Picture this situation: You're the coach of a football team with a 23-game losing streak, leading by three points in the first quarter, with the ball on your opponent's 43-yard line. Only problem is, it's fourth down, and you've still got a yard to go for a first down. Do you go for it, or do you settle for punting the ball out of bounds around the opponent's 10-yard line?
If you're Duke head coach Carl Franks, you go for it; at least, that was Franks' decision in the season opener against East Carolina. As it turned out, the choice was vindicated. Quarterback Chris Dapolito eluded defenders for a 29-yard gain, and the drive ended in a touchdown en route to a 23-16 Blue Devil victory.
Of course, the decision doesn't always pay off, as Duke learned in a 26-21 loss to Northwestern in which the Blue Devils lost possession on downs three times in the fourth quarter, each time near midfield. Franks called for quarterback Adam Smith to pass on fourth down with one, six and two yards to go, respectively, but all three passes fell incomplete.
It's the uncertainty of success, and the finality of failure, that lead many teams to go for it on fourth down in a few specific--and rare--situations. In the ACC, teams opt for the conversion about 15 percent of the time.
The Blue Devils are a bit more ambitious than average, attempting fourth-down conversions 21 percent of the time; only Wake Forest is more aggressive at 22 percent.
"If you're behind you might as well go for it," Franks said. "At some point it doesn't matter--doesn't matter if you get beat by 14 or 44. Some times you go for it on fourth down because you're trying to score. Sometimes you go for it on fourth down because you have a good play. There's a lot of reasons for it. I don't mind going for it. It depends how the game's going, the field position we're in, the way the defense is playing. There's a lot to it. I'd say most people are conservative. In the NFL, they're very conservative."
Apparently, Franks' conclusion rests on sound mathematical footing. Using an economic formula--the Bellman equation--and three years of NFL play-by-play data, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley wrote a paper this year analyzing the value of having the ball in different field positions and the expected gain of a fourth-down play. The professor, David Romer, determined that teams should be much more aggressive.
That advice probably applies to college teams as well, Romer said. ?My guess is that the conclusions would be similar, but I have not looked at college data at all,? he wrote in an e-mail.
Romer suggested that the best strategy is for teams to go for it, even on their own half of the field, if there are as many as four yards to go. Around midfield, the distance to a first down can be even greater. And once a team is within its opponent?s five-yard line, the paper says, it?s almost always worth going for a touchdown rather than settling for the guaranteed field goal.
If a team goes for a touchdown with a three-sevenths chance of scoring or a field goal with a 100 percent chance of scoring, they can expect an average of three points either way, he explained. But if they fail to score the touchdown they leave the other team in poor field position, much worse than they would be in after the kickoff following a field goal.
?Teams? actual choices are dramatically more conservative than those recommended by the dynamic programming analysis,? Romer wrote, particularly in the first quarter. ?On the 1,100 fourth downs where the analysis implies that teams are on average better off going for it, they kicked 992 times.?
Romer estimated that by improving strategies like these, a team would win an additional game each season about 75 percent of the time. Even the Blue Devils are too conservative, according to Romer?s formulas. So far this year, all the fourth down conversions that the team has attempted have come in one of two situations: when there?s one yard to go, usually around midfield, and when Duke is trailing in the fourth quarter. Still, the Blue Devils are confident that they are going for fourth down enough.
?All the times we?ve gone for it so far?all the choices the coaching staff has made on going for it on fourth down?have been the correct decision,? Smith said.
For the year, the Blue Devils have attempted a fourth-down conversion 13 times?12, if you don?t count a fourth down Duke used to run out the clock at the very end of the ECU game. Five of those attempts have succeeded, meaning that has a .385 conversion percentage, compared to a .538 average across the ACC.
In his paper, Romer admitted that coaches have additional information that the model lacks, but said teams were so consistently conservative on fourth down, that alone does not explain the discrepancy.
?I think we?re [going for it] pretty much right,? offensive line coach Rich McGeorge said. ?Obviously the game dictates what we need to do. Against Louisville [when Duke was stopped short on a 4th-and-1 on their own 38 in the second quarter], we were having a hard time getting anything going, and we had an opportunity to get a first down, and get some momentum. But when that didn?t happen, it?s tough.
?Then [against Northwestern], the score and us being behind and the time on it was a factor,? McGeorge added. ?You have to look at the game itself.?
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.