Why Bother With 2-point Conversions before 4th Quarter?

In My Humble Opinion
1

For years, college football coaches have kept little tables telling them the situations in which it makes sense to go for 2 points after a touchdown. Example? When you’re trailing 14-3, if you score a touchdown, you’re supposed to go for 2, because if you succeed, you’re only down by a field goal (14-11), instead of by a touchdown (14-9). Pro coaches now follow these tables, too.

But… while I’m glad the 2 point conversion is an option now, I think it’s generally a bad idea to use it before the 4th quarter, now matter what the tables say. If you’re trailing 14-3 in the first half, and score a touchdown, I say you take the automatic one extra point. It’s WAY to early to be worrying about going for two. There’s a lot of game yet to be played, and I think you’ll end up regretting not taking the gimme point more often than not.

What do you think?

2

Good question. I think you’d also have to weigh just how high scoring a game it’s likely to be.

If offense is both team’s strength, then take the point. If it’s a defensive battle and likely to be a low scoring match, then going for two might make more sense even early in the game.

3

Actually I don’t see the point of going for a 1 PAT unless it’s the last seconds and you need a point to win. (Down by a point? Go for 2 and win!)

Of course, I’m from the Art Donovan school of football. Real Men don’t wimp out and just kick it if they have the option of doing some more clobbering.

4

astorian, you’d first have to get ahold of those tables. They have nearly every single situation, and I highly doubt that they suggest going for 2 in the first quarter. Was there a game this weekend where someone went for 2 early in the game?

I’m highly suspect of teams that don’t kick fieldgoals inside the 25, but instead go for it on 4th and 5. This is incredibly common in college. Now, I understand that not every team has a consistent kicker in college, but 5 yards is a LOT to push for. K-State is notoriously bad at this.

5

Well, I think you have to keep in mind not only the question “will I be better off if I get the 2 pt conversion” but also “will I be worse off if I miss it?”

So in your 14-3 example, missing a 2pt conversion leaves you no worse off than kicking the extra point: you still need to score a touchdown (or 2 other scores). If you make it however, now you only need a field goal. So why not go for 2? (One answer might be to maintain momentum by getting an easy score)

6

I think that anytime in the second half when it’s to your benefit to go for 2, you should.

In the first half, you should only do it if you expect a very low scoring game. Those are fairly uncommon in the NFL now.

Despite missing a PAT last night, Denver never got in the position where it made sense to go for 2. Their last TD made it 19-17 and it was better to take 1 and a 3 point lead.

7

I think astorian’s point is that, early in the game, you don’t know whether the difference between 1 and 2 PATs is more significant than the difference between 1 and 0.

If you’re down 14-3 early and score a TD, it’s 14-9. Here you are, early in the second quarter, say, and there’ve already been 3 TDs and a FG in the game. What will the rest of the (likely many) scores look like? Heck if you know. If the other team’s next score is a FG, the difference between being down 6 and down 7 is significant, but not as significant as between down 7 and down 8. And that’s what your ‘going for 2’ decision now amounts to.

astorian’s right: you have no idea whether going for 2 is a good gamble, early in the game, because you don’t know what the comparative payoffs are.

8

I think we need more data. The pros are successful on at least 95% of the 1 point PATs, but I have no idea what the success rate is on 2 pointers, but I’d guess it is about 50%. That being the case up until the game is on the line in the 4th quarter, I think the almost sure thing of a kicked PAT is a lot better gamble than going for 2.

9

Best I could do was this piece from 1999:

10

If you are the coach, there are a lot of other considerations besides just the naked score. How good is your short yardage offense? How good is their short yardage defense? Are you going to try a fake? Will they buy it?

I think you ought to go for two on any opening kickoff return for a touchdown. What the hell, it can’t hurt. No fakes, line up and drive on in. If you don’t make it, then you are six and oh. But if you do, you got em eight zip, and your offensive line feels ten feet tall. I think you ought to always leave the opponent wondering what the hell you might try.

If you have the offense, or if you opponent simply doesn’t have the defense, you got a lot of advantage, psychologically if you just get relentless on their ass, real early, and keep it up until the gun goes off. So what if it only works half the time? The same score achieved that way is going to make your offense feel a lot stronger. But the kicker is likely to get all morose.

