Quote Originally Posted by RJSizzle:
This is your worst post in this thread.
You cant say go for it and win. Its impossible. You cant assume the game would have been the same if a different play is made.
Let me elaborate in case you dont get it....
If Eli doesnt throw one of those picks in the first quarter, we dont know what would have happened the rest of the game.
If they kick the FG there, you cannot, you just cannot, make the assumption that the game plays out the same. The Giants could have returned the kick for a TD. The Giants could have fumbled the kickoff. A myriad of things could happen.
Once you change one play, you change the rest of the plays after it.
You cannot assume that the game stays the same. The plays are the same. The game is called the same.
Thats a lot of assuming for someone hammering 'math' down everyones throats.
All of this is true. What you really need to do is estimate the probability of all events and run simulations many times from the key decision point. Obviously, you can't do it at the time but you can do it after the fact. Post mortems help for future games.
When you run this decision through a simulator, you'd pick up many more wins from going for it and making it than you'd lose by going for it and missing.
Whats interesting about this is that announcers etc. always (and I mean always) bring up the fact that a team would have been tied or winning if they went for it instead of kicking the fg, missed and then lost by 3 or less. The "anything can happen" disclaimor never seems to apply there.
I have never once heard an announcer bring up the fact that making that "go for it" decision was the reason they won when a team goes for it, makes it and then eventually wins by 4 or less.
Implicitally, the assumptions seem to be that if you kick everything else will go your way later. If you go, everything else will go against you. This is just stupid. Do you make these sort of assumptions when you are capping games? If you do, thank you. You're helping to make me big profits.