I found a reddit conversation from mid-2014 that showed that out of the 41 OT games since the rules change in 2012, 7 had a TD on the opening drive. Based on that admittedly very small sample size, you’ve got around a 1 in 5 shot of winning without giving the other team the ball.
You’d have to gather that data by hand, and with so few OT games (looks like 50ish since the rule change?), I’d imagine well less than 10 have wind strong enough to factor into this decision. You’d have an embarassingly small sample size with which to try a draw a real conclusion.
Pats look very beatable once the playoffs start
The advantage of kicking off is that you have a much better sense of what you need to do on 4th down.
The receiving team is going to punt/kick on 4th down, but that’s because they don’t know what the other team will do on their next possession. But the kicking team already has that knowledge, and know whether they need to go for it or can afford to punt/kick.
No, I think it was the better choice. His defense had played much better than his offense that day (yes, another OL went down), and he had to be confident they could hold the Jets to no more than a field goal if that on their first drive. His offense would then know what they had to do - and it might have been only to get down to the 35 or so and let Gostkowski win it. If the offense went out first, they might not have been able to get more than that anyway, and might have had to punt, giving the Jets better field position than with one of G’s unreturnable kickoffs. It just didn’t work that way. Who really expected a Ryan Fitzpatrick team to get a TD on the opening drive?
But yes, the coach had his player’s back afterward, like he should.
I’m guessing you mean what to do if they’re on the far side of field goal range. So they can’t afford to miss a field goal in that case anyway so they’re going to punt anyway. On the second possession if the receiving team already scored a field goal that team will go for the field goal on 4th down no matter what, but they’re not in any better position because of that, it’s worse because it’s all on the line right there.
If you accept that the generic win probability for receiving in OT is 53%, then that’s a significant advantage. But it wouldn’t take to much to move the probability to favoring the kicking team. If the teams playing have stronger defences than offences, like they seemed to in this game, it could make up that small margin.
If the advantage for the Pats receiving is that they might score a TD and win immediately, it’s worth noting that their offence only scored one during regulation, and that required 2 fourth down conversions, which they wouldn’t go for under normal game circumstances. I don’t think it’s necessarily unreasonable to think kicking gives the best chances under these conditions.