Going for it is clearly the correct call. If you punt, any live Vegas book will have a line no worse than Indy +200. If you go for it, you win the game > 66.7% when you make it.
Colts/Pats 4th and 2
Written on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 4:53 am by whitelimeFiled under Non-baseball sports.
November 17th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I don’t know how to do the EV calcs but I’ll throw some numbers out there.
The Pats 4th down conversion rate on the year was around 78%.
If the Pats convert, they win. If they don’t, they lose around 85% of the time based on the momentum of the game and giving up good field positioning to the Colts.
If they punt, they win around 80% of the time. Even the great Peyton Manning would have a tough time going 70-75 yards with only one timeout.
Why give the Colts a real good chance to win the game 1/4th the time when they can just punt it and win 80% of the time?
My numbers might be slightly off, but they’re close.
Bad call.