Ohhhhhhh! Well, Sheet! Or Duh. Anyway, thanks for that bit of enlightenment.Alpe d'Huez said:Congratulations to Rob Gronkowski on retiring at the right time. Plus, saving what appears to be his entire salary, living only off endorsements, and a fairly frugal lifestyle. His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, said don't be too shocked if he changes his mind, a la Jason Whitten. Or just comes back to fill in a roll later this season if the Pats need him. I don't know, he seemed pretty resolute to me.
The AAF rules may be having a small impact on the NFL. The rules committee just voted nearly unanimous, to have an alternative to the onsides kick. That is, if you don't want to try it, you can try a 4th and 15 from your own 35 yard line. Giants owner John Mara was the only one to vote against it, thinking it was like the Arena Football League. But the numbers show more players are hurt on kickoffs than any other play, so this is one step to eliminating the kickoff entirely.
I wondered that too at first, thinking it was the strangest thing. I mean, who throws a football well with their weak arm? How often do they? And how can some do so the same speed with both arms, when they only work on mechanics with the dominant arm? I knew that couldn't be right, so I looked into it. Both throws are with the dominant arm, it's the step and direction they are throwing the ball that they measure. The throws are to the left, and to the right.on3m@n@rmy said:As for numbers, it's odd they now post velocity for right and left arm...
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As for that AAF rule allowing a team the 4th & 15 try instead of the onside kick, it sounds a little bit like make-it take-it in gym rat hoops. :lol: It seems like the percentage of successful conversions vs attempts would be greater via the 4th & 15 method than would the traditional onside kick. One study (actually discussed in this thread quite some time ago, probably over a year/2 years ago?) showed the % success of a 4th & 15 to be about 19%. If that rate of success SEEMS greater than the % of successful onside kick recoveries, keep reading.
...that from http://advancedfootballanalytics.com/index.php/home/research/game-strategy/120-4th-down-studyFor example, a 4th down and 3 at the 50 yd line could be converted 56% of the time.
Further, from that article, such a successful conversion (after starting with a 4th & 15 from the 35 yd line) would put the ball on at least the 50 yard line, which would result in 1.8 "expected points" (based on data from 2,400 NFL games from the 2000-2008 seasons). But expected points increases the closer to the endzone a team gets. So, lets say the 4th & 15 conversion nets a 30-yard gain, putting the ball on the defenses 35 yard line. The expected points from that ball spot would be close to 3 points. One could go through lots of mental gyrations over this.
The same analytics group did a study of onside kicks. http://archive.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2009/09/onside-kicks.html
The effect of surprise on the success of an onside kick is pretty big. The chart below plots success rate by WP. The less a team is expecting an onside kick, the more successful it is. When teams are expecting it, when WP is about 0.15 and below, the success rate is about 20%. But when teams aren’t expecting it, the success rate averages 60%. (There are 103 onside kicks classified as 'surprise' in the data, which results in a standard error of +/- 4.8%.)
So, maybe the 4th & 15 to go spotted at the 35 option is a really good alternative to the onside kick.
And then as to normal kickoffs, what it seems teams have done with the ball spotted at the 35 yardline is to kick the ball higher for the obvious reason, to give an offense poorer starting field position. And we know from stats that poorer the field position has lower success rates for scoring. Plus, it seems the number of runback attempts with the ball spotted at the 35 is just about equal to what it was when the ball was spotted at the 30. So, the NFL may actually have to eliminate kickoffs altogether. But I did not research the facts on this.
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Yup, good on Gronk. Hope he can find peace and passion for something else outside of playing the game.