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In response to
"That Chart Party did not feel 54 minutes long and the reveal at the end killed me. -- nm"
by
Tim
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spoilers to save you 54 minutes: the entire premise is that punting is giving up, so he devises a formula rating the decision to punt by 4 factors.
Posted by
Tim (aka othertim)
Feb 20 '19, 12:08
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Location of the ball: in your own territory is understandable, but when you’re in the opponent’s territory, it makes less sense, and has an exponential penalty
Yards to first down, 4th and 10 or beyond, sure, okay. Teams this century have had a success rate of 65% when going for it on 4th and 1, soooo why punt? Bigger penalty.
Score: this is controversial, but he penalizes a punt more when a team is down by one score rather than two or more. Smaller penalty when the game is tied.
Time remaining in game: first half punts barely register, the third quarter isn’t so bad either. As time ticks down, the choice to punt becomes dumber. And if you’re in overtime, it’s tremendously stupid to punt most of the time. He admits this is also subjective.
ANYWAY, while like 98% of the punts this century barely register on the scale (the average punt score for an entire season is about 4) he talks about the top ten (which rate from 313 to a score of 535!) and what the circumstances were and why the choices were terrible.
Then it turns out that of those 10 punts, including what he views as the worst choice to punt in the 21st century ever... (in 2006, the Vikings punted from their opponent’s 34! On 4th and 1! Losing by 1! With 9:45 left in the game! It is the furthest up any team has ever punted at 4th and 1 in at least 20 years, perhaps longer.)
those teams had a record of 6-3-1 in those games. And one of the losses was the 2000 Ravens, who then didn’t lose a game after that and won the Super Bowl that year.
What does it mean that most of these teams were rewarded for stupidly punting in these situations? He punts on that question.
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