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They give you 4 downs to get the 1st, not 3.
There's a high school in Arkansas that has made the most significant football innovation we've seen since the veer option. This high school is tearing up its state and is on the verge of revolutionizing the way football is played. TMQ suspects that within a few years, the phrase "Pulaski theory" will be as widely known as the phrase "shotgun spread." In a copycat sport, Pulaski Academy of Little Rock has devised an offensive philosophy that is genuinely new, and it's winning games left and right. Pulaski Academy does not punt.
I first heard about Pulaski from Peter Giovannini of Morrilton, Ark., a high school football official who wrote me to report in astonishment that he had just worked a conference championship game in which the winning team never punted, even going for a first down on fourth-and-6 from its own 5-yard line early in the game. "As a devotee of TMQ, I thought you might like to know at least one coach in the vast football universe has experienced the epiphany and refuses to punt the ball away," Giovannini wrote. That team was Pulaski -- 9-1-1 after having just won its opening-round game in the Arkansas 5A playoffs. Coach Kevin Kelley reports that he stopped punting in 2005 -- after reading an academic study on the statistical consequences of going for the first down versus handing possession to the other team, plus reading Tuesday Morning Quarterback's relentless examples of when punting backfires but going for the first down works. In 2005, Pulaski reached the state quarterfinals by rarely punting.
In 2006, Pulaski reached the state championship game, losing by one point -- and in the state championship game, Pulaski never punted, converting nine of 10 fourth-down attempts. Since the start of the 2006 season, Pulaski has had no punting unit and never practices punts. This year, Pulaski has punted just twice, both times when leading by a large margin and trying to hold down the final score. In its playoff victory Friday night, Pulaski did not punt, converting three of four fourth-down tries. "They give you four downs, not three," Kelley told TMQ. "You should take advantage.
Suppose we had punted from our own 5. The odds are the opposition will take over at about the 35, and from there the stats say they have an 80 percent chance of scoring. So even if you only have a 50 percent chance of converting the first down, isn't that better than giving the other side an 80 percent chance of scoring?" For fourth-and-short attempts, the odds of converting are a lot better than 50 percent. As TMQ endlessly notes, NFL teams convert about 75 percent of fourth-and-1 tries. Yet highly paid professional coaches endlessly send in the punt unit on fourth-and-1, handing a scoring opportunity to the opposition. In the 2006 edition of my annual don't-punt column, I summarized the odds this way: "Nearly three-quarters of fourth-and-1 attempts succeed, while around one-third of possessions result in scores. Think about those fractions. Go for it four times on fourth-and-1: Odds are you will keep the ball three times, and three kept possessions each with a one-third chance of a score results in your team scoring once more than it otherwise would have. Punt the ball on all four fourth-and-1s, and you've given the opponents three additional possessions. (It would have gotten one possession anyway when you missed one of your fourth-and-1s.) Those three extra possessions, divided by the one-third chance to score, give the opponent an extra score."
Kelley says that when he began to shun the punt, people thought he was crazy: "It's like brainwashing, people believe you are required to punt." Players and the home crowd needed to get acclimated to it. "When we first started going on every fourth down," he says, "our home crowd would boo and the players would be distressed. You need to become accustomed to the philosophy and buy into the idea. Now our crowd and our players expect us to go for it, and get excited when no punting team comes onto the field. When my 10-year-old son sees NFL teams punting on short yardage on television, he gets upset because he's grown up with the idea that punting is usually bad." Preparing the players for the no-punting future of football is a practical concern.
If a coach unexpectedly kept his offense in on fourth down in his own territory, and failed to convert, the crowd would boo and the defensive players become demoralized. If the defensive players understood that a no-punting philosophy occasionally would hand great field position to the other side but overall would keep the other side off the field, they would buy into the idea. Imagine, in turn, the demoralizing effect on the opposition if its defense stops its opponent after three downs, only to realize that no punt will follow. For the 2007 edition of my anti-punting column, the stats service AccuScore did thousands of computer simulations based on 2006 NFL games and found that, on average, rarely punting added one point per game to the score of the teams that didn't punt, while not adding any points to their opponents' final scores. Computer simulations showed that rarely punting amounted to roughly one additional victory per season at the NFL level. At the college and high school levels, the bonus might be even higher. Why do coaches punt on fourth-and-short -- and worse, when trailing or in opposition territory? "Most punting is so the coach can avoid criticism," says Kelley, who has coached Pulaski for five years and got his start in high school coaching in football-crazed Texas. "If you go for it and fail, the first question in the postgame press conference will be, 'Aren't you to blame for losing the game because you didn't punt?' If the coach orders a punt, the media will blame the defense." TMQ has always speculated that the desire to shift blame explains why big-college and NFL coaches send in the punting team.
