:30 of game time and were probably able to run enough times to even employ semi-effective play-action. Also the middle of the field was open to them for slants and drags to convert crucial 3rd and 4th downs.
But see, here, exactly, this is my point. In these two different scenarios lies the assumption that that second TD is equally probable. I’m saying in this second scenario, where there are 4 minutes left and you’re down by 9, the next TD drive is much less likely to happen because using up 3:30 is not a viable option. So now you probably can’t run, play-action is meaningless, you can’t really feast on those high percentage 6-yard slants and drags. You’re looking either deep or sideline, you’re hurrying more, it’s just a lower percentage drive all around.
I’m saying that when you give the TD drive in the second example a lower chance as only seems reasonable, the first example ends up being the higher percentage play.
I’m not sure I agree with your reasoning here. That wasn’t a situation where a team HAD to score a 2PT to tie the game; they were scrapping for points in a tight game. That was their first score of the second half in a game in which they were dominated in TOP. I doubt that Carolina thought they were going to score 2 more TDs in the last 12 minutes.
In your scenario, the 31-28 lead probably would have meant OT, as New England kicked a FG with 9 seconds left.
You don’t give away the best receiver in the league, make other shoddy moves, give up all of your first AND second round pics to try and win now with a top 5 paid QB. I don’t know what O’Brien was thinking but keeping his GM gig certainly didn’t top the list.
Playing devil’s advocate with myself, let’s assume I’m right that the offensive game plan for the next TD when down by 9 is lower percentage due to having less time and thus less of the playbook at your disposal.
The same logic would also say that the defense changes depending if they’re up by 8 or 9 with 4:00 left. Up by 9 it’s likely softer, so even though those sideline and deep routes will be covered, they’ll happily give up those 6-yard slants and drags. Hell, they’ll see a 6-yard drag with the clock still running as an actual win.
By contrast, up by 8 they’re playing straight up, probably even blitzing the shit out of you. Definitely not as soft as if they were up by 9.
I still think that scoring the down-by-9 TD while saving enough time for an onside recovery FG win is way lower percentage than just scoring the down-by-8 TD using up as much of the clock as you need. Making up numbers just to show the scale I’m thinking, maybe 20% chance down by 9, 35% chance down by 8. Dwarfing the minor benefit gained from the miracle onside recovery FG win.
(For making up the numbers, I figured maybe there’s 9 drives in a game and you score 3 touchdowns, around a 35% chance to get a TD playing straight up. Cut that almost in half if you’re racing past the TD to get to an onside kick.)
@EllisDee I think you’re correct that failing to get the conversion on the first TD does make that second TD much less likely, not sure there’s many who would argue against it. But, I think about it like a Poker hand. You want as many outs as you can, and if you hold off on attempting the until the end you really only have 1 out even under the best of circumstances. Doing it early is like pulling a card on the turn versus the river. You have the time and the choice to recover from a failure, even if it is hard, that you don’t in the first situation.
I don’t see it as being very different from the argument that when down 8-11 points that you should always kick the field goal first to draw within 1 score before trying the onside kick/forcing a 3 and out.
I don’t really comprehend the poker strategy due to ignorance. My thought is that cards are immutable (a Jack is always a Jack) whereas the viability of the “cards” (gameplan) for the down-by-9 TD drive are less effective than the down-by-8 drive.
Sort of like in poker if you tried an early out (I don’t know what that would mean) and failed (or that) then you don’t get to use any diamonds in your hand. (Across the middle, running plays.) I bet you’d hold off on your outs (still no idea what that would mean) until the last possible second if that were the case.
You go for two the first time because it informs your actions for the rest of the game. If you fail, you know you still need two scores and thus have to speed your play up even faster. If you succeed, you can possibly pace out your last drive to prevent a Rodgers/Brady/Manning-like comeback in the last minute.
You need the second TD either way. Under which of your two scenarios is that next TD more likely, do you think? Or are they exactly the same probability?
I’m saying that when you go for 2 and make it, your next TD drive is easier and more likely to succeed. If you go for 2 and miss, your next TD drive is more difficult and less likely to succeed.
Meaning you can’t equate the 2pt chances as equal for the two different TDs. As in, you can’t say “either you go for it first or second, it’s the same chance either way.” The 2pt conversion itself is the same percentage either way, but the required TD drive to allow the opportunity is not.
Imagine you can drive two ways to the same destination: The long way takes 20 minutes, the short way takes 10 minutes, both ways are opposite directions from your house. The short way crosses a drawbridge 4 minutes into the trip that randomly opens and closes such that it is impassable 50% of the time, requiring you drive all the way back home and go the long way.
Your choices are either 20 minutes guaranteed the long way, 50% chance at a 10 minute trip the short way, or 28 minutes total when the short way fails. That averages to 20 minutes the long way, 19 minutes trying the short way.
Despite being statistically better, I don’t think I would ever even try the short way again after the first time it failed twice in a row. I would just think to myself “Why gamble?” If I take a chance and go for the bridge and it’s closed, retracing my steps and then arriving late will be super irritating.
Similarly, I would never concede a competitive position in a game before I have to. Going for the 2pt and missing to stay down by 9 is conceding your competitive position, and it happens half the time! It’s just nuts to invite that. Always cut a 2-score game to 1-score, never risk leaving it a 2-score game.
Breaking this into the bare hypothetical. I know this is not an analogy for what we’re talking about, but I’m just trying to understand yor mentality:
Let’s say you make a choice with 10 minutes left on the clock. There’s a 60% chance this choice pays off and you win the game. But 40% of the time, when the choice fails, you lose the game 100%, even though it now takes 10 minutes of useless time to finish the game out.
On the other hand, you can make a choice that occurs later, with 2 seconds left on the clock, so it will be the last choice made in the game. It only has a 40% chance that you will win, and a 60% chance you will lose, but if you lose, the game is over. You no longer have to lose and then play out the remaining dead time, knowing you lost.
Which choice would you rather have the opportunity to make?
I think you’re thinking in terms of time, that extending the time until you potentially lose, or to keep the appearance of the chance to win for as long as possible is inherently valuable, so a greater chance to win (or lose) early may not be preferable to a lesser chance to win later. This sounds like psychology rather than strategy at play - wanting to keep the hope of winning alive as long as possible - rather than strategic decisions designed to win above all else. I’ve had similar arguments with people in the past, and this was the bias they seemed to be serving.