DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum The fourth down thread

Hey guys, I made this thread on a different message board and thought it might be a good addition here, especially in light of the controversial 4th and 1 punt last week at Indy.

I got to wondering, what is everyones opinion on when to go for it on fourth down? I kind of want this thread to serve as a reference whenever someone accuses our coaches of timidity. Somebody says coaches should have gone for it, come back here and see if they contradict themselves.

For me, starting on our own 40 with 4th and 2 or less, I want the team to go for it with only a few exceptions.

1. Nearing the end of the 1st half, field goal range, not enough time to run a play. There, I prefer a field goal.

2. Nearing the end of the game where a field goal takes the lead or ties the game, take the field goal.

On the whole, I prefer a strategy of aggression. If we trained our entire team to think of a series of downs as four offensive opportunities instead of three and a punt, I think the aggression and confidence of this team would go up, not becoming demoralized when we fail and demoralizing the other team when we succeed.

If our coaches go for it on fourth down and fail in the above situation, I will always praise the decision. Aggressively pursuing victory is preferable to me over being passive and timid.

Good coaches try to win, bad coaches try not to get fired.

I would have gone for it last week on the simple notion that:

1) We only had to go 1 yard for the first...

2) the Colts HC disrespected our defense and went for it on 4th and short even in THEIR territory...

I would have gone for it after considering what Shurm would do, and choose the opposite. We are on their side. We have lost enough games for next 5 years. Only a little time, few TOs, and I never want to depend on punters in the clutch. One win looks pathetic. We need a win, not force our overworked defense to give us a crapshoot finish with longer odds than here. But if you have no sensible playcall, I can smell the fear on him.
Gotta make progress to turn a corner. Seems clueless in the 4th.

Your comments make sense...I would add that when you are 1-5, you should be willing to take more risks...especially going for it on 4th down.

In our case, as we know a FG would not have won it on that drive. However, going for it made sense in that getting it would have given us four more downs which we could have used to score or move into FG range. If we were willing to punt, confident we would get the ball back, then kicking the FG would have put us in a position to win it with another FG, with about the same amount of time on the clock as we had when we got the ball back after the punt, without the need to score a TD to win.

Under normal circumstances, I would go for it on 4th and less than a yard any time we're on the opponents side of the field and we are behind or tied, or anywhere beyond our 40 if it's late in the game and we need a score to win. I would even go for it occasionally if we're leading and playing an opponent with a high powered offense.

http://www.footballcommentary.com/blunders.htm - Article is 8 years old, but still very relevant and useful. If anything it underestimates how often coaches should go for it, on the grounds that recent rule changes have continued to favor offenses.

Quote:

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Some Common Strategy Errors

Several times in a typical game, a coach must decide whether to punt or go for it on fourth and short, or whether to attempt a two-point conversion after a touchdown. In this article we will present Tables, computed from the footballcommentary.com Dynamic Programming Model, that provide guidance for making those decisions.

Too Many Punts

On their opening drive in the 2003 AFC Conference Championship game, the New England Patriots went for it on 4th and 1 at their own 44 yard line. What makes this decision noteworthy isn't that it was wrong—it wasn't—but that coaches in that situation almost always punt.

To defend their unwillingness to go for it on fourth down when every thoughtful analysis says they should, coaches often cite the loss of momentum, and the harm to the players' morale, that purportedly results from a failed fourth-down attempt. However, David Romer, who has urged coaches to go for it more often, has reportedly actually examined data on momentum swings, and found no evidence that momentum is a factor. If anything, Romer says, the data suggest that teams play harder after giving up the ball following a failed fourth-down attempt or a turnover. Our own opinion is that few things could be more demoralizing to players than a coach who doesn't give them the best possible chance to win the game.

Elsewhere we have discussed the limitations of the model David Romer uses to analyze fourth-down situations, namely that as a steady-state model rather than a backward-induction model, it doesn't take into account the score or the time remaining in the game. And indeed, the results of the footballcommentary.com Dynamic Programming Model don't support Romer's more sweeping conclusions. However, we agree that coaches often punt when they should go for it. In particular, according to our Model, teams should always go for it on 4th and 1 if they trail, are not in field goal range, and are not too deep in their own end. Closer to either goal line, or when leading, or with more than a yard to go for a first down, it is still often correct to go for it, but these cases must be considered on an individual basis.

We worked through the arithmetic for a couple of 4th down situations in our analysis of Super Bowl XXXVIII. One of those situations arose with 9:04 remaining in a scoreless first half, when New England faced 4th and 1 at the Carolina 38 yard line. We found that New England's decision to go for it raised their probability of winning the game by about three percentage points.

To provide some guidance, we have prepared a series of Tables that show what the probability of picking up the first down has to be to justify going for it on fourth down. As an example of how to use the Tables, suppose we lead by 3 points with 21:00 remaining in the second half (i.e. 6:00 left in the 3rd), and face 4th down at the opponent's 40 yard line. We go to the Table labeled "Opponent's 40 yard line, second half," and find that the entry corresponding to a 3-point lead, and 21:00 remaining in the second half, is 0.46. The interpretation of this number is that if our probability of making the first down exceeds 0.46, we should go for it, and otherwise we should punt. So we should certainly go for it if it's 4th and 1 or 2 yards to go. With 4 or more yards to go for a first down, we should punt.

Certain patterns emerge from the Tables. For example, to justify going for it, we need a higher probability of success if we're ahead than if we're behind. Moreover, this disparity is more pronounced late in the game. Specifically, if we are ahead, it is more likely to be correct to go for it early in the game than late. Conversely, if we trail, it is more likely to be correct to go for it late in the game than early. So, the rule of thumb "Kick Early, Go For It Late" captures some of the flavor of the Model when we're behind, but not when we're ahead.

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Tables from the same article: http://www.footballcommentary.com/goforittables.htm


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www.AdvancedNFLStats.com also frequently gets into these conversations... here's a snippet based on the game vs Indy.

http://www.advancednflstats.com/2012/10/a-week-of-weak-decisions.html#more

Quote:

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Cleveland Browns: Punted on 4th-and-1 on the Indy 41-yard line down by four with a little over six minutes remaining.

On what was likely the worst decision of the day, the Browns cut their expected win probability almost in half by punting. On 4th-and-1 from the opponent's 41, you should almost always go for it. You are expected to score +1.58 points by going for it (74% league-wide conversion rate) versus -0.04 points by punting.

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Again, teams should be even more aggressive when losing and that becomes even more pronounced with time running out, but make no mistake about it, Shurmur has been very, very bad in this department even before the Indy debacle.