Here's my theory as to why the Vikings have become masters at blowing 10+ point leads in the 2nd half....
They're trying to win the first pick in the NFL draft.
But their strategy is to play as if they're actually trying to win for a while, and then just let the game choke away if they're in the lead. The only problem with this strategy is that they're actually really good, and capable of blowing out teams like the Chargers and the Bucs. So you'd think that they'd just abandon the 1st pick strategy and just try to win the Super Bowl.
But they committed to the strategy, dammit, and they're going to see it through to the very end.
So the Vikings' problem isn't that they fail to make halftime adjustments, or that they decide to leave their defense on the field the entire 2nd half. It's just that they're too stubborn.
I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but... at least it means they're not terribly incompetent!
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Another notch to my "baseball is better than football" list:
ReplyDeleteIn baseball, you have 162 games. In late-game situations, managers have the strategies they try to win the games. Good strategies sometimes cause losses, but over 162 games, a good decision-making process will produce a net gain. Teams can afford to care about the process more than the results.
In football, everything is result-oriented. Coaches can't choose non-conventional strategies because they would be picked apart if they backfire. Teams convert 65% of 2 point conversions (or something similarly high), but when a team down 7 scores a touchdown in the last minute, they ALWAYS kick the PAT and go to overtime, where they only have a 50% chance.
Teams never go for it on 4th down unless they need to, even though 4th and 3 or less is a good bet anywhere in between the 30 yard lines.
Baseball encourages good decision-making. Football's pressure discourages it. Remember how stunned everyone was when Mike Tice went for 2 to beat the Saints? That should be normal football strategy, but it was a stunning rogue move.
Couple things:
ReplyDelete1) Two point conversion usually has a less than 50% success rate.
2) There was an interesting article about college football and unconventional strategies located here you might be interested in:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6948865/speed-chess
In general, I think you're going to have less conventional strategies/decision making in the college game simply because there are a lot more teams with less to lose. Which *would* make the college game more interesting to me if they didn't ruin it by having a corrupt bowl system...
But yeah. In general the NFL could be a little less streamlined. It was in another article that I read sometime ago, but there's a decent argument somewhere that teams could have a better shot at winning a football game if they went for it on 4th down all the time. And yeah... there's too much on the line for coaches for anyone to actually try that with any regularity.
But at the same time, football's strategy doesn't come down to *just* going for it on 4th down and going for two either. They're just the more easily noticeable examples of decision making.
But even then, there are plenty of cases of unconventional decision making, good and bad. Two games I watched today, Bucs went for an onside kick in the 3rd quarter and down 10 points, which they recovered. If they didn't, we probably march down the field, at least get a field goal, and the game most likely goes our way. Instead, they recovered, which meant that resulted in our defense remaining on the field for most of the 3rd quarter... which then meant that the Bucs had an easier time moving the ball on us as the 2nd half wore on.
In the Pats/Chargers game, Pats up 20-14 with about 9 minutes left in the game, 4th and 3 at midfield and they go for it. They fail, Chargers ball, and it seems likely the Chargers will take the lead. It ended up not mattering much, since the Chargers then fumbled the ball away, but Belichick has made these types of calls before, so he is your exception to the rule.
Hmm, I've replied twice and it hasn't gone through....
ReplyDeleteI can't believe google's first page of results for "NFL 2 point conversion rate" did not produce a list broken down by year, team, fake/not fake, etc. It's pretty disappointing--step up your game, NFL stat websites. I had heard 65% a while ago, but maybe that was invented or college or something.
I enjoyed the Grantland piece; I've liked what they've published, though I've only really read the soccer, tennis, and baseball pieces.
I thought it was weird that there wasn't any real data on Google about the stat, especially when I've seen the stats on televised games when a team is going for two. I've always remembered it as being around 40%, but I suppose it fluctuates during any given season.
ReplyDelete