The more I think about it, the more I think the game was entertaining but not particularly well-played -- or at least, not by the quarterbacks. Jimmy played scared a lot of the night -- for all the complaining about his receivers letting balls fly through their hands (which is true) he also made a ton of throws that most defenses take to the house. And his ball security was atrocious -- which was complicated by his holding on to the ball forever. Meanwhile, Russell Wilson had a better night but a number of terrible plays, including the red zone pick that was really under-thrown -- and a weird fumble that was a poor play in an even worse spot.People seem to always conflate "the defense made a play" with "the offense played poorly". Like, we can't give both sides credit for executing well, so with a close game, we have to say that they both sucked. It's bizarre.
Some people here do that in baseball too - it wasn't a great game, first one pitcher sucked, then the other pitcher sucked, and they took turns sucking until it ended up a 9-8 final with 6 lead changes. Well, um, the hitters had something to do with that too - maybe they're all really good at their jobs, and just, both sides can't win?
"putrid fundamentally", come the hell on. I saw a lot of great blocking, a lot of sure tackling, inventive play design without anyone going nuts, a lot of good coverage, some brilliant line play (Clowney most of all), a lot of good throws from both sides, a lot of good runs, some clutch plays by both sides... and one absolutely fugly FG attempt that would have won it for the team that ended up losing. I didn't see any totally blown coverages, I didn't see abject stupidity from either coach until, arguably, the last few minutes of OT, and unless you want to count Bourne having stone hands I didn't see a ton of execution failures either. If you saw "putrid fundamentals", I'd like to know what a well-played game would look like to you, because there must be hardly any.
Catching up on the thread endgame, this is the only post that matters.Fuck Don Shula
Quite a bit, I'd imagine. Kittle is their leading receiver andallows them to be very creative with groupings and formations. Sanders, if with the team all year, would probably be leading the team in receiving, if not neck and neck woth Kittle.Different topic, but from what little I watched it seemed like a lot of injuries to key players especially on SF side.
How much will that hurt them going forward ?
I think there was some controversial missed flip call that caused them to change the mechanics and to have the ref repeat the call. But in the years since they made the change, it has definitely changed in how they administer it. Right after the initial change, the ref would say the call back to the captain and wait a bit but it seems like now they just say the word "heads" or "tails" as they are flipping the coin, which really doesn't avoid the controversy they were trying to prevent.
Then of course there was Steratore before LII forgetting even to get the captain to make a call before handing the coin to the Medal of Honor guy to do the flip.
I think the refs get nervous too.
(NB: This refers to Carolina's two-point try after scoring a TD that brought them within eight points of GB in the 4th quarter).I will never understand going for 2 there
You're absolutely right - "ignoring second-order factors" is a caveat that should be added, strictly speaking. But keep in mind that the numbers in the OP were designed to show that the (first-order) conclusion holds even under ridiculously conservative assumptions. If we use more realistic estimates, the win probability differential becomes large enough that second-order considerations (which are admittedly hard to quantify) are very unlikely to fully offset it. And in any case, not to move the goalposts, but the point of the exercise was ultimately to establish the comprehensibility of the two-point try, even if the case for absolute correctness is less than ironclad. Given that the most straightforward approximation comes out so heavily in favor of the two-point try, It is not at all hard to see why a smart coach would choose it in this situation.I guess, though, in no case is leading by one ever going to make it more than 50 percent likely you will lose in regulation, so it is always better than overtime. It just seems to me that when we say the win probability of TD, convert, TD, kick is 1.00 are we baking in some assumptions there? The entire premise of the exercise is an assumption is that the other team does not score at all, but the question is whether converting or not converting the two point conversion with 9 minutes left changes the way your opponent plays thereafter and thus changes the odds that that they won’t score more.
Dude, really? You couldn't think of any other game in the entire history of football with which to illustrate this point? Sheesh.I think about this sometimes when a team is down by 3 late, like in the Scottish Game. Obviously going up 4 is always better for win probability, except not always in hindsight. If Moss drops the TD and the Patriots kick a game tying field goal, the Giants play more conservatively and certainly do not go for it on fourth down. You can’t assume how things play out but they might have been content for overtime. The Patriots might even have gotten the ball back in regulation on a punt. The 4 point game forced the Giants to play in a way that worked out best and may even have been, given all factors, more optimal and conducive to winning.