FanPost

Lets put the let them score argument to rest



I don't know of any head coach who will want to let the other team score. In fact in the Free Head Exam, that Seifert does every week, he addresses this specifically. I'll quote below:

  1. Coach Leslie Frazier has deserved some criticism this year, but let's cut him a break from demands that he should have allowed the Broncos to score once an interception gave them possession at the Vikings' 15-yard line. As the theory goes, the Vikings would have been better off giving the Broncos a 39-32 lead and then launching their own potential game-tying drive rather than letting the Broncos run off the rest of the clock and kick a short field goal to win. I checked with ESPN's analytics team to see if the Vikings would have increased their mathematical win probability with such an unorthodox move. The short answer from Alok Pattani was no, based on an ESPN model built off thousands of individual play results over the past decade. The Broncos had a 95.3 percent chance to win the game the moment they made the interception. Had the Vikings allowed an immediate touchdown, their chances of driving the field for a touchdown on their ensuing possession and ultimately winning the game in overtime was 2.5 percent. So statistically speaking, the Vikings had a better chance of stopping the Broncos' final possession, as they tried to do, than pulling off a non-traditional miracle.


Basically, with statistics, the Vikings had a 4.7% chance to win the game after the Broncos picked Ponder off. Their chances of driving 80 yards with no time outs for a game tying (sp) touch down ... 2.5%, and then you have to worry about overtime, and a coin toss, and all that work would be for naught.

Yes, we did ultimately lose, but chances are that even if we'd hvae let them score, we would have lost anyway.

This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.