You're down 4 points late in the game. Go for 2 or kick the XP?
The Jacksonville Jaguars made a bold choice at the end of their game. Was it the right call?
With 93 seconds remaining in its game against Cleveland, Jacksonville scored a touchdown to pull within four points of the Browns. On the road, and without timeouts, Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson made a bold call: go for 2 rather than kick the extra point.
Was it the right call? Depends on exactly how much you trust analytics.
Now, put aside the fact Jacksonville's options all hinged on the recovery of a forthcoming onside kick, which is its own challenge. Late in a game and down four, should you go for the easy point or the more difficult 2?
Let's start with the obvious. Kicking the extra point when down four puts you within a field goal of tying the game. Given that Jacksonville's Brandon McManus is a perfect 30 for 30 this season for extra points, you could reasonably expect that he'd make that kick. At that point, you'd have 90 seconds or so to recover the onside kick, and a relatively short distance to get into field-goal range and try to force overtime.
Instead, Pederson opted to go for 2 points, which had been the right call so far this season; coming into Sunday, the Jaguars were 3-for-3 on 2-point conversions. Put the 2 points on the board, and suddenly that hypothetical short field goal is for the win, not just to force overtime.
ESPN Analytics suggests it's the right call, particularly inside of about nine minutes left in the game. Why? "Imagine you're down three points driving late in the fourth quarter, but you knew the result of overtime in advance," ESPN's Seth Walder wrote earlier this year. "It would change how you played. If you knew you were going to win in OT, you could kick a field goal to win. But if you knew you were going to lose, you'd go for it on fourth downs and try to score a touchdown."
Put another way, going for the 2-point conversion effectively takes overtime out of play. If you're either down four or down two late in the game, it's highly unlikely that the game will go to overtime. So whichever way the conversion attempt goes, that in turn determines whether the trailing team goes for a field goal or a touchdown to win the game on its next possession.
Two-point conversions have a historical success rate of about 48 percent, per ESPN. That means, basically, that a trailing team that opts for the conversion has a 50-50 shot to put themselves in position for a field goal to win the game. Is that a gamble you'd take?
Oh, and as for what happened on Jacksonville's 2-point attempt: Trevor Lawrence didn't even get a chance to throw. Myles Garrett swallowed him up, the Browns recovered the on-side kick attempt, and the game ended with Jacksonville down four points. So much for that.
