An old post from our friends at Football Outsiders, but a great one. With Mike McCarthy claiming that the reason he ran the ball so much in the last five minutes yesterday was that he wanted to get "20 rushing attempts in the second half. I felt that would be a very important target to hit for our offense” (Courtesy Bill Barnwell of Grantland), it's time to extrapolate his commonly-held misconception that running a lot in the second half causes victories. It's the other way around, dingbats! You run the ball because you're in the lead and you're trying to kill the clock!
So, the obvious conclusion we draw from this "logic" - what else happens when you're leading in the second half? Particularly the very LATE second half? Kneel downs. This post shows* how teams that have at least TWO kneel down plays in the second half win 90% of the games! With that kind of logic, why wouldn't you start kneeling as soon as you get the ball? "Kneel, kneel, kneel, PUNT! Kneel, kneel, kneel, PUNT!"Ah yes...I can hear the cheerleaders now...
Here's my favorite paragraph of the article:
In games in which the quarterback did not kneel at all, teams average 18.4 points per game. When the quarterback knelt once in a game, teams averaged 20.2 points. In games with two kneels, teams averaged 22.1 points per game. By simple linear regression (a method that relates one variable to another and allows statisticians to extrapolate predictions), it follows that if a team calls 40 quarterback kneels in a game, they will score 92.4 points per game. (Our emphasis.)
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