But take note, these days, the media and the postgame news conference are factors even at the high school level. Pulaski Academy is providing real-world evidence of the future of football. The most important innovation in years is being field-tested by the Pulaski Bruins, and the test is going quite well. But don't just take Kelley's word for it. The decisive snap of Illinois' upset of No. 1 Ohio State on Saturday came when the Illini, leading 28-21 with six minutes remaining, went for it on fourth-and-1 in their own territory. Sports radio generally called this a huge gamble. Actually, it was playing the percentages; Illinois converted and held the ball for the remainder of the game. Had Illinois boomed a punt, the Buckeyes would have been in business.
On Sunday, while trailing at Washington, Philadelphia went for it on fourth-and-1 in its own territory in the second half -- Fox television announcer Daryl Johnston called this "a huge gamble!" It was playing the percentages; the Eagles converted, and they scored a touchdown on the possession, igniting a comeback. Trailing 10-2, Buffalo went for it on fourth-and-1 from the Dolphins' 24 in the fourth quarter: a conversion, followed by a touchdown on the possession, keyed the Bills' comeback. Leading defending champion Indianapolis 16-0, San Diego went for it on fourth-and-2 at the Indianapolis 37, converted and scored a touchdown on the possession, going on to win by two points. Three times Jacksonville went for it on fourth-and-short in Tennessee territory, all three times converting and going on to score touchdowns; the Titans went for it on fourth-and-short twice in return, once failing and once scoring a touchdown. As noted by reader Rene Derken of Leuth, the Netherlands, Green Bay went for it twice on fourth-and-short in Minnesota territory, both times scoring on the possession -- but Minnesota punted from the Green Bay 42. Carolina went for it on fourth-and-1 from the Atlanta 20, and the play reached the Falcons' 2 before the Panthers' runner fumbled. Yes, New Orleans failed on a fourth-and-1 attempt in its own territory and went on to lose, and San Francisco failed on a fourth-and-1 on the Seattle 2-yard line when trailing big. But of the high-profile fourth-down tries in the NFL and in the Illinois-Ohio State game this past weekend, 10 were a total success, one a qualified success and three a failure. Not too shabby, compared with passively punting the ball.
[h1]It doesn't pay to punt[/h1]
[h1][/h1]
By Gregg Easterbrook
Special to Page 2
(Archive)
Updated: September 26, 2006
Once again this weekend the NFL landscape was littered with Preposterous Punts. Trailing 24-3, San Francisco punted on fourth-and-1 on the Philadelphia 40. Even the great Bill Belichick ordered a punt from the Broncos' 35. As this column repeats ad infinitum (Latin for "by using AutoText"), NFL coaches punt in opposition territory, or on short yardage, in order to avoid blame -- if a team goes for it and fails the coach is blamed, whereas if a coach does the safe thing and kicks and then loses, the players are blamed. But skip the psycho-dynamics and ask: Should a football team ever punt?
A year ago at the Hall of Fame reception in Canton, Ohio I found myself sitting between Bill Walsh and Don Shula. I posed this question: In a day when the Bears line up five-wide and Texas Tech passes 60 times a game, are there any fundamental innovations that have not been tried? Walsh supposed someone might try using trick formations for an entire game. Shula twinkled his eyes and said: "Someday there will be a coach who doesn't punt."
Think about all those punts on fourth-and-1, fourth-and-2, fourth-and-3. The average NFL offensive play gains about five yards. Yet game in, game out, coaches boom the punt away on short yardage, handing the most precious article in football -- possession of the ball -- to the other side. Nearly three-quarters of fourth-and-1 attempts succeed, while around one-third of possessions result in scores. Think about those fractions. Go for it four times on fourth-and-1 -- odds are you will keep the ball three times, and three kept possessions each with a one-third chance of a score results in your team scoring once more than it otherwise would have. Punt the ball on all four fourth-and-1s, and you've given the opponents three additional possessions. (It would have gotten one possession anyway when you missed one of your fourth-and-1s.) Those three extra possessions, divided by the one-third chance to score, give the opponent an extra score.
