By Robby Wellington – Staff Writer
I’m not a big fan of many bets this week. I’m probably going to tease the Colts (-9) at home in a bounce back special against a devastated Eagles squad with the Vikings (-6) at home against the awful Cardinals. Wish me luck.
Now, a few things I wanted to touch on. The only time I can remember a team letting another team score a touchdown was in Super Bowl XXXII. Despite the criticism that Mike Holmgren endured, the so-called “concession touchdown” is completely underutilized in football. To wit, last Sunday night, the Denver Broncos tackled LaDainian Tomlinson not once, but twice, when they should have allowed a “concession touchdown.” Instead of getting the ball back with nearly three minutes down eight, the Broncos had to drive the length of the field with no timeouts and 1:10 on the clock. (4th Quarter play-by-play) Even if they had held the Chargers to a field goal, the Broncos would have had less than 30 seconds to get downfield and line up for a field goal with no timeouts. At least one coach recognized this scenario, as Marty Schottenheimer called for Drew Brees to take a knee on second and goal. Well played.
Other things that I would like to see coaches or players do more:
1. A running back intentionally drop a pass that is thrown to them well into the backfield and has “five-yard-loss” written all over it. Or, a running back throw a ball out of bounds when they are bottled up on a run for a big loss. In fact, I have always been a big fan of the throwing running back. My one major gripe is that it has always seemed to be an all-or-nothing endeavor. If the running back is supposed to throw it, well, he’s going to throw it, regardless of downfield coverage. How about a fake pass every once in a while and then a 5-10 yard scramble. I could see Michael Vick doing this a lot next year with Matt Schaub under center. Watch out!
2. I would also like to see a team down by a wide margin (three to four touchdowns) actually go for it early in the forth quarter instead of punting and basically conceding defeat. You would rather keep the score respectable than have a shot, however so slight, at actually winning the game? Really?
3. Lastly, and this is my personal favorite, I would love to see a team down two touchdowns late in a game (less than four minutes left) score a touchdown and go for two to try and cut the lead to six. Now, hear me out on this one. If, for example, the Falcons had scored late last week to cut the Ravens lead to a touchdown, they would have needed to get the ball back and score another touchdown to tie and send the game to overtime. Well, why not go for two after that first touchdown? If they convert it, then a touchdown wins and if they don’t, then they still have a chance to score, go for two again and send the game to overtime. Simply put, if the chances of converting for two once outweighs the chances of not converting for two twice (which it virtually always does) then teams would be best suited to go for it.
NFL 2-point conversion rates hover around 43%. Using this figure, the chances a team will be unsuccessful on conversions twice in a row is calculated as 32.48% (.57 * .57). So, using this strategy, a team would have a 43% chance at winning, a 32.5% chance at losing, and a 24.5% chance at sending the game to overtime, as opposed to a 100% chance of sending the game to overtime. Also, this assumes that an extra point is a given, while the actual conversion rate is 94%, which only helps to bolster my argument.
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