2023 NFL Conference Championships

one small example of why money making opps abound in this world folks

How many of the anti go for it people will acknowledge that on one of the Chiefs 2 TD drives they went for it on 4th and short from around midfield?

if you go for it and get it, it was obviously correct, Mahomes is just a winner and winners get **** done

Late to the party .. pretty civil in here, nice to see

1) FG at end of Q2 is very sound .. go into half up 3 scores and eliminate the 'we stopped them' mental high. Not sure why they bled the clock so much but it did turn into a 1st and goal anyway.

2) CJ-GJ PI and hand wave were only fuel for SF at half .. IMO not the type of Player the Lions want anymore. It was obvious that it was known to SF based on how a few Players gave it back in Q4. He only played 3-4 games at 6.5M. Player? Prob .. Detroit Player .. not IMO.

3) 'As a Lion' 40+ yard FG was 77% and the 4th Down conversion rate was 78%. As others have said, even if you convert you aren't guaranteed points .. but you keep the ball (time off clock) and you obtain a bigger swing of mental momentum for the next few plays. Even a FG is still 'we held them to 3' on the mental side.

4) Question .. were these plays called for #8, check-downs or progressions? History of drops but did make some 'big' grabs in previous games. Goff seemed to be going/looking more to him the last 4-6 games.

5) I still can't understand why NFL Gunners don't know to just bat the ball back into the field of play on punts. So what if the other team picks the ball up and runs .. they're doing it from inside the 5!

6) Great onside kick attempt .. but those first few guys need to block, not go for the ball.

7) You can say all you want that DC is too emotional of a coach right now .. but he stuck to what worked all year (even in Dallas). You can say he should've 'felt' the game slipping and went the more conventional route as the person who is supposed to 'know better', but it's the same as most of the decisions .. if it works then genius.

8) His 'coach speak' is excellent at pressers .. still says stuff without calling out specific players/coaches. GL

Look at this dummy folks

Is there a source where we can play with that fourth down bot thing and/or we're able to look at the EV of starting drives at different field positions? In argument with someone saying that Campbell should kick before half time because the negative that kicking will give the Chefs ~20 yards of field position on the next drive doesn't exist because of time on clock, while I'm thinking the difference in starting 20 yards further forward has EV of **** all compared to the EV you piss away immediately by not going for it

I’m coming around on the idea that I’m probably wrong about my hate on not kicking the FG up 14 but I’ll say in real time I was dejected they were gonna get a FG and got a little excited when they passed on that to go for it

My feelings on this may be biased by how soul crushing the FG woulda been and how hyped I was they were gonna give the Niners a chance to stop them

I’ve never messed around with the settings, but here is a link to the source code and calculator.

https://www.nfl4th.com/

There shouldn't be any 'hate' .. just disappointment that 'the draw' didn't work out.

1) Get 1st down .. more time off clock, probably score at least 3 points maybe 7, HUGE momentum boost/killer

2) Kick and make .. immediate counter to their FG, 3 scores and 'only' 22 min left, momentum stalls, but they 'stopped us' at only 3

3) Kick and miss .. lose 7 yards, momentum boost for SF but Det knows still up 2 scores

4) Fail on 4th .. HUGE momentum boost AND loss .. shorter field than after a kickoff

4th Down stops are just like turnovers, and the offense picks up on the energy of the defense coming off the field. Kickers missing is just never as much of a let down than getting stopped on 4th (when up 14). Yes, I know, don't ask Buffalo about missed FG .. this is a way different spot. GL

Agreed. I'd be shocked if the models actually said to go for it here considering the time, going up 3 possessions, and the fact that you can't benefit from field position.

I probably would've kicked it the 2nd time because going up 3 possessions seems super valuable to me.

Analytics say they should have gone for it before half.

Question: does this use historical league averages to derive a result?

Yet the missed FG is worse because you lose 8 yards field position, with the additional knowledge that you took the ball out of the players' hands.