[table][tr][th=""]TMQ Cheat Sheet[/th] [/tr][tr][td] This week: Gregg Easterbrook on ...
• Stats of the week
• Cheerleader of the week
• Sweet and sour of the week
• X-Men analysis
• Single worst play of the season
• Running up the score watch
[/td] [/tr][/table]
Bottom line? If you face fourth-and-1 four times and punt all four times, your opponent will score once more than it otherwise would have. If you go for it all four times, you will score once more than you otherwise would have. (These are simplified probabilities that do not take into account that the one-score-in-three figure assumes most teams voluntarily end drives by punting on short yardage; subtract those punts, and a possession becomes more valuable because a score is more likely to result.) Few teams face fourth-and-1 four times in a game, but the numbers for fourth-and-2 and fourth-and-3 work out about the same, and most teams do face fourth-and-short several times per game. Probabilities suggest a team that rarely punts will increase its scoring while decreasing its opponents' point totals.
Think I'm crazy? Let's turn to this 2005 paper by David Romer, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Romer's work got attention from the sports media because he contends teams facing fourth-and-goal should almost always try for the touchdown. I'm not so sure, and will address that in a later column. (Short version of my counterargument: Field goals are nothing to sneeze at.) But there is gold, absolute gold, in the overlooked later pages of Romer's study. His numbers say that anytime the situation is fourth-and-4 or less, teams should not punt. Romer thinks teams should try for the first down on any fourth-and-4 or less even when in their own territory. After all, the average play gains almost five yards. On average you will retain possession, and the pluses of that exceeded the minuses of the inevitable failed fourth-down try.
Romer put the opening quarters of all NFL games from 1998 to 2004 into a database, then analyzed when coaches ordered punts, when they went for it, and how these decisions had an impact on field position on subsequent possessions. Here are Romer's three key conclusions. First, inside the opponent's 45, go for a first down on any fourth-and-7 or less, unless a field goal would decide the game. Second, inside the opponent's 33, go for a first down on fourth-and-10 or less, unless a field goal decides. In Romer's sample years there were 1,068 fourth downs in which the above formulas said go for the first down, yet NFL coaches kicked all but 109 times -- meaning they went for it only about 10 percent as often as they should have. Finally, Romer's numbers say that an NFL team should try for the first down on any fourth-and-4 or less, regardless of where the ball is on the field. Of course some fourth-down tries would go down in flames and even create easy scores for the other side. But over the course of a season of rarely punting, Romer maintains, the team that eschewed the punt would score more than it otherwise would, while its opponents would score less.
Thomas Croke/WireImage
Admit it -- football without punting would be much more fun to watch!
Suppose an NFL or major-college coach came into a season determined to go for it any time it was fourth-and-4 or less. I don't think a coach should be doctrinaire about this. I'd punt if it was fourth-and-4 inside my 20, and I'd be inclined to punt in the second half if protecting a lead. But otherwise, the coach commits to going for it instead of punting, even if the first few attempts backfire. Surely a strategy of rarely punting would sometimes boomerang, but on balance it could lead to more scoring for your team while depriving the other team of the ball. The strategy could cause exhaustion and panic on the parts of defenses that thought they had done their jobs by forcing fourth down, only to discover your offense had no intention of passively jogging off the field. Teams that rarely punted might pile up big advantages in points and time of possession. If Don Shula's "coach who doesn't punt" appeared on the NFL scene, that coach, Tuesday Morning Quarterback suspects, would revolutionize football. Player talent being equal, that coach might blow the doors off the National Football League.
Which leaves us with the question of whether the coach conjectured by Shula could ever exist. Such a coach would need to be completely unconcerned with the media and owner backlash that would follow a loss caused by a no-punt policy. Such a coach would need to be fearless, and financially independent. Will there ever be such a coach? Tuesday Morning Quarterback wonders. But next time it's fourth-and-3 and you hear the announcers say "now they have to punt," just remember: No, they don't have to punt.
Articles are kinda dated, but still.......
Will we ever see a coach with enough gall to start doing it?
