Team That Never Punts and Always Onsides Kicks

[Keith]

This is moneyball for football. From a recent HBO Real Sports:

https://vid.me/nj4d

The innovative, math-based thinking here is enthralling. MLB doesn't have a monopoly on old school strategy. Changes are due to how NFL strategy will evolve.

[barrett]

The main obstacle is what happens when you lose.

When you lose doing things the accepted way nobody blames you. When you lose doing things a new way you get far less rope. This coach wins a ton so that bridge has not been crossed yet.

[Keith]

Right, as proposed in the video, the biggest hurdle is the fear of failure. Also unsaid is that this school is private, able to attract top talent, creating a far less balanced level of completion than seen in the NFL, even college. The NFL also has far more reliable kickers and punters than say at the high school level where going for it may be less of a gamble.

Still, with the notion of punting, especially in short yardage situations and where field position is such that touchbacks are more common, is challenged by statistical analysis. In a passing league, how valuable is extra field position? I think it's a compelling discussion worth further investigation in spite of the fear (and consequences) of failure.

"Moneyball"-type ideas in MLB arose somewhat out of necessity given the revenue imbalances between teams. These exist on a far lesser scale in the NFL with all of their revenue sharing.

[Warren]

I find the whole Moneyball idea of exploiting inefficiencies based on traditional thinking very interesting. More NFL teams are adding “analytics” positions to their football operations staffs. The Jags are supposed to be getting heavily into it, and Kubiak is going to have his director of analytics on the headset during games to advise him of probabilities in key situations. The Patriots have a guy named Ernie Adams who has been with Belichick for years to find him this kind of information.

On the video the coach said something about the difference in field position between the average unrecovered onsides kick and the average kickoff and return only being like 14 yards (at his level, I assume). I don’t think that holds up in the NFL.

They didn’t mention how going for it almost every time changes play calling. If you know that you have four chances to make a third down instead of three, that’s probably going to change your approach, especially on third downs.

One area that I think NFL coaches need to follow the numbers more is going for a touchdown instead of a field goal on fourth downs at or near the goal line. Even if you don’t score, I think the stats support the decision since it puts your opponent’s offense in such bad field position.