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The story was made in the Sunday Night Football, but this is probably not the kind of hope that Cleveland Brown fans were hoping for. With 9:45 remaining in the fourth quarter and 17-13, the Browns advanced to the Rams' 41-yard line. Nick Chubb earned a one-meter pass for Cleveland, followed by two passes from Baker Mayfield. Head coach Freddie Kitchens had to face a difficult decision in the fourth and ninth. In response, he composed an unprecedented game call in the recorded history of the NFL: a draw.
A draw is designed to make the defense believe that a pass is imminent, but rather results in a delayed transfer of the semi-offensive. The version the Browns used only gained 2 yards, so Cleveland turned the ball over. To be fair to Kitchens, it was a bold call in adverse circumstances. People with analytical tendencies are sometimes guilty of shouting on TV so that the teams will be aggressive from the fourth try, and then – if the game fails – will immediately turn around and complain loudly of the call. However, even considering the bias of the results-oriented NFL fan base, a long and long draw is still a very rare and deeply upsetting move.
Since 2006 – the first year of ESPN started following the game types – the teams only managed a draw 26 times in the fourth try, including the failed attempt by the Browns. During the same period, no team outside of Cleveland managed to draw in fourth place with more than 7 yards to go. Of this small sample, only one draw was converted to a new set of passes with more than three yards to go – and the shift manager was noted by grid wizard Ryan Fitzpatrick at the time he was leaving for the Buffalo Bills in 2011.
Nevertheless, blaming Kitchens for calling a draw just because few people were historically called from this distance could be unfair. Draws work more often when they are called in the fourth and the short, for example. And the conversion rate on a slightly newer sample of games – there have been 16 since 2009, the beginning of our dataset – is 62.5%, which allows the game to work in the right situations . Meanwhile, the success rate of all games in the fourth inning with exactly 9 yards to go – the same distance that Kitchens faced – is anemic by 35.4%. It's hard to blame a specific type of game when the chances of success are so high.
This led us to wonder if there were any types of game that have always been successful in fourth and long term situations. Historical mapping is somewhat limited in the NFL, but we found five other types of games that we could compare to the draw for the period from 2009 to 2019. The size of the samples is notoriously small for the fourth and fourth games. long-lasting because of the NFL's dislike for aggressive games. play the calls, but among the types of games for which we have data, the action-game is the most common.
There is simply not much evidence to guide decision making in these situations. But if we examine the relative frequency of each type of game call and separate it by success or failure, there is one type of game that has always been reasonably successful in fourth and fifth or higher: the screen past.
Screen passes are short passes to a receiver that begins to look like deeper passes. The linemen – usually the center and two guards – start the game blockage as usual, but will free their defensemen for the purpose of causing them to engage excessively in the quarter run. A well-executed screen usually forces the QB to wait for the opposing line players to be almost on him before throwing the ball at the receiver. Ideally, the melee of suddenly free offensive line players then begins to resonate deep in search of a linebacker or a smaller defender to block the ground.
Recognizing that the types of play are very limited, the screen is the only type of game to have succeeded most of the time in the fourth test and between 5 and 9 meters to go. The size of the sample is tiny – there are only 10 games played – so any notion of statistical significance goes very fast, but the teams managed to convert a first down to six out of 10, good for 20 points percentage of more than the league average. given and the distance.
Perhaps the deception offered by convincing the defense that a long passage is preparing improves the outcome of the game It is interesting to note that among the types of game considered, the screen is the least effective in the short and fourth games – and games globally in fourth.
Are screen passes not as successful at the fourth drop?
Fourth decline in conversion rates by type of game selected, regular seasons 2009-19
| Play TYPE | NO. OF plays | 4th conversion in% | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone reading | 41 | 68.3% |
– |
| Not | 74 | 62.2 |
– |
| Draw | 19 | 57.9 |
– |
| Play-Action | 263 | 57.8 |
– |
| blur | 173 | 53.8 |
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| Screen | 37 | 35.1 |
– |
In order for the screens to succeed, the offense needs the defenders to respect the pass and attempt to sack the QB so that the receiver has sufficient space. In the fourth and last position, the considerations relating to the limitation of the passage probably pass in the background to stop the race. The numbers seem to confirm it. When considering all the distances at the fourth descent, the screen is on average the worst performing game.
Kitchens and the Browns may have been able to extend their training even better if they chose another type of game on Sunday. A screen might have allowed a better return on investment for their aggressive game. Again, given the lack of data we need to work on, it may just be noise.
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