There Were 35 Plays More Costly To The Patriots Than Stephen Gostkowski’s Missed Extra Point

Interesting article, I find this kind of stuff fascinating. I'd love to see their take on going for it on 4th down vs taking the field goal.

There Were 35 Plays More Costly To The Patriots Than Stephen Gostkowski’s Missed Extra Point
There Were 35 Plays More Costly To The Patriots Than Stephen Gostkowski’s Missed Extra Point

As you may notice in the footnotes of the paper, they rely a lot of ESPN Stats and Info for the win %.

According to ESPN, the Vikings had a better chance to WIN at the beginning of the 4th quarter than the second before a 27 yard field goal which is kicked successfully 95% of the time? I just don't understand how the win % before the last play of the game was not 95% in the Vikings favor and how with an entire quarter left to play with a small lead they would have a better chance.

Seahawks 10, Vikings 9: More wild win-probability swings

Agreed. The xp shouldn't have mattered to be honest. It hurt us yeah but The main culprits were ol, turnovers, and a questionable 4th down decision.

PATSYLICIOUS said:

Agreed. The xp shouldn't have mattered to be honest. It hurt us yeah but The main culprits were ol, turnovers, and a questionable 4th down decision.

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The O line bothered me the whole game. It had to be one of the worst O line performances witnessed in a AFCCG.

I'm convinced that the decision to go for it on 4th down included the fear of not getting back into the red zone with that crappy ass O line.

Maybe the article takes the win probability model a bit too far. But there are 8-10 plays that went Denver's way - reverse any one of them and potentially change the outcome of the game. But that's pretty much true of any close game in the NFL.

The media narrative is that Denver crushed NE. Truth be told, the margin of victory was razor thin. The very same loudmouth Broncos that had it all the way were soiling their undergarments after the Gronk TD. If they get to OT, it's NE's game to lose because HGHead was looking for a place to fall down for the better part of the second half.

Denver did what they had to do to win. Congrats to them but lets not get carried away, because it was that close to going the other way.

The problem with using win probability as your measuring gauge is that it will be skewed towards the late-game action.

Plus, I have to question the logic behind the approach when they say there are 35 plays more costly than the XP miss, but oh by the way the single most costly play was the failed 2 point conversation which would have been a 1 point conversion if the first XP was successful.

The botched extra point was certainly NOT the cause of the loss however it did present an extra unneeded hurdle to jump later in what became a very close game.

blaming gostkowski would be pretty boneheaded -- he just gets heat 'cuz the camera's right on him when he makes his mistake, and he makes so few mistakes that this one stands out.
brady's picks didn't influence the outcome?
how about various players around brady that might've contributed to those picks?
how about a laundry list of players not doing their jobs that killed drives?

Tony2046 said:

The O line bothered me the whole game. It had to be one of the worst O line performances witnessed in a AFCCG.

I'm convinced that the decision to go for it on 4th down included the fear of not getting back into the red zone with that crappy ass O line.

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It was one of the worse ever, with BB as a head coach.

But it is not 100% on the O-line. They were put in a position to fail. Wade Phillip's philosophy was "We're going to treat every down like it's a passing down, damn the run. Even if they run, they won't get more than 10 on us." And unfortunately no adjustments were made in response to this.

There's an image in my head that's going to stick there for some time- it's the image of Cannon on the ground in a three point stance, with Von Miller lined up wide of him in an obvious pass-rushing stance, and Cannon was all by himself.

That is being put in a position to fail, every single time.

PP2 said:

It was one of the worse ever, with BB as a head coach.

But it is not 100% on the O-line. They were put in a position to fail. Wade Phillip's philosophy was "We're going to treat every down like it's a passing down, damn the run. Even if they run, they won't get more than 10 on us." And unfortunately no adjustments were made in response to this.

There's an image in my head that's going to stick there for some time- it's the image of Cannon on the ground in a two point stance, with Von Miller lined up wide of him in an obvious pass-rushing stance, and Cannon was all by himself.

That is being put in a position to fail, every single time.

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Just heard Jaworski say that he thinks somebody was cluing them in to the snap count. He wasn't sure if it was the way someone was standing etc....but they must have known something to get off the ball that quickly.

EDIT: I'm not implying cheating.

The level of difficulty matters too. Picks are expected. Missing 30yd fgs aren't as expected.

To those who say " the extra point miss did not matter", etc - it was the SOLE reason why the game did not go to overtime!!

Obviously everyone is aware that the extra point try has been moved back this year to the point in which it is no longer automatic, but our minds are not yet trained to think of it that way yet. We still think of an extra point miss as the worst thing a kicker could do.

Another obvious point is that we don't want Ghostkowski to miss ANY kicks, but the odd reality that our minds have trouble coming to grips with is the fact that if he were to miss any kick in that game it's actually preferred that it was the extra point try. After all, if he misses a field goal that's 3 points off the board instead of 1.

We are all getting bent out of shape over the stigma of missing an extra point try. If he had missed a 33 yard field goal in the first quarter we'd all be mad but would somehow be far more understanding (even though it would have cost the team more points).

Bottom line: Even though we know otherwise our minds are still trained to think of an extra point as a 'given' and psychologically hurts more. This may change over time but it's clear that we are not there yet.

Just imagine if Ghost had made the first quarter PAT and then missed the one in the final seconds, leaving the score 19-20 with 11 seconds left. That would've stung.

Zeus said:

Maybe the article takes the win probability model a bit too far. But there are 8-10 plays that went Denver's way - reverse any one of them and potentially change the outcome of the game. But that's pretty much true of any close game in the NFL.

The media narrative is that Denver crushed NE. Truth be told, the margin of victory was razor thin. The very same loudmouth Broncos that had it all the way were soiling their undergarments after the Gronk TD. If they get to OT, it's NE's game to lose because HGHead was looking for a place to fall down for the better part of the second half.

Denver did what they had to do to win. Congrats to them but lets not get carried away, because it was that close to going the other way.

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To add onto this, the narrative for 3 of the Patriots SB is they barely won, because the margin was 3 points. But when the Patriots lose by 2 points, the story is they got their butts kicked and it wasn't that close.

Tony2046 said:

Just heard Jaworski say that he thinks somebody was cluing them in to the snap count. He wasn't sure if it was the way someone was standing etc....but they must have known something to get off the ball that quickly.

EDIT: I'm not implying cheating.

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Wasn't it stork who gave it away?

The only play more costly than the missed XP was the missed 2 point conversion.

TommyBrady12 said:

Wasn't it stork who gave it away?

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He didn't say who or what they keyed in on but I would think they would have changed things up to draw them off sides or something.

To be fair if you were a Denver fan you could say that there were two low probability plays that went the Pats way that even made it 'a game' in the first place.

Take the lateral, I could have VERY easily seen the refs just sticking with the ruling on the field.

4th and 10 bomb to Gronk, we've all seen the Pats success (or lack there of) when going deep

Without those two plays we are looking at an absolute blow out

Frankly, boiling stuff down go individual plays is a waste of time. Even positive plays in hindsight can affect the outcome negatively. If Amendola doesn't fight for the first down and get 4 and 1 we likely kick the FG instead of going for it.
Overall, the Broncos were more physical, if they didn't get to Brady they still hit him, and they manhandled the receivers. As bad as the OL was, Edelman and DA weren't getting open quick enough, and Gronk was getting mugged. Not blaming Edelman, but if he was able to get open quickly, the OL issues would have been masked like they were all year. You also have to be able to run at the 5 or 6 hole effectively to keep the ends from lining up ttoo wide where they Tackles can't get them, or keep a tight end in to help, which would have meant fewer receivers.