I am far from the anti analytics crowd and I'm taking no victory laps, but it took Dan Campbell getting his front teeth knocked out by multiple kneecaps to bring me back to the reality that football is not purely a mathematical exercise. Players matter. Mental toughness (however you want to define that or measure it) matters. Having a three-score lead with 20 minutes left to play matters. Other stuff matters.

Analytics are important and should be a priority but there are other factors in decision-making in a football game. Robo-coach ain't gonna cut it until more data can be parsed into the algorithms. [/heresy]

For the ESPN haters, just got to listen to that tool Dan Orlovsky try to defend Campbell's decision to run the ball which resulted in wasting a timeout.

Yes, I believe so, as that's really its only baseline. So there is certainly some nuance, especially in a single sample. But over the long run, my understanding is that the data should all converge to create the estimated WP delta.

A few posts above, I posted a link with some more info on it. There is also an Athletic article link in that info that gives more context.

That is similar to a question those first two FG WPs brought to my mind. Long-term winning coaches as well as good (at the data point) teams might be assumed to make better decisions. Those decisions would be assumed to result in producing a contribution to wins and therefore to WP. Is there any attempt to account for this in the analysis? If not, there is a bit of a chicken/egg question here.

I have enough interest to ask the question but not enough to read about it in depth. I'm not really asking you to research it, but only posted it under your post in case you or someone else already knows the answer or does want to look into it.

once again, it sure is comforting to know NFL kickers make 100% of FGAs from 45 yards

Having had a day to think about it I suppose going for it wasn't a bad decision. (Although if we're going to live and die by the analytics then clearly kicking the FG at the end of the first half was wrong also, even though I thought it was correct at the time).

But obviously if we have to point to a single play, that drop by Reynolds was an absolute killer. The miracle facemask carom completion that came after never happens if Reynolds makes what was a pretty routine catch.

I do not think there is any attempt to capture the difference between Andy Reid making the decision versus say someone like Frank Reich. I think that would be almost impossible to bake into a general model like that. With that said, career decisions from guys like Andy and McVay and Harbaugh and Gase and Reich and Rivera and all the other coaches are already baked in. The blended results should factor in both good and bad coaching decisions and converge to league average.

Is the fact those nuances can't be factored in enough to trust the model's results for a single sample? I still think so on a general basis. But the model is not going to be perfect.

There are also so many other variables and butterfly effect type decisions in any given game. Hindsight always gives the benefit of knowing the result, but today we could also be talking about how Dan chose to go for 3 on all three decisions and SF still came back and won. And like liga and others have posted, the FG make is not a guarantee.

While some may argue the missed 4th down conversion up 24-10 could have affected team morale, momentum, confidence, etc. that led to these next two plays, I think the unlucky ball to the DB facemask bounce and catch by Aiyuk and the subsequent Gibbs fumble had way more of an impact than the actual failed 4th down attempts.

And like revots just posted, if Reynolds actually makes the catch we are also having different conversations today.

51 yards off the face (in the context of how the game played out) is the single luckiest play I have ever seen

Predictably the narratives have been that Campbell lost this game, which is utterly moronic. Every last thing had to go right and every last thing had to go wrong to end up with a Niners win

Once again (ok, maybe for the first time), we'll never know the answers to a lot of questions until the construction of parallel universes with time machines also available is perfected.

But with 20 minutes left if, as someone posted upthread, the chance of a successful kick there is 75% to put the Lions up by three scores as opposed to the success of going for it being 60% to keep it at 14, give me the kick to keep playing against a superior team in their house for this one shot at going to the SB.

If we're running it a thousand times between all permutations of all teams in the NFL under all conditions and at all points in the season, I'll take the 2.2% additional WP choice.

yep

I still kind of can't believe you had:

Easy drop on 4th down
Bonk off the defender's face mask
Gibbs Fumble

all within like 2 minutes of game time and 5 minutes of real time.