Imagine you’re an NFL head coach. After a brilliant two-minute drill, your offense just scored to pull within one point with seconds left in regulation.
That leaves you with an important choice: do you kick a high percentage extra point and send the game to overtime, where your offense may not see the ball again? Or do you send that offense back onto the field, snap the ball from the two-and-a-half yard line, and attempt a riskier two-point conversion that will ensure the game is won or lost after 60 minutes of official time?
In Week 12, two coaches in dire need of big wins stared down that same decision. Each chose the high-risk, high-reward instant gratification of a two-point conversion. Each walked away with a come-from-behind win.
CLUTCHHHHHH#BALvsJAX on CBS pic.twitter.com/Jw3A0liLc6
— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) November 27, 2022
The first saw the Jacksonville Jaguars turn what had been a 94.9 percent win probability for the Baltimore Ravens on its ear. Trevor Lawrence, playing arguably his finest game as a pro, harnessed the momentum of a 10-play, 75-yard drive in under two minutes to shock the Ravens. His strike to Zay Jones at the edge of his drag route was perfectly on the money and, most importantly, put his team up 28-27 with 14 seconds to play.
Two points and the lead for the @Chargers!
📺: #LACvsAZ on CBS
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/zq8Igx8Ckq pic.twitter.com/6wCBSXmtq3— NFL (@NFL) November 28, 2022
Chargers head coach Brandon Staley, a man oft-derided for his willingness to go for it on fourth-and-short but an inability to actually convert these plays — he’s only eight of 19 on fourth down attempts this fall — pushed his luck again after rallying from an early 10-0 deficit against the Arizona Cardinals. A quick inside throw to Gerald Everett was enough to crush a Cardinal defense playing too far off the ball and dropped Kliff Kingsbury to 4-8 in what will likely be his final season as an NFL head coach.
In both cases, teams that had been outplayed assessed their chances of surviving overtime and decided that playing less football was the right choice. The Ravens had outgained the Jaguars 6.1 yards per play to 5.4 Sunday afternoon. Hours later, the Cardinals held a 5.7 to 4.9 advantage over the Chargers. Win probability models favored both Arizona and Baltimore in the event either team made it to the extra period.
(The Raiders stared down a similar conundrum after scoring with 1:54 remaining. Josh McDaniels kicked the extra point, then won in overtime after two different game-winning Seattle drives failed. But Las Vegas held a distinct yardage advantage over the host Seahawks Sunday, which helped his cause).
Through 11 weeks, teams had attempted 77 two-point conversions in 2022 (per Stathead). They’d converted 36 of those, for a 46.8 percent mark — a rate roughly one percent lower than last year’s 47.7. That average is actually worse in the fourth quarter; defenses have gotten a stop in 30 of 51 attempts in the final frame for a 41.2 percent success rate. That’s also lower than last year, where teams converted 52 of 108 attempts in the fourth (48.2 percent)
Within the small sample size of 2022 fourth quarters, this suggests baseline analysis would actually advise against going for it, though different games have different scenarios — like, say, when your team is getting outgained by nearly a yard per play and the odds of surviving overtime are low. If you sort those numbers down even further an advantage unfurls; teams going for two in the final two minutes of the game in a one-possession game converted exactly half the time (four of eight), a number that’s now 60 percent after Sunday’s wins.
This is all to say there’s no slam dunk data backing a coach’s choice to go for two and finish a game in regulation rather than plan for overtime. It’s more a remedy for flawed teams who’d benefit from playing less football — the Chargers or Jaguars in Week 12, or the New York Giants back in Week 1 when they upset the Tennessee Titans — than it is a proven indicator of wins and losses.
Had either team failed Sunday, their coaches likely would have gotten roasted, even if an all-or-nothing shot was their best chance. That’s life in the NFL. What we know right now is that the two-point conversion hits a little less often than a coin flip, so it makes sense that coaches aren’t going for it every chance they get.
But with momentum on their side and facing an uphill battle in overtime, that spot at the two-yard line is a blessing for needy NFL teams. You don’t need the numbers to tell you to go for it if you’ve got Trevor Lawrence or Justin Herbert dealing and a comeback on the brink of completion. That’s a worthy dice roll to make — and one we should begrudgingly get behind, even when it fails.
