Yes and no. It’s not about extending the time you have a chance, it’s about not replacing the game of football with some dopey lottery. To me it’s akin to switching to a college overtime format; it’s no longer really playing the game of football when you now have to recover an onside kick.
How about this: How about at kickoff, an omnipotent intelligence offers you +5% chance to win over what your actual chances add up to when looking at all possible outcomes throughout the multiverse. But if you take this option, instead of football, you will instead play tiddlywinks.
I would never once choose that option, viewing the preference to play actual football over not-football (or less-football) as a self-evident truth.
Kicking a PAT is ensuring yourself competitive football. Going for 2pt is risking that almost half the time, you’ve conceded competitive football and are now banking on a miracle onside kick. It doesn’t matter if the onside kick adds 3% chance (or whatever) when you compare it to the near-50% certainty that your decision will introduce it into the game where it didn’t need to be.
Going for 2 first is playing for an onside kick, which I think is nuts.
Washington benches Duane Haskins and turns to Kyle Allen. Even worse, Haskins is dropped all the way back to third, making Alex Smith the backup on Sunday.
Haskins wasn’t awful against Baltimore and definitely didn’t cost them a game they were almost sure to lose. But, Haskins isn’t Rivera’s guy either. And, a benching after only 4 games means he was clearly on a very short leash, Washington has a week 8 bye so that would have been the logical time to make a change.
Washington gets the Rams at home this week, another game that’s almost a guaranteed loss. Allen still just basically has Gibson and McLaurin as weapons so this won’t be pretty.
The NFL officially has an outbreak on its hands. The Titans have another positive player. The Raiders have a positive player. And Stephen Gilmore tested positive AFTER the Chiefs game which mostly means that both the Patriots and the Chiefs are about to see a surge in cases.
The Pats best hope now is for a series of cancelled games, but I don’t think it really matters at this point. I suspect this season is about to take a dramatic turn.
Why? A touchdown requires the same process regardless of any previous scores you’ve made.
What you seem to be ignoring is the planning aspect. If you make the first touchdown and the conversion, you now know you need to score another touchdown and extra point; you make your plans for what time remains in the game accordingly. If you make the first touchdown but miss the conversion, you now know you need to score another touchdown, make an extra point, and kick a field goal; you have to make a different set of plans than you needed in the first situation. And you want to know as early as possible which set of plans you need to make and follow.
And the plans are not equivalent. Let’s say the first plan has a 25% chance of success and the second plan has only a 2% of success. You obviously would prefer to use the first plan. But if you get in a situation where the first plan won’t produce enough points, you have to switch over to the second plan.
The other aspect is time. The less time you have to carry out a plan, the lower its chance of success. A plan that has a 10% chance of working with five minutes left in the game might only have 5% chance of working if there’s three minutes left and a 1% chance of working if there’s one minute left. So if you’re going to use that plan, you want to start it as early as you can.
Down by 8 driving for a TD to tie the game you have more time to score that TD than down by 9 and needing a TD, an onside kick recovery, and a FG. (Not necessarily in that order.) You have less time to devote to the TD.
The problem is usually stated as “go for 2 either first or second.” The underlying assumption in that framework is that the two TDs are a given. I’m saying that the chance at those assumed TDs changes (significantly lowers) fully half the time when you go for the 2pt first. (Specifically, when you miss it.)
If down by 8 it’s 32% likely you’ll score the TD (I made that number up) to take it to overtime but only 20% likely (made this one up too) if you have to save time for an onside kick recovery, I see it as:
Kick first = 32% chance to score the next touchdown (if PAT were 100%)
2pt First: (32% + 20%) / 2 = 26% chance to score the next touchdown (if 2pt were 50%)
No matter what, you can’t win unless you score that next touchdown. In comparing going for the 2pt first or second, you can’t say scoring the two assumed TDs is equally likely regardless when you go for 2. If you go for 2 first, scoring the second TD is less likely to happen.
Yes, it’s probably easier to score a touchdown if you can use all the remaining time in which to do it. But, about half of the times you do it, it won’t matter.
Say you’re down 15 points entering the 4th quarter. If you score in the first minute of the quarter, you have plenty of time for two more possessions, if you don’t convert the two-pointer. If you score with ten minutes left, you probably still have time for two more possessions, and no onside kick might be necessary.
But if you score with five minutes (or less) left, two possessions are probably not likely unless you convert an onside kick. In this scenario, I think you have to kick the XP on your first TD.
So, in my mind, the question of going for two on the first TD is largely determined by the amount of time left on the clock. I think that if you score the first TD with less than 8 minutes left, you kick the XP.