Watching the Raiders-Jets game yesterday got me irritated. With time winding down, the Jets lined up for a game tying field goal. The ball is snapped and the kick is on the way and BAM! the ball strikes the upright and bounces no good. Game over, pat yourselves on the backs Raiders for a well fough- wait your placeholder of a coach decided to wait until the last second to call a timeout. Feeley gets another crack at it and the ball sails true. Oakland goes on to win in OT but the way regulation played out annoyed me enough to hope that the Jets pulled the game out. (I recovered from this malady quickly no worries) It got me to thinking about what the idea is behind this wait-until-the-ball-is-snapped-on-an-important-field goal-against-to-call-timeout is. Here's what I got:
Let's say the chance of a kicker making any kick is p,
then the chance of missing is 1 - p.
The distribution for all miss/hit combinations is:
p * (1 - p) = p - p^2 (Hits then misses Yeah!)
p * p = p^2 (Hits both times Oh well we tried.)
(1 - p) * p = p - p^2 (Misses then hits Oops!)
(1 - p) * (1 - p) = 1 - 2p + p^2 (Misses then misses Phwew!)
The desired outcome is either hits then misses (preferred) or at least misses then misses.
What is the probability of this you ask?
p - p^2 + 1 - 2p + p^2 = 1 - p which you may know better as the probability that the kicker misses in the first place. Brilliant.
All this technique actually does prolong games unnecessarily; exposing players to injuries without benefiting the team that pulls the stunt in any way. Unless you still believe in "icing the kicker". Bush league psyche-out isht man. Laughable.
