Take the freaking points

[KillerGoose]

(10-10-2022, 10:34 AM)C0de_M0nkey Wrote: Football is one of the most complicated team sports in history. There are way too many variables to account for. You can’t say that kicking the field goal has a 41% chance of winning because no past team with the exact personnel, coaching staff, opponent, etc has kicked that field goal with the same score with the same weather, the same crowd noise, and the same stadium. There are way too many outside factors to calculate this number. Do you honestly believe that those numbers are accurate and we just got unlucky?

Maybe the average team had those probabilities with that score, but there’s way more to the decision than that. We’re not the average team over the past 50 or so years, and there are outside factors that the analytics cannot account for. You’re a fool if you delegate coaching decisions to analytics.

You can account for them, yes. We're just talking about data points and math. You don't have to act like analyzing football is solving quantum entanglement. At this point, we have millions of data points available to us with weather, stadium type, field position, player evaluations etc. Now, am I going to say that 41% is completely, 100% on the nose? No, but it is close enough to make a decision. It will also vary by model, of course, but only slightly. Situations like that have been played out so many times before, we have the dataset we need to calculate probabilities here and get us in the ballpark. 

I also agree, you don't delegate coaching decisions to analytics, which is a buzzword I hate. It's just math and statistics. They are tools used to help make decisions. 

Quote:Do you honestly believe that those numbers are accurate and we just got unlucky?

Yes, and no. Yes, I believe the numbers are accurate, or accurate enough to help make a decision. No, I don't believe the Bengals were unlucky. The odds were against them in that situation. They had <50% chance of converting the 4th down, and less than <50% chance of winning if they kicked the FG. I believe their luck played out exactly as the numbers said they would. They were slightly unlikely to convert (they didn't), which gave them an unlikely chance to win (they didn't).