Why Football Teams Shouldn’t Wait to Go for Two Late in Games
By: Connor Groel
Tags: Analytics, Strategy, Football, Sports, NFL

Why Football Teams Shouldn’t Wait to Go for Two Late in Games

Amazingly, NFL teams still haven’t figured this one out.

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash

Late in the second part of Week 1’s Monday Night Football doubleheader, the Denver Broncos found themselves trailing 24–9 to the Oakland Raiders. With two minutes and 15 seconds remaining, Joe Flacco threw a touchdown pass to Emmanuel Sanders. Brandon McManus kicked the extra point, making the game 24–16.

“So what?”

If this reads as pretty standard to you, it’s because Broncos coach Vic Fangio made the decision that most teams and coaches would have made. However, Fangio made a huge error here, one that lowered Denver’s chances of winning the game.

After the touchdown, down 24–15, they elected to kick the extra point. In reality, the Broncos offense should have stayed on the field. They should have gone for two.

(It wasn’t even the only major mistake the Broncos made in the fourth quarter. Trailing 21–6 earlier on their previous drive, the Broncos kicked a field goal instead of going for it on fourth down. This still meant the Broncos would need to score two touchdowns. For more on this mistake, read this. Additionally, I believe they should have attempted an onside kick down 24–16, though I don’t have all the data to prove that. Anyways, back to the decision to kick the extra point.)

Opting to go for two goes completely against normal thinking, which suggests a team should keep the game within reach as long as possible. Under this mindset, if a team can reduce their deficit to eight points by kicking an extra point, it makes it a one-score game. This applies pressure on the other team since if they don’t score, the trailing team can tie the game on their next drive with a touchdown followed by a two-point conversion.

Compare that to if a team goes for two on their first touchdown drive, when down nine points. If they succeed, it’s a seven-point game. They’ve just gotten the two-point conversion early. However, if they fail, it remains a nine-point, two-possession game. The other team can relax, as the game is still basically over.

Just weighing the two options naturally, the first choice — to kick the extra point after the first touchdown, leading to an eight-point deficit — seems like the better choice to keep the game competitive.

Most people assume this to be the case. In fact, until last season, I had never even considered that going for two earlier would be beneficial, for the same reasons I just described. This is why I don’t mock fans for thinking this way before they’re told about the benefits of going for two early.

However, teams should know better. Making the right choices is their job. The problem with choosing to go for two on the final drive is precisely that teams view it as their final drive of regulation. Their only mission is to give themselves a chance at that two-point conversion before the clock hits zero.

When the conversion is successful, that’s great. They get to play overtime. But when it fails, the game is over. There’s usually not enough time to get the ball back again.

If only there were a way to know ahead of time whether or not the two-point conversion would be successful…

Oh, right. You go for it early. When a team decides to go for it early and succeeds, they get the same benefit of converting later on — namely, that they only need two possessions to erase a 15-point deficit.

When they are unsuccessful, though, they gain the information of knowing they still need to score two more times while more time is on the clock. This allows them to adapt to the situation accordingly, whether this means using timeouts earlier, attempting an onside kick, or using a faster-paced offense.

It doesn’t massively improve a team’s odds — if you miss the two-point conversion, you almost always lose anyway. But just because it rarely ultimately matters doesn’t mean teams should use less-than-optimal strategies.

Once again, I think a big issue here is that coaches are playing not to look dumb instead of playing to maximize their chances of winning.

If a team scores a touchdown in the closing seconds of regulation but fails the two-point conversion, the coach can still say his team gave themselves a chance at the end. If they missed the two-point conversion earlier, it doesn’t look as good, as it’s still a two-possession game.

It’s counterintuitive, but going for two early is clearly the better choice. Yet, somehow, many teams haven’t figured this out, and some fans, even after being given the explanation, still insist it’s better to wait. This drives me up a wall.

Once Vic Fangio’s Broncos kicked the ball off trailing by eight points, their offense never got the ball back again. This means it’s impossible to truly know whether or not they would’ve been able to tie the game.

I do know one thing, though. If things didn’t work out, they wouldn’t be prepared for Plan B. There wouldn’t have been enough time.