Patriot plod past inept Jets

» Posted by GridIronMine on December 16, 2007«

This article appears in the Patriots Football Weekly and PFW online. The VF percentages quoted in this article refer to the graph presented in the hardcopy of the PFW, which uses team-dependent VF. The online tools use the team-independent (or NFL average) VF.

(click to enlarge)

The Patriots started week 15 as a the largest favorite in the history of GridIronMine's Victory Forecast (VF) system. At the opening kick, the Pats had an almost certain 98% chance to win.

Because of the large initial advantage, there were really no key plays in the first half that caused any significant swings in VF. The most important play for the Jets was obviously the blocked punt returned for a touchdown. But that only resulted in a 3% VF increase for the Jets. While a small absolute increase, this represented a more than doubling of the Jets chance to win: from 2% to 5%.

The second half was also relatively event free, as each team scored only 3 points. There were two plays of note. The first was the Jets' decision to attempt a 33 yard field goal on 4th and 1, down 17-7. Considering the distance to make the first down and the time left in the game (6:18), the Jets should have gone for the first down. Interestingly, their VF did not increase at all upon making the field goal, despite narrowing the deficit to 7 points---again, this is because the GridIronMine VF system expects the Jets to go for the first down.

The other key play was the reversal of the touchdown catch by McCareins. This was clearly not a catch and was correctly reversed upon review. If this catch would have stood, the Jets would have increased their VF to 15%---not good, but much better than anyone thought possible before the game. However, the incompletion kept the Jets' VF at 7%. Subsequently on the drive, Nugent missed a field goal, which increased the Patriots' VF to 99%. Even if the field goal were made, the Patriots still would have a VF of 93%.

GridIronMine.com Nugget

In 2007, 43% of NFL games have been decided by seven or fewer points (47% by 8 or fewer). Many of these games come down to a single drive near the end of the game, where end-game coaching decisions are extremely important. This nugget, as well as future nuggets, will investigate proper use of timeouts. When a coach uses his timeouts in the right way, what would otherwise be a loss can turn into a win.

Before we go into details, we want to emphasize that determining the proper use of timeouts is not trivial. A head coach has many duties and doing addition and subtraction on the fly is something that GridIronMine.com believes should be the sole duty of a dedicated assistant coach.

In week 10, there were several high-profile misuses of timeouts. The one that generated the most attention was Tony Dungy's timeout in the Colts/Chargers game that was used to argue an illegal shift penalty right before Adam Vinatieri missed a chip-shot field goal. In fact, Dungy apologized, saying he should not have used the timeout to argue a call. While it is true that he shouldn't have called the timeout, it was not the only misuse of a timeout in that game. The rest of this nugget will focus on one situation---to show the complexity of calling timeouts in the proper manner.

The situation begins just a few plays before the missed field goal after the Colts completed a pass in bounds to Joseph Addai to the 15 yard line. There was 2:52 to go at the end of this play, with the Chargers leading 23-21, and the Chargers had two timeouts left. Norv Turner correctly determined that he needed to use timeouts on defense, anticipating that otherwise the Colts would run the clock out and win the game on a Vinatieri field goal. (While Vinatieri missed, a chip-shot field goal of that distance is made over 90% of the time, so Turner has to coach assuming Vinatieri is going to make the field goal.)

Turner called a timeout before the first down play, at 2:44 to go. On first down, the Colts ran the ball for 3 yards, in bounds. Turner then called the Chargers' last timeout at 2:36, after this play. On second down, the Colts ran the ball for 4 yards, in bounds, which took the clock down to the two-minute warning. On third down, they ran the ball for 2 yards, in bounds, which should have left the Chargers, after a made field goal, with about 1:05 to go (following the kickoff). If the Chargers had not used their timeouts, the Colts would have run their first down play before 2:12 (40 seconds from 2:52, when the previous play ended) and, assuming they run the ball in bounds, their second down play right after the two-minute warning. Basically, the Chargers used two timeouts to force the Colts to run one extra play before the two-minute warning. This is a very poor return on investment.

One clear mistake was that Turner waited eight seconds to call the first timeout. Had he called the timeout immediately (at 2:52 to go), it is possible that he would have forced the Colts to run three plays before the two minute warning, giving his team about 1:50 to score following the kickoff after the made field goal---an entire 45 additional seconds, which is an enormous difference. However, there is no guarantee because the first two plays might have taken the clock down to 2:00. Additionally, as we will explain in a future nugget, the defense never wants to allow the offense to run a play that will start before 2:00 to go and end after 2:00 to go.

The optimal way to use the timeouts instead would have been to wait until after the two minute warning to start calling them. Under this scenario, the Colts would have had to snap the first down play at 2:12 (again, 40 seconds from 2:52). Assuming the play ended in bounds, the two-minute warning would occur. Assuming then that the Colts ran two more in-bounds plays without getting the first down (which did in fact occur), the Chargers would have been able to call both timeouts, giving them approximately 1:40 to go following the kickoff after the made field goal---35 additional seconds.

Of course, this is just one situation. Next week we will give general rules of thumb for calling timeouts.