Grantland posted a video of a high school FB coach that never punts on 4th down and only goes for onside kids. Based on analytics. Also, the archive footage is from CSN Houston. Interesting. No need for Marciano. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/AGDaOJAYHfo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If your tendencies are so strong that you do something like that in every situation, NFL teams will adjust and you will be annihilated.
This guy is my hero. That being said, this probably can only work for high school and if you listen to him, a lot of the time he's using specific stats for his specific team. NFL coaches are waaaaay to conservative though. There is so much analytics out there to support being more aggressive on 4th downs. I suggest reading Bill Barnwell's column every week.
I'm guessing if Morey were in the NFL, he'd go for on 4th down anytime the distance was less than 5 yards. Also, I have no doubt he'd always go for the 2 point conversion (until otherwise unnecessary). I don't think going for every onside kick is a good idea though, because the element of surprise is your biggest advantage there.
He says when they kick off the other team averages getting the ball at the 33. That may be par for high school football, but Marciano can even do better than that.
This may or may not work in the NFL. But you never really know until you try. I'd love to see some head coach do this one season, just to see how it worked. But I doubt it'll ever happen.
that's not a good percentage play even at 4th and 5. It depends completely on field position. 4th and 5 at your own 20 yard line, even if you make it you still have 75 yards to go to score, while you miss the opponent is giftwrapped 3 pts at least. as for 2 pt conversion, it has to do with your confidence in being able to convert. It only works out for you if you convert >50% of your tries
Actually, in the NFL, it's far worse. From 2012: http://espn.go.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/35597/kickoff-rule-change-has-big-effect-on-nfl Of course, coverage of onside-kicks is much better in the NFL. I doubt any team could recover 20%.
Of course you would consider field position and how good your defense is (as well as your field goal kicker, given you were on the other side of the 50), but the average NFL play this year gains 5.4 yards. That's where I got that number from. 2 point conversion, if it became a normalized thing (i.e. if teams trained more for it), would seemingly be a no-brainer in terms of success rate.
Thats proving my point. I realize I didn't make it clear that I am referring to the kicking team's performance as awful (Sorry). Not the returning. No NFL team would average letting the other team start at the 33 on kick-offs.
Well I mean nfl teams have a tendency to punt it every 4th down.. But seriously, it's interesting how he has a bunch of different inside kicks. That must be really hard to prepare for.
With the way they have been playing in the second half lately, they should just use the "go-ahead" offense, go-ahead and punt on first down and get it over with.
