[vhawk01]

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How much smaller of an area do they have to defend? On what planet is there a 4th and 1 from the 50 and there are NOT 8 guys in the box? I really dont get this. Yeah for some teams they have to respect some TINY chance of them throwing a deep bomb. But that doesnt mean they are lining guys up 20 yards down field or putting 6-7 guys in the box. There are always 8 in the box, safeties are always up, and no one is more than 11 or so yards from the LOS.

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Find some 4th down from the 1 yard line stats and show me I'm wrong. But I maintain there is no way the safeties and cornerbacks can commit to the line of scrimmage on a 4th and 1 in the middle of the field, like they can when just defending the end zone. It's far from a tiny risk, there is no CB in the league who can let Bolden or Fitz get behind them without giving up a free touchdown from anywhere on the field.

I'll say this one more time to make myself clear. I will bet Wiz knows the odds better than anyone on this thread. He adjusted for some in game data, like the effectiveness of his line and the Forty Niner's goal line defense, and his estimate of the Card's likelihood of winning in OT. He'd already gone for it once on 4th down at the one, so he had some insight into the likely SF defense. And he'd already call a pass play with 6 seconds left that could have ended the game on an incompletion, interception or a fumbled snap, so he wasn't that afraid of looking stupid.

Anyone who has actual stats likely can't make the case that there was anywhere near a 25% better chance of winning in regulation by going for it. My guess is it is no more than a 5% difference at best.

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Also, the fact that like 99% of the time, for any coach, they are ALWAYS kicking the FG in this spot, detracts a little bit from your conjecture about how Wiz was taking into consideration all of the game-specific variables and his team percentages and came to the conclusion that kicking the FG was...well, still like a 5 or 10% hit on his win%, which isnt that great since its STILL wrong, but thats not my point. If sometimes coaches kicked and sometimes they didnt, I might believe you that this coach took into consideration things that we dont know about and was actually making an intelligent decision. The fact that coaches NEVER go for it here, regardless of circumstances, makes it a lot more likely that Wiz was just doing what every other coach does in this spot.