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Tennessee at Baltimore (-10) Game Thread-Divisional Round (1 Viewer)

These are jokes right? No one actually thought he should have kicked a fg on 4th and inches down by 8.
He's lost many games over the years failing to put points on the board. Virtually every year he loses a game that they would have won if he kicked a FG. Whose to say that what the game looks like when they are down 5. Lots of things could have happened differently. Sure it was 4th & inches but here's the deal. Harbug and his revolutionary &analytical game got beat up by old school NFL football and thats what it usually takes in the playoffs. 

 
Missed the game tonight and just checked out the box score.  Damn, Tanny completed just 7 passes?  That's an old school win right there.
Game script and some happenstance was perfect for it. Used a short field off a turnover and penalties for the first score, a fifty yard strike for the second, a sixty yard Henry run to set up the TD for their third score, another twenty or so yard drive for their fourth. Other than that, it was just pounding the ball by Tennessee.

 
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He's lost many games over the years failing to put points on the board. Virtually every year he loses a game that they would have won if he kicked a FG. Whose to say that what the game looks like when they are down 5. Lots of things could have happened differently. Sure it was 4th & inches but here's the deal. Harbug and his revolutionary &analytical game got beat up by old school NFL football and thats what it usually takes in the playoffs. 
Wow someone really is that dumb. Congrats!

 
The guy attempted 60 passes and carried the ball 20 times. All other Balt players carried the ball 9 times. Jackson accounted for 90% of all offensive plays. They scored 12pts.

If it's not on him, I have no idea who it could possibly be on.
Coach? Play calling? Defense? Receivers? 

He takes a share, but he had no help. 

 
I think the 66 yard run they gave up to Henry on the subsequent drive might have played a bigger role.

Also, Ravens went like 0/2 on 4th and short, plus the failed 2PC. They just didn't have their short-yardage game going tonighr. Whether that was injuries or play calling, it wasn't there. An extra three points wasn't going to save them.
Boy, those analytics sure failed in their biggest game in years. May want to revisit that harbug because old style NFL football kicked your ###.

 
You can't be a slave to either the old football or new analytics. There's a synthesis to be had. eXP and what have you are only going to be worth their weight in quantifying personnel in a vacuum at that particular moment, then giving you a probability. I think we're still using down and distance generalizations to make microcosmal decisions.

He should have kicked the duck to make it 14-9. It's not college out there where you're putting up fifty against the Titans today. Forget it, reset it, and get back in the game. The way they play cost them tonight a few times when field position or points would have been better. 

 
You can't be a slave to either the old football or new analytics. There's a synthesis to be had. eXP and what have you are only going to be worth their weight in quantifying personnel in a vacuum at that particular moment, then giving you a probability. I think we're still using down and distance generalizations to make microcosmal decisions.

He should have kicked the duck to make it 14-9. It's not college out there where you're putting up fifty against the Titans today. Forget it, reset it, and get back in the game. The way they play cost them tonight a few times when field position or points would have been better. 
Disagree, my friend. I question the execution, but not the decision. 

Baltimore was not winning that game kicking FGs. They had been 8-8 on 4th and 1 this season. 

Bottom line is that the Ravens got their butts kicked last night. 

 
I was fine with the ravens going on 4th and inches down 14-6, but the major blunder was going on 4th and short early in the game on their side of the field. They got stopped and then it’s 13-0 a play later. I know they’d gone for it all season in that situation, but the offense was struggling early. Punt it and let your D work until the O gets it going a little. I like aggressive coaches, but the Ravens were too aggressive last night, and it bit them. 

 
Disagree, my friend. I question the execution, but not the decision. 

Baltimore was not winning that game kicking FGs. They had been 8-8 on 4th and 1 this season. 

