Agreed about the coffin corner kick (although I remember a Peter King column a few years ago, possibly written by a substitute who was a punter, who said it’s harder than you’d think).
Me? I’d like to see teams intentionally false start when they’re punting and want a little extra room to avoid a touchback. The current MO seems to be to get a delay of game penalty, which the opposing team declines something like half the time. But, as far as I know, you cannot decline a false start penalty. Viola, instant five yards. Do it twice if you want even a little more cushion.
On any play inside the 10 yard line, have your defense guess the snap count. If you get it right, you stuff the play, if you get it wrong, it’s half the distance to the goal line. Even if you guess wrong all the time the other team never scores.
Baseball managers should be willing to use their closer in the 7th or 8th innings (just for one inning) if that is when the heart of the opposing lineup is coming up, and not wait until the ninth just because.
I don’t remember the precise statistics, but I do remember reading once that in the NFL, the percentage of successful 2-point conversion attempts is around 55% and the percentage of successful point-after attempts is around 95%. So your expectation on a 2-point try is 1.1 points while your expectation on a 1-point try is 0.95 points. In the long run, you’ll get more points by going for 2 every time.
But if you get it wrong, they get their choice of half the distance or the play which might well be a TD. If you do it repeatedly, they get many free chances at scoring a TD.
2 point % success is about 45% for 2011
1 point % is well over 95% for 2011 (the lowest is 96% with 24 teams at 100%). Didn’t feel like multiplying out the raw numbers (they give attempts per game instead of total attempts)
Hm. Maybe the stats I’m remembering are from NCAA?
In any case, it applies in the NFL where you’ve got a really good offense. The league average may be 45%, but I bet the top offense in a given year could get it up to 55% - 60%.
To expand on this, you can decline any penalty, including dead ball fouls. Announcers sometimes say you can’t decline a false start, but what they mean is that if the flag is thrown late and the offense snaps the ball and runs a play, you can’t decline the false start and take the result of the play. The play won’t count under any circumstances, because of the dead ball foul; all you can decline is the 5 yard walkoff.
Teams don’t decline the 5-yard delay/false start penalty on punts because there’s no point; the offense will just false start or delay again.
The benefit of taking the delay over the false start is that it takes longer; your defense has just been on the field, and the longer you hold the ball the longer they get to rest.
Huh. I didn’t know you could decline a dead ball penalty (I’ve never seen it). I see in the rules that it says an aggreived team can decline any penalty with some exceptions, but I can’t find any of those exceptions.
Still, I bet it’s so automatic – for both the refs and the coaches – to whistle, flag, and march off five yards when an offensive player flinches, I bet it’d work more often than not. (And I suppose a punting team could keep doing it until the defense finally accepts, but that’s chintzy ball and no one except Bret Bielema* would do it).
[sub]* And that was actually pretty cool and brilliant.[/sub]
The game can’t end on a defensive penalty, so unless you’re willing to play it out infinitely, eventually they get to run a play from the .000000001 yard line.
The problem with this is that you are not playing a game that cares about point equity over the long term. It’s just the opposite, in fact. Winning by 1 and winning by 30 are the same, unlike in, say, non-tournament poker. So the real question you need to ask is whether going for 2 gives you more chance to win the game you’re in, not accumulate slightly more points over the course of your career. Falling behind by a point is a serious problem.
That said, the Oregon Ducks like to go for 2 on the first touchdown, and I love that call. If they make it, the other team is nearly guaranteed to be playing from behind all game long. If they don’t, well, they’ve got 55 minutes to make up the point.
I’ve always thought it would be fun for a football team (probably at a pretty low-level school) to borrow a bunch of ruggers for a play or two, if at very least for the wtf expressions that would ensue.
That sounds possible. NCAA kickers aren’t nearly as accurate.
Anyway - I wonder if there’d be diminishing returns if you always went for it. Most teams keep a play or 2 in their back pocket for the instances where they need it. Either way I’d like to see them go for it more often, anything other than the boring EP. Almost bit FSU in the ass last night, though.
A few years ago, during the Florida-Ohio State NCAA basketball championship game, Billy Packer suggested something for football that I really liked: the designated kick blocker. He was pointing out that Joakim Noah and another Florida player (I don’t remember which) were each something like 6 feet 93 inches tall to begin with, and that when they raised their arms upward and jumped with their basketball-player vertical leaps, they were able to get their hands (and a lot of their arms, too) to good kick-blocking heights.
I’d love to see a team put a seven-footer or two immediately behind the defensive line just to try to block kicks. If you’re worried about injuries, instruct them to just stay the hell away from the inevitable scramble for the ball if they do block it. If it turns out to be a reasonably successful strategy your future opponents will be forced to adjust by moving their kicker back a couple of yards, which can only lower their kick conversion success rate.
But from a strategy perspective this does not always serve you well. There’s the obvious scenario: you just scored the tying TD with 3 seconds left and the “guaranteed” 1-point is way more important than the possibility of 2 points.
And let’s say you score a TD with 4 minutes left in the game. You are now up by 8. The extra point puts you up by 9 which means the other team HAS to score twice to beat you. You go for 2 and miss, the other team can tie you on one scoring play. True, they would have to make their own 2-point converison, but I submit that forcing the other team to score twice is way more important than any benefit of 2 pts. vs. 1 pt. Going up by 10 really doesn’t buy you much more than going up by 9. And the downside of staying at 8 is more risky to your team’s chances.
expressions that would ensue.