NFL Week 10 Sunday Night Football: Colts@ Chargers

[Moozh]

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Jesus, do you people not realize that a 29 yard field goal is easier for an NFL kicker than a 24 yarder when you're kicking it from the hash? The angle's the only thing that can make it remotely missable and the angle's easier from further out.

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Since the hashes are at the width of the uprights, I don't think this is the case.

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This interested me so I looked up the dimensions.

Field goal pole is 9.75' from center.
Hash is 20' from center.

Hash to pole distances are thus 10.25' and 29.75'.

Kicks are 72' and 87' respectively.

Thus, angle for the 24 yarder is 14.348 degrees.
The angle for the 29 yarder is 12.159 degrees.

Second one is more difficult.

But to factor how much more difficult, you need to find the standard deviation of a kicker's (or more specifically, Vinitari's) error from the center (in degrees) and turn that into a probability distribution.

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Are you sure you are looking at dimentions for an NFL field. It's different than college.

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Not at all. Feel free to correct me if you find different measurements. It's basic geometry stuff... arctans and all that.

[kyro]

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Edge,

Do you want your title changed to "kicked in HS and college for 5 years"? I can provide that service free of charge. Check one:

[x] yes
[ ] no

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Personally, I'd take any custom title over the piece of crap "carpal tunnel" title I have now.

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hahahahah

love your new title

[Kneel B4 Zod]

ok, some basic analysis I did. I looked up my old version of The Hidden Game of Football, and I found this date.

from 1982-1986, FG attempts from 20-29 yards were 89% successful.

this data is 20+ years old; given that we now know that extra points (= 20 yard FG's) are
96% successful, and kickers are much better now, I think it's fair to assume that that 89% figure is now up 5% higher: 94%. So if we know that 20 yarders are made at 96% ish, and we can guess that the average between 20-29 is 94%, I think a likely current distribution is something like this:

20 96.5%
21 96.0%
22 95.5%
23 95.0%
24 94.5%
25 94.0%
26 93.5%
27 93.0%
28 92.5%
29 92.0%

meaning going from 24% to 29% probably changes the kick from 94% to 92%

that analysis is far from perfect, but the #'s intuitively make sense.

[kyro]

I forget, where was the ball on the field? Left/right hashmark or dead center?

[Jack of Arcades]

Left hash.

[kyro]

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Left hash.

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If Vinatieri's chances of making actually decrease from 24 to 29 from the left hash, it's miniscule.

(I have never been a kicker, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express like 2 years ago)

[D104]

Vinateri's miss makes me hate the Pats even more.

D

[Kneel B4 Zod]

I think you could make the argument that Dungy's wasted TO arguing the false start call hurt the teams wins expectancy a lot more than the call itself.

give Manning another 40 seconds, and the odds of him making a game winning drive go way up

[RacersEdge]

Dungy just said they should have gone for it on 4th down there at the end. Huh?? SD offense was in self-destruct mode - very small chance they even get a long FG attempt - especially in the rain.

[Richard Tanner]

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I think you could make the argument that Dungy's wasted TO arguing the false start call hurt the teams wins expectancy a lot more than the call itself.

give Manning another 40 seconds, and the odds of him making a game winning drive go way up

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Ding! This was another "one play" that obviously changed the outcome quite a bit. I have no idea why he used that TO and from the post-game conference, he doesn't either.

Cody