Bottom line is that the Ravens got their butts kicked last night. 
:goodposting:

Leaving aside for the moment the people who still don’t seem to understand process > results, to the extent that “analytics” (hate using it  as a catch-all term, but whatever) help you win football games, it’s at the margins. Baltimore didn’t lose that game at the margins. One extra FG wasn’t going to save them 

 
Leaving aside for the moment the people who still don’t seem to understand process > results
This kind of thinking is stinking thinking. Yes, we want to know what process consistently and viably leads to the most probabilistic success, but we have to admit when we have too many variables to deal with. Forget the term "analytics" for a minute, which is a colloquial expression for all things advanced stats to statistical minutiae. Think, in this particular case, win probability as we understand it. My contention is that the Ravens couldn't possibly know through statistics what they could have known from their eyes. It's the great baseball fight all over again, with even the SABR baseball guys admitting that football has way too many variables for the stats to be anything but a referral notice and interview, not a job.

I'm really hesitant to flip my hat into the ring and start having the same arguments I had in people in baseball in '97 about statistics and their limits. It's too stupid a debate to have all over again. Fangraphs and other sites and entities became popular and an invaluable because of its fusion of tracking and measurements (eye test) vs. raw statistics in isolation.

I say it, and say it strongly: The two will meet in the future. Anything else is academic. 

 
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Disagree, my friend. I question the execution, but not the decision. 

Baltimore was not winning that game kicking FGs. They had been 8-8 on 4th and 1 this season. 

Bottom line is that the Ravens got their butts kicked last night. 
Fair enough. That's not in the vacuum. That's a steady point saying, "Hey, I expected their score to be X. Therefore we needed to score Y. Our probability of scoring Y was greater when we went for it."

That kind of thinking I love.

What I don't love? A sheet that tells you down and distance and success rates when normalized for your team against the NFL. I think that's bad process. 

 
Fair enough. That's not in the vacuum. That's a steady point saying, "Hey, I expected their score to be X. Therefore we needed to score Y. Our probability of scoring Y was greater when we went for it."

That kind of thinking I love.

What I don't love? A sheet that tells you down and distance and success rates when normalized for your team against the NFL. I think that's bad process. 
It’s only bad process if that sheet is followed in all scenarios without any other factors being considered. 

Otherwise it’s not “process”. It’s just data used in a decision. 

 
Fair enough. That's not in the vacuum. That's a steady point saying, "Hey, I expected their score to be X. Therefore we needed to score Y. Our probability of scoring Y was greater when we went for it."

That kind of thinking I love.

What I don't love? A sheet that tells you down and distance and success rates when normalized for your team against the NFL. I think that's bad process. 
Really? They averaged over 5 ypc all season and had converted every (as in, 100%) of their 4th-&-1s on the year. 

The Ravens needed to turn first downs into touchdowns last night. They didn't do that and lost the game. It happens.

The other team has good players/coaches, too. The Titans were better than Baltimore.

I don't think one (or, even a few) play would have made a difference, given the way the game played out. But, more than the failed conversions, the 3rd-&1 when Henry ripped off a 70 yard run was the back-breaker to me.

 
Ravens went for it on 4th down all season. Going for it last night was one of the few things they did on offense that wasn’t a departure from what had worked so well to get them to 14-2. Right decision just poor execution  
I didn’t like them going for it in their own territory so early in the game. I thought it was an unnecessary risk. Turned out to be the biggest moment of the game as Tennessee scored on the next play and the Ravens never really recovered. 
 

This wasn’t hindsight, and I’m usually in favor of being aggressive, but I would have punted there. I was pretty surprised that the offense was still on the field when they came back from commercial. 

 
It’s only bad process if that sheet is followed in all scenarios without any other factors being considered. 

Otherwise it’s not “process”. It’s just data used in a decision. 
I get what you're saying, but I was having trouble understanding what he was saying. I don't really know what "process>results" means as applied to this case.

It could mean a host of things. I'd rather wait for clarification on that. I probably should have worded it better, but didn't want to nitpick too much about terms of debate, which maybe we should, as I agree with you and not with that statement, if that makes any sense on my end. 

I'd probably wind up agreeing with most of what he was saying, but much like the SABR debates had to give way to the thought that not everything is perfectly and finitely rational in sport.

Really? They averaged over 5 ypc all season and had converted every (as in, 100%) of their 4th-&-1s on the year. 

The Ravens needed to turn first downs into touchdowns last night. They didn't do that and lost the game. It happens.

The other team has good players/coaches, too. The Titans were better than Baltimore.

