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I heard a tease on ESPN.... Chuck?

Posted By: Gregg Cattanach
Date: Monday, 23 November 2009, at 2:55 p.m.

In Response To: I heard a tease on ESPN.... Chuck? (Gregg Cattanach)

The ESPN show didn't refer to Chuck but some other guy that did some pencil and paper analysis of 4th downs quite a while ago.

There was another bit of inanity from Mike Ditka on Fox. He went to the trouble to find stats from New England and Indy specifically about chances of making the 4th down and scoring from 30 and 70 yards away. First he tells us that Belichick simply 'must punt', but then reports these numbers, 79% conversion by NE of the 4th and 2, 33% chance for Indy to score from 70 yards and 58% chance to score from 30 yards. Even ignoring the 42% chance to stop Indy after missing the 4th down conversion, how can't he see that 79% > 67% (1-33%) and still tells us that Belichick 'must punt'? It's almost as if he thinks if he multiplies two numbers or does a subtraction he's sinned against the alter of conventional wisdom and will be banished to outer darkness. (Note: using league-wide numbers like Chuck does and adjusting for the team's skills is much better, because the sample size of the team specific numbers is too small.)

Of course,in his coaching days, Ditka would never have gone for it; but even staring directly at the numbers he still refuses to see how going for it has to be better. I guess nobody likes to think they were wrong in the past.

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