Shoot your free throws underhand; Trade all your 1st round picks; Never punt (Podcast)

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Never punt

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4th down inside your own 5 and it's a one possession game...

Yeah, lets go for it.

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Never punt

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Dumb. This is extremely situational

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And "never punt" is a case of being fooled by statistics. Everything is situational.

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That's what smart people like Gladwell call the fallacy of the masses.

Emotional - general on the field - decisions - that look like you're being smart because it's "situational" but you're not playing chess as we fool everyone into thinking football is...you're playing the odds and repetition.

Situational matchups and dissecting who is on whom is the most overrated micro-management thing in football. You're not Einstein...you yell at people to tackle people. Saban or Carroll or even Belichick aren't geniuses. There was a great book years ago (forgot the title) but basically said what we were all thinking - this hero genius worship of football coaches is pathetic. I don't care if you're Bill Walsh. It's not quantum physics. It's a football play. And at its most complex is still pretty simple compared to lots of other things.

Gladwell and others have exposed the tall-tale adoration of coaches - especially basketball coaches.

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you're playing the odds and repetition.

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Most people are terrible at statistics, patterns, and probability.

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Most people are terrible at statistics, patterns, and probability.

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Right, especially dumbass coaches that made their careers out of something other than being smart. Former players, good talent evaluators, even good playcallers. And dumbass journalists who may be even worse. Also fans who are, on average, halfway on the bell curve by definition, and ultimately governed by emotion.

People are bad at understanding statistics, which is made worse by people being risk averse by nature. That's why you have stupid hard and fast rules about sitting players in "foul trouble" or even conventional wisdom about how to handle 4th down.

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So any 4th and 2 you go for no matter where you are on the field.

That doesn't seem very situational to me.

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That is, by definition, situational, since you just gave me two characteristics about the situation.

LINK there's the article if you want to read into how he arrived at that. I'm not claiming it's gospel, but it makes sense to me. Author is a retired Naval Aviator (USNA grad) that has done work for ESPN.

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Saban or Carroll or even Belichick aren't geniuses.

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No they are not but neither is Gladwell and they probably understand the flow of a football game and correct playcalling better than he does.

Sometimes the jocks know what they're doing and the math guys don't.

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Best career free throw shooters in NBA history:

1. Steve Nash = .9043 = OVERHAND
2. Mark Price = .9039 = OVERHAND
3. Stephen Curry = .9010 = OVERHAND
4. Peja Stojakovic = .8948 = OVERHAND
5. Chauncey Billups = .8940 = OVERHAND
6. Ray Allen = .8939 = OVERHAND
7. Rick Barry = .8931 = UNDERHAND
8. Calvin Murphy = .8916 = OVERHAND
9. Scott Skiles = .8891 = OVERHAND
10. J.J. Redick = .8881 = OVERHAND


Seems like the unnatural position is the better technique

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Seems like you're not too good with statistics. Consider the sample sizes. The amount of players that shot overhanded is well into the thousands. The amount of players that shot underhanded is probably 10 or 20. With an exponentially larger player pool, of course the top 10 is going to be mostly overhanded shooters.

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And "never punt" is a case of being fooled by statistics. Everything is situational.

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Another thing, would the current statistics utilized to make this statement ("never punt"), which are presumably derived under the framework of where teams are punting most of the time, going to carry over to a framework where teams are not punting?