The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

Easily McDaniel, the Dolphins won in spite of his poor calls.  Less than two minutes in a tie game, with your opponent having zero timeouts and your defense playing well, you KICK the Field Goal and take the lead!!!  Then he also uses Miami's remaining TO's to help Washington.

I thought that McDaniel was crazy and I would have agreed with you.

But I started thinking about it and the liklihood of winning and you're 3.5% more likely to win the game if you go for the TD, according to Dan Lebatard today.  Granted, those numbers are averages, assuming a completely generic offense and defense.  You don't get to factor in that we're uniquely bad at running for 1 yard or that Mariota is a bum.

But the decision, on paper at least, seems to have been the right one.

And it worked out, so I think I need to eat crow.

I would have made the same calls. We have 3 wins and realistsically little to no chance of making the playoffs. I would take a few chances as well.

The one thing it shows is our Offensive line is still getting their arse kicked on short yardage and they know its coming. Having the 6th lineman didn't help that situation. They were driven into the backfield both times. It was embarrasing for them ... or at least should have been.

While the stats may support the decision, if WSH makes the FG at the end of the game, McDaniel is probably fired today.  The talking heads would love nothing more than to absolutely incinerate any coach who does not kick a field goal in that situation.  The nerds with their pocket protectors and excel spreadsheets tell you that "the analytics" say to go for the touchdown, but Real Football Men Know that you kick the field goal there every time!

I gotta give McD my SOTG for failing to try to protect his own job.  Read the room, man.

A 3.5% increase in winning is an extremely small increase and not worth the risk.  I used a probability calculator with a 3 point lead, 2 minutes left, with the opponent starting on the 30 yard line (no option to enter available TO's).  The result is a win 90.89% of the time.

"More likely" is more likely than "less likely," no matter how you slice it.
But sometimes the facts don't matter and public perception is what it is.

It's almost like you haven't been paying attention. Mike would have to kill one of Ross's family members to be let go before Tua's contract expires. Hahaha

Exactly the point.   We're way past the area of McDaniel having pics of Ross in New Orleans or Vegas with hookers.   We're in the area of McDaniel having information about people in Biscayne Bay with concrete boots that Ross put there.

I found it interesting that Joe Rose revealed today that Jimmy Cefalo and Kim Bokamper thought they should have kicked the FGs while he (Joe Rose) and Dan Marino thought they should have gone for it like they did. Seems to match what I'm seeing online as well.

The offensive line for how badly they got beat on those goal line plays

This doesn't make mathematical sense.

If it's a 90.89% win to kick, then it would be a 94.39% to go for it.  Higher percentage is higher percentage.  "It's not worth the risk" doesn't make sense, in a vacuum, at least.

To Spider's point, there are things like scapegoats and optics, so maybe you kick for that reason.  But in general, you take the likelier chance of success when given the choice.

Percentages don't mean shit to me.   Logic does.  And in this case, logic dictates that you don't take points off the board.   If your defense is playing well, you take whatever lead you can get.

Yes it does make sense.  Those percentages factors assume both scoring opportunities were successful.  However, we all know that kicking a FG from 20 yards has a success rate of over 90%, whereas the success rate of scoring a TD from that location is much lower.

The actual percentages (that McDaniel would have been looking at) absolutely take into account the expected success rate of the plays in question.  Otherwise, the percentages would be meaningless!

Like, you can't meaningfully evaluate the difference in winning percentage between going for it on 4th and 4 at your opponent's 20 vs. kicking a field goal if you are baking automatic success into the outcome.  If you assume going for it will definitely be successful, the math would say to go for it 100% of the time, no matter where on the field you are!

It's pretty easy to look at every scenario after a game and punch in the numbers and give the probability. These coaches are facing a play clock,  are not sitting in front of a computer, etc. If you think McDaniel had any clue there was a 3.5% sway either way when he made his decision I think you are delusional. I may be naive.

They do not.

The percentage means that at the decision point, the team that choose to attempt to go for it will win the game 3.5% more than the team that chooses to attempt the kick.  Then you have to factor in all the possibilities of missed TDs, going for 2, missed kicks, onside kicks, etc.  There are a lot of factors.

The real argument against is that the Dolphins are uniquely bad at going for it on short yardage as opposed to the average.

Any coach that actually cares about analytics and statistical probability would have to be a complete moron NOT to have a guy in the booth upstairs punching down and distance into a computer after every play; a person that can instantly tell him on his headset what his expected outcomes are.

I think that depends on exactly what is allowed. The internet isn't exactly clear on the subject but what I see is that only NFL approved hardware and software can be used during a game. What is included in those tools I don't know. I don't expect they have real time access to number crunching real time for every single scenario but they do probably have an analyst with a bunch of general situations already played out.

The point is that it's not McDaniel whipping out a calculator and figuring out the percentages himself while the play clock is running.  Teams that care about analytics will have a person in charge of that, and the head coach will simply ask them "What are the percentages on going for it vs. kicking the FG?", quickly receive an answer, and make a decision.  He's not just spitballing it.

He absolutely knew the percentage for the general case. Each team uses their own models, but if you don't think they have a chart or someone in the booth available with the numbers, I do think you are naive. 4th down, X yards to go, up Y points is a set of numbers that are very easy to run beforehand.

The 3.5% is obviously for the average case across the league and I would seriously hope that the Dolphins use a model that is optimized for their offense. Hopefully, they adjust the numbers every game for their opponent.

I would also hope that the McDaniel uses what he has seen all game long to tip the scales one way or another when deciding.

There's a lot of hope there and I obviously have zero clue what the Dolphins actually do.

Personally, it *felt* like the wrong call, but the Dolphins have actually been quite good in "power" situations this year, so I'm not able to point to easy numbers that back up my *feelings*.

In this case, it's just a table. You could easily have that printed out and laminated nicely if there are limitations on software that teams can use during the game.

It would be a pretty big table. Consider how many variables need to be plugged in (remember this all started because we are talking about 3.5% difference) down, distance,  field position, time on the clock, etc. All being run at multiple variables prior to a game.

This is an interesting thought.

I wonder what you would actually need to know that would significantly swing the numbers.

I think it's really point difference, time left, yard line and distance.  But even "time left" is probably only something you need for the last 5 or so minutes of the game and I would imagine that you could break it up into sections, like 4-5 mins, 3-4 mins, etc.  I doubt there's much different between 4:12 left on the clock and 4:40.

The same is likely true for things like distance in this situation.  It has to be incredibly specific to go for the TD.  I don't think it's on laminated paper, since it seems like just plugging the stuff into a computer would be the easiest way to do it.  I can't imagine that something like that would be illegal by the NFL.  How would you even enforce it?  Fans could just have a phone in their pocket.  it's not calculating anything...just spitting out numbers, like a blackjack odds-chart that tells you whether to hit or stand.

McDaniel

I don't know how that makes sense.  There's about a 95% chance you make the field goal and take the lead.  Whereas there's only about a 47% chance you score the TD.  So I don't see how it is 3.5% better chance of winning if you go for the TD.  Granted there is a lot that happens after that, and you need to take a lot of other factors into consideration about the teams, but it still doesn't make sense to me.

The difference is in the gap in expected win % between taking a 3-point lead with 1:45 left, and taking a 7-point lead with 1:45 left.

A 4th down conversion is less likely to be successful, but MUCH more likely to result in a win if it is successful; kicking a field goal and then preventing the opponent from getting their own FG attempt with that amount of time remaining is unlikely.