If going for two when down eight is a winning strategy, why doesn’t anyone do it? Because—just as in the case of punting on a short fourth down—kicking the PAT minimizes the chance you’ll look dumb. As SportsQuant’s David Annis explains, the extra-point strategy decreases your chances of losing in regulation while increasing your overall chance of losing the game. As a consequence, Annis writes, it seems the typical football coach “really isn’t trying to maximize his chances of winning. Rather he’s attempting to prolong his defeat.”
My correspondent Walter Sun suggests there’s a simple way to get risk-averse, play-not-to-lose coaches to come around to the right way of thinking. “If you go for two when down eight, you not only improve your win probability (the sound mathematical reason), you also control your own fate (the reason fans/management will accept),” Sun says. Even in the age of the NFL’s new, fairer overtime system, the team that wins the OT coin toss still holds the advantage. “In a sport where the phrase ‘controlling your own destiny’ is overused,” Sun continues, this is the one time the cliché makes sense. Come on, NFL coaches—do you really want your fate to depend on whether a coin comes up heads?