The Power of Not Punting.

[Travisty13]

An article I read yesterday, that mentions Hazell/Purdue, on thinking outside the box and not punting. Mathematically it says it's smarter to go for it on 4th down. And they say why shouldn't a college team, that's a habitual loser, try it out.
http://www.campusrush.com/kevin-kelley-pulaski-academy-power-of-not-punting-1338619200.html

 

[HomelessHarvey97]

An article I read yesterday, that mentions Hazell/Purdue, on thinking outside the box and not punting. Mathematically it says it's smarter to go for it on 4th down. And they say why shouldn't a college team, that's a habitual loser, try it out.
http://www.campusrush.com/kevin-kelley-pulaski-academy-power-of-not-punting-1338619200.html

I would rarely punt on 4th down between the 40's. The risk of giving the ball up is far outweighed by the benefit of the extra TOP and scoring potential.

 

[Boilerbrewer]

This all stems from a 2003 paper by David Romer. To my knowledge,he was the first to apply statistical methods and show that teams punted far too often. The paper can be found here:

http://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/nber9024.pdf

 

[banshee90]

This all stems from a 2003 paper by David Romer. To my knowledge,he was the first to apply statistical methods and show that teams punted far too often. The paper can be found here:

http://eml.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/nber9024.pdf

I'm sure it relates to why soccer players don't kick PKs in the middle. It is statistically has a better chance of going in, because the goalkeeper has to jump before he knows what direction the ball will be going. Normally the goal keeper will chose a side instead of staying in the center.

Well the psychological reason why they believe it isn't more prevalent is because no one wants to be the guy that kicks it in the center and get it blocked by a goal keeper that had to do 0 effort to stop the try.

 

[njm8845]

The difference is that it takes defensive effort to stop a 4th down.

Obviously it depends on field position, score, and other game conditions, but I've always felt football coaches are much too conservative.

 

[New Pal Boiler]

An article I read yesterday, that mentions Hazell/Purdue, on thinking outside the box and not punting. Mathematically it says it's smarter to go for it on 4th down. And they say why shouldn't a college team, that's a habitual loser, try it out.
http://www.campusrush.com/kevin-kelley-pulaski-academy-power-of-not-punting-1338619200.html

And it would at least make the games entertaining again.