This Old Neon Forum

Claytone wrote:The context of this play is nearly as mind-boggling as the play itself. Florida State was #9 in the country and had not lost a regular season game since 2012. Their kicker had never had a kick blocked, nor had he ever missed one in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, Tech was, as my previous post bemoaned, 2-5 and on a historically poor run. So in the face of all those odds, our boys blocked that kick and ran it back for the walk-off victory, and Bobby Dodd Stadium was instantly a madhouse. Unreal. Easily the best home game of my undergraduate career, and on homecoming weekend, no less. A sports memory I'll cherish forever!

Moments like these are *precisely* why I'll always prefer college football to pro. That, and the fact that there's something just slightly more special about cheering for students of one's alma mater than a bunch of randoms from all over the country paid to play ball in my city

Of course, when you add in that the kick was 56 yards and that it was kicked from that crazy angle all the way from the left, the block seems less like an unlikely event. It certainly didn't surprise me when it happened. I think people underestimate the chances of getting a field goal blocked, especially when it's a long, difficult one.

It actually was a play that one could contrast the college game from the pro game though in the sense that because the hash marks are so wide, you can end up kicking field goals from angles far to the right or left of the goal posts. Not too many people care about hash marks, but it makes a big difference when hash marks are 18.5 feet apart(NFL) versus 40 feet like it is in college. In this scenario for the FSU kicker, at the start of the play he's standing, I don't know, about 15 feet say to the left of the nearest goal post. That's going to decrease your chances of making the field goal. You not only have to kick it more than 56 yards and high enough so that it's not blocked, and to angle it in between the goal posts, but you also to have to get the ball to travel a good distance to the right as well. Chances are the Florida State play callers weren't paying too much attention to hash marks either, otherwise they probably could have avoided the situation without having too much limitation on the types of plays they could call. The management of that final drive in general by Florida State wasn't great.

Also odd that FSU had a bunch of offensive lineman blocking there. That's usually not who teams have out there on Special Teams. I can't recall recently seeing that ever in the pro game. Putting those guys out there didn't appear to help the protection, and it certainly hurt on the pursuit of the Georgia Tech player once he recovered the blocked kick.

There's plenty to learn from on that one play. But such is the case with the sport in general. You could spend all day studying all the ins and outs of a single play in American football.

TheGreatNads wrote: Of course, when you add in that the kick was 56 yards and that it was kicked from that crazy angle all the way from the left, the block seems less like an unlikely event. It certainly didn't surprise me when it happened. I think people underestimate the chances of getting a field goal blocked, especially when it's a long, difficult one.

Oh, certainly. I was not astonished that the FG was blocked (in fact, one of our players leads the FBS in blocked punts and kicks among active players). If that had been it, I wouldn't have been terribly moved. It's the 78 yard runback for the walk-off score that was crazy to me. And by a player two deep on the depth chart. Against literally the best kicker in the country. And again, you must consider the circumstances necessary for our shitty team to have put FSU in a position to need a game winning field goal (that is, that we shut them out in the 2nd half). Higher-than-average probability of the kick being blocked or not, this was no small feat of a play and is worthy of note. It was the just-in-time reversal of fortune Georgia Tech needed to keep its hopes of playing in its 19th straight bowl game alive.

TheGreatNads wrote:There's plenty to learn from on that one play. But such is the case with the sport in general. You could spend all day studying all the ins and outs of a single play in American football.

Yes. Yes, and I love it. To me, it's the antithesis of, say, baseball. I rather enjoy baseball, but it's incredibly procedural and protocol based. It almost seems like a solved game, in a certain sense. Football, meanwhile, is still changing, and there is still not a perfect answer to a lot of situations. Keeps things interesting.

Claytone wrote:Oh, certainly. I was not astonished that the FG was blocked (in fact, one of our players leads the FBS in blocked punts and kicks among active players).

Thanks for that, I was actually tempted to ask whether there is any evidence that Georgia Tech were a good field goal/extra point blocking team. This statements indicates that the answer is probably yes. My brief search indicates that it's hard to find team stats for blocking field goal. It's easy to find them for blocked field goals, that is how often a team has had its own field goals blocked, and also for individual players one can often find out if they have blocked field goals, but I didn't get much for team stats on field goals they have blocked.

Claytone wrote:If that had been it, I wouldn't have been terribly moved. It's the 78 yard runback for the walk-off score that was crazy to me. And by a player two deep on the depth chart. Against literally the best kicker in the country. And again, you must consider the circumstances necessary for our shitty team to have put FSU in a position to need a game winning field goal (that is, that we shut them out in the 2nd half). Higher-than-average probability of the kick being blocked or not, this was no small feat of a play and is worthy of note. It was the just-in-time reversal of fortune Georgia Tech needed to keep its hopes of playing in its 19th straight bowl game alive.

Yeah, you were looking at it from a bigger perspective and were also focusing on the exciting aspect of the whole play. I was talking about it from the perspective of field goals, mostly because I'm frequently annoyed by how coaches make decisions related to field goal attempts(in the first post I had to prevent myself from going on a giant tangent on the subject of field goals. So in this post I'll try to go on a smaller one).

Just for example, one funny thing to me is that many coaches are very conservative about not going for it on fourth down while they're happy to attempt field goals, even though the end result of a missed field goal say and a gain of 0 yards on fourth down is the same(obviously there are other factors too). I think there are situations(like if the kicker is struggling and maybe your offense is pretty good) where going for in on fourth down is a great option, not only because the payoff is potentially higher, but it might be that kicking a field goal isn't such a conservative strategy after all.

Another example is that if I was a coach I'd sure be tempted to punt the ball more often. Like in situations where I could kick a field goal