I don't think one (or, even a few) play would have made a difference, given the way the game played out. But, more than the failed conversions, the 3rd-&1 when Henry ripped off a 70 yard run was the back-breaker to me.
I wasn't really asserting that one particular play cost them the game. I think others were. I was lamenting the decision because I would more properly say it was a faulty decision that decreased their win probability added rather than increased it. I'm more on your side than not, and know Baltimore does this. But I have to disagree with the bolded: Going for it from the 46 and 21 is likely a slavish devotion to numbers not ripe yet, so I can't agree with your last statement. 

 
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I get what you're saying, but I was having trouble understanding what he was saying. I don't really know what "process>results" means as applied to this case.

It could mean a host of things. I'd rather wait for clarification on that. I probably should have worded it better, but didn't want to nitpick too much about terms of debate, which maybe we should, as I agree with you and not with that statement, if that makes any sense on my end. 

I'd probably wind up agreeing with most of what he was saying, but much like the SABR debates had to give way to the thought that not everything is perfectly and finitely rational in sport.

I wasn't really asserting that one particular play cost them the game. I think others were. I was lamenting the decision because I would more properly say it was a faulty decision that decreased their win probability added rather than increased it. I'm more on your side than not, and know Baltimore does this. But I have to disagree with the bolded: Going for it from the 46 and 21 is likely a slavish devotion to numbers not ripe yet, so I can't agree with your last statement. 
Their win probability was undoubtedly higher by going for it there on 4th and inches.

 
Their win probability was undoubtedly higher by going for it there on 4th and inches.
That's simply a declarative to which I can't respond.

I could say, "their win probability was undoubtedly lower by going for it there on 4th and inches" and we'd have shut off all debate.

What I'm saying is that you can't possibly know what their win probability was given the closeted nature of their own decision-making vis a vis the public, the impossibility of quantifying to a satisfactory level everything but historical non-applicable data, and certainly not popular consensus nor wisdom, however fallible.

All they could have had possible was their seasonal data, and the Titans's seasonal data, from where they made the decision. But it isn't like the Ravens are Tampa Bay here. This is a nascent project they've got going. 

To cite authority as argument, which is indeed a fallacy -- but only so long as the reasoning behind it is still faulty: Going for it in your own end and losing a game to Indy was enough to make Belichick never do it again.

 
That's simply a declarative to which I can't respond.

I could say, "their win probability was undoubtedly lower by going for it there on 4th and inches" and we'd have shut off all debate.

What I'm saying is that you can't possibly know what their win probability was given the closeted nature of their own decision-making vis a vis the public, the impossibility of quantifying to a satisfactory level everything but historical non-applicable data, and certainly not popular consensus nor wisdom, however fallible.

All they could have had possible was their seasonal data, and the Titans's seasonal data, from where they made the decision. But it isn't like the Ravens are Tampa Bay here. This is a nascent project they've got going. 

To cite authority as argument, which is indeed a fallacy -- but only so long as the reasoning behind it is still faulty: Going for it in your own end and losing a game to Indy was enough to make Belichick never do it again.
The gap is large enough that I don’t need to quantify the minute details that may move the expected points up or down a couple tenths. Although I suspect as an extremely efficient rushing offense anything unique to the particular teams in this situation would move the odds in the favor of going for it. Choosing to kick gets you somewhere close to 3 expected points. The PFF win probability calculator cites 4.4 expected points from 1st and 10 at the 17. You’d have to fail about 35% of the time going for it to come out behind in this calculation. 4th and inches is converted at a much higher % than 65%.

 
And here we just wound up disagreeing about another declarative. 
Ok then you take a crack at it. What circumstances last night do you think were in play that would override a difference in expected points of roughly 1.6? Or do you disagree with that 1.6 number. If so why?

 
Lol what? Do you think win prob is something people are just making up in their head?
I could answer this with this tone...

Eh, It's Capella. 

No. I don't. I think they're taking in a host of factors, some of which may or may not be accurate. WPA is certainly not a predictive stat, but a narrative one. It can tell you things, but can't tell you the whole story. As most footabll "analytics" guys know, football situations are so sensitive that each corresponding play has its own weight.

 
I have thoughts on these decisions, but don't feel like wading into it now.

What I don't understand is this: why did the Ravens eschew running the ball?  I know Ingram was hurt, but Edwards has been great at many times this year.  I assume that Roman thought that was too tempting to throw against those 8 man fronts, but he should have stuck with the run and kept sucking them in, sucking them in, and then go for the home run balls when they presented themselves.  Wait for the Titans to make a mistake, like when Evans rushed in and let Lamar run free for 30 yards.

Honestly, play it like Seattle does.  I don't know if Roman thought that the Ravens need to get up early and destroy the Titans' will, which is probably part of Baltimore's success this year, but you knew the Titans weren't going to do jack#### on offense to be a problem.  Keep it close, wait it out, then pounce.  Very weird.

Which perhaps does give some credence to the idea that they shouldn't have been as aggressive on 4th down, but they still could have easily kept that a one-score game at pretty much all times without the turnovers.

 
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Ok then you take a crack at it. What circumstances last night do you think were in play that would override a difference in expected points of roughly 1.6? Or do you disagree with that 1.6 number. If so why?
I don't know why, but I don't feel like having this debate. Their expected points according to NumberFire, the head of whom wrote for Brian Burke's AFA before he moved to ESPN were:

Downs

10:02 Q3 - 4th and 1 • BAL ball on TEN 18

8-L.Jackson to TEN 18 for no gain (58-H.Landry).

WP: 30.16%   -14.86%

EP: -0.42   -3.19

I'm assuming the EP is before and post snap. Talk about negatives. Talk about tenths. 

I'd be hard pressed to think EP would have been anything but 2.67 for a field goal from the eighteen

 
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I could be wrong on this. I don't really doubt nor am afraid of numbers. Point in the right direction to explain. Because the 4th-and-1 from both places looked bad situationally. 

 
Boy, those analytics sure failed in their biggest game in years. May want to revisit that harbug because old style NFL football kicked your ###.
IIRC aren’t you one of the guys in the politics forum that thinks that the 2016 presidential polls were totally wrong or fake news or whatever? 
 

 
I don't know why, but I don't feel like having this debate. Their expected points according to NumberFire, the head of whom wrote for Brian Burke's AFA before he moved to ESPN were:

Downs

10:02 Q3 - 4th and 1 • BAL ball on TEN 18

8-L.Jackson to TEN 18 for no gain (58-H.Landry).

WP: 30.16%   -14.86%

EP: -0.42   -3.19

I'm assuming the EP is before and post snap. Talk about negatives. Talk about tenths. 
Not 100% on how to interpret that but I would think the -.42 is showing that the Titans expected points is .42 on the drive starting at their 18 after the stop (-.42 from the Ravens perspective). The change of -3.19 indicates the expected points on 4th and 1 at the 18 was 2.77. That’s my interpretation of what you’ve posted. I don’t know if you can input situations on numberfire but if so input what the Ravens expected points would be had they gotten the first down. Probably a number close to 4.4. Now calculate the odds of a 4th and inches converting. It’s a very high%. You kick a fg from 35 yards you’re expected 2.57 points. Probably play that number up some for Tucker. Again 4.4 times Qb sneak conversion rate > 2.whatever.

 
Coach? Play calling? Defense? Receivers? 

He takes a share, but he had no help. 
Of course, I'm not saying the rest of the team is blameless... but when you said "It definitely isn't on him" it sounded like you were inferring he played well and his teammates were to blame.  On just the 3 turnovers alone they were pretty much all his fault.

 
I’m in the camp that both 4th down calls were the right play.  It’s a shame that such overwhelming odds in their favor didn’t work out.

 
I’m in the camp that both 4th down calls were the right play.  It’s a shame that such overwhelming odds in their favor didn’t work out.
Here’s the thing about this argument - context matters. 

i agree with the quoted above: they were the right calls.

but....

in the context that the Ravens best RB was standing on the sidelines with his calf wrapped & iced, it maybe changes the calculus a little bit. 

and once their best blocking TE got hurt, it changed it a lot. 

The Ravens were 100% on those plays because they had the personnel to execute them. With Ingram in the backfield, it could have been LJax or Ingram & they had the big uglies to get the job done.

but that wasn’t the case, and both plays got stuffed.

it’s just my opinion, and I concede that it may be incorrect, but my gut tells me with the circumstances at hand, even if it was the correct play call to go for it there, they should have played more conservatively and out points on the board with the FG. 

 
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Ravens went for it on 4th down all season. Going for it last night was one of the few things they did on offense that wasn’t a departure from what had worked so well to get them to 14-2. Right decision just poor execution  
Could you imagine the criticism had the Ravens been conservative in those situations and still lost?  Harbaugh and the Ravens would be lambasted today for deviating from what worked ALL season. Sometimes the other team is just better on that day nothing more.  That's what happened last night and props to the Titans for that.

 
Ok count me in the camp that says those 4th down attempts were the right decision but bad execution. I forget which play exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was the 4th in their own territory that the Titans turned into a TD on the next play. That was the one where they had about 19 seconds on the game clock to run the 4th down attempt that everyone on the planet knew was coming, but instead of running up to the line and leveraging momentum and energy, they allowed the playclock to run down and the 1st quarter expired. Then they got stuffed at the beginning of the 2nd.

Analytics, situational football, x's and o's, I don't care what you call it, you should go for it on *the front* side of the quarter break if you can help it at all. If it's marginal in terms of time, then maybe not, but allowing the defense to get a breather and to really think about how they want to defend the upcoming attempt is a big mistake. And they had enough time to do it. Rusty I guess. Does anyone have stats on 4th (or 3rd) and short situations that occur after timeouts or quarter breaks vs those that happen in the normal course of a drive? 

 
Could you imagine the criticism had the Ravens been conservative in those situations and still lost?  Harbaugh and the Ravens would be lambasted today for deviating from what worked ALL season. Sometimes the other team is just better on that day nothing more.  That's what happened last night and props to the Titans for that.
Every word of this.

 
Here’s the thing about this argument - context matters. 
Here's the thing about context - the Ravens weren't winning that game kicking FGs.

That's not hindsight on my part. You could (or, at least, I could) feel that they weren't right and that Tennessee was firing while watching the game. Baltimore needed to do something to tip the scales and they made a couple of calls that had worked 100% of the time during the season. They didn't work.

 
Here's the thing about context - the Ravens weren't winning that game kicking FGs.

That's not hindsight on my part. You could (or, at least, I could) feel that they weren't right and that Tennessee was firing while watching the game. Baltimore needed to do something to tip the scales and they made a couple of calls that had worked 100% of the time during the season. They didn't work.
Speaking of context, the rest of my post agreed with this. Maybe you should have quoted more than the 1st sentence. I also explained in part why they didn’t work, and why that may have changed the decision. 💡

 
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Of course, I'm not saying the rest of the team is blameless... but when you said "It definitely isn't on him" it sounded like you were inferring he played well and his teammates were to blame.  On just the 3 turnovers alone they were pretty much all his fault.
We'll just disagree here. Although I didn't see them all on tv (stupid power outage). 

The QB can only do so much. Of the plays I did get to see, receivers didn't make easy catches, the line didn't hold up. 

Ingram clearly wasn't 100%, but when your QB runs for 143, throws 365, your receivers don't make key plays and your defense fails, I'm not putting much of the blame on Lamar. Someone else needs to help. 

 
We'll just disagree here. Although I didn't see them all on tv (stupid power outage). 

The QB can only do so much. Of the plays I did get to see, receivers didn't make easy catches, the line didn't hold up. 

Ingram clearly wasn't 100%, but when your QB runs for 143, throws 365, your receivers don't make key plays and your defense fails, I'm not putting much of the blame on Lamar. Someone else needs to help. 
Yes, the QB can only do so much, but accumulation of stats doesn't count for much in real football. I'll reference a stat I posted in the LJ thread, but his 31.7 QBR in this game qualifies him for 2nd worst of all QB performances in the postseason thus far. That's worse than Cousins, Allen, etc... only McCown was worse. So no, he didn't play well at all.

 

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