But then, if your Offense doesn’t have the goods to deliver, on first and two, or you are looking over at a defense that is just too strong for you, well, that nearly guaranteed point is hard to turn down. But what the hell, you just scored on these guys! They can’t be that tough! Let’s go for it. Then let’s try the on sides kick, to let them know we really mean business!

Tris

11

If you’re down by two points and convinced your team will not score again in the game, go for the two. Otherwise, take the “sure thing.”

The “expected value” of the two point conversion is not good vs the 1 pointer.

2 X .33 = 0.66 vs 1 X .90? = 0.90?

12

If you’re the Bucs you’ve got to go for 2 early in the game to get within a field goal, because honestly we’re not convinced we can score another touchdown all game…but a field goal we can do.

13

I love it! :smiley: Could you please also share with us your philosophy on baserunning?

14

It might also be done to make your score more “football-like”. If you have some weird combinations of field goals and safeties, you might want to go for 2 to make your score one of the tradition football multiples of 7. I think the Houston Texans did this on Sunday against the Giants.

15

I once watched a college game on TV in which team A got ahead 20-0 in the first half. After halftime, team B woke up and scored a TD. To “fire up” his players, coach of tean B went for two, and they failed to make it. Team B scored a second TD, went for two and again failed. Then near the game’s end, team B scored another TD, went for two again, and again, they failed.
Final score, Team A, 20, team B, 18. If B had simply kicked three 1-pointers, they would have won, 21-20.

There are other occasions when I have seen going for two early in a game backfire. I think the go for two thing should be saved until late in the game, when there are a limited number of things that can happen to change scores and circumstances.

16

My only contribution to this discussion is that kicking a PAT (in college football) is never “automatic”.

Go SC!

17

Tris: I like the idea of keeping the pressure on by being unpredictable. But AFAICT, going for 2 works somewhat less than half the time. If there were a 50% or better likelihood of scoring on a 2-point try, you bet Spurrier would be going for two all the time, even if nobody else did. Look at the way he’s willing to take a shot on 4th down. (Hijack: I liked his 4th-and-5 gamble at the Rams’ 34 the other day, even though it failed. It was too long for a FG, and the likely gain from a punt was only 14 yards. What was there to lose?)

Lorenzo: you got a cite on the .33 chance of success on going for 2?

John Carter: even though it didn’t cost them the game, my favorite instance of this was USC-Notre Dame, 1974. Notre Dame took an early 24-0 lead (3 TDs, 1 FG, like you’d expect). When the Trojans finally started scoring, McKay had them go for 2 after the first two scores. Failed both times. Finally went for 1 after the 3rd TD that made it 24-19 - but it would have been 24-21 if he’d settled for the PAT all along.

Fortunately it became moot: the next score was also a USC TD, and they went for 2 and made it: 27-24. They ultimately scored four more TDs to run it up to 55-24. As the saying goes, you can look it up. :slight_smile:

There’s one NFL game, from before the 2-pointer days, that I wish the option had been available for. Redskins-Cowboys, last game of the 1979 season, in Dallas, a playoff spot in the balance. A real seesaw of a game: Redskins ahead 17-0 early, Staubach brings 'em back to lead 21-17, the Redskins go back up 34-21 midway in the fourth quarter.

Going for 2 to make it 35-21 would have been awfully sweet. Because Staubach brought the Cowboys back for 2 TDs in the last 4 minutes to make it 35-34, Cowboys, which was how it ended.

That’s the sort of situation that’s tailor-made for the 2-point conversion.

18

Posted by RTFirefly: "Fortunately it became moot: the next score was also a USC TD, and they went for 2 and made it: 27-24. They ultimately scored four more TDs to run it up to 55-24. As the saying goes, you can look it up. "

As it happens, I don’t have to look that one up! I remember it well, as I was sitting in the living room of a Notre Dame fan that I thoroughly despised. I LOVED that game! :slight_smile:

19

RTFirefly and John Carter: Thanks for bringing up that nasty memory! As a Notre Dame fan and alum, I’ve been trying to forget that particular game since it happened!

(PatrickM walks away grumbing while sticking another needle into his Anthony Davis voodoo doll.)

(Anthony Davis being the USC tailback/kick returner who seemed to scored about 19 touchdowns in that game.)

20

It wasn’t so much Notre Dame, PatrickM, as it was the idiot N D fan I was watching that game with. Actually, after that time when Notre Dame beat Alabama 13-11 in the Orange Bowl, I’ve always been sort of partial to Notre Dame. (Auburn fan here) :slight_smile: