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Thursday, September 24, 2015

Kicking the Extra Point vs Going for Two Under the New Rules

Through the first 2 weeks of the NFL season, much has been made of the new rule change that moves the extra point attempt back to the 15-yard line, and for good reason - the success rate on XP is down from 99.3% for all of last season to 94.19% so far this season. The Steelers appear to be going for two more often, but is this 5% decrease in accuracy enough to make the two-point conversion the better strategy?

It comes down to the expected value of each strategy. Over all of last season, teams successfully scored the two-point conversion 47.46% of the time. Thus, the expected value of going for two was 0.949, nearly identical to the current expected value of the extra point, 0.942. However, through a very small sample size of 15, teams have successfully converted for two 53.33% of the time in the first 2 weeks of 2015, which implies an expected value of 1.067. 0.125 points is a large difference, but it remains to be seen if this higher success rate will continue. It's more likely regression to the mean will occur, which leaves the decision between the two options basically a coin flip. It probably will be more dependent on the current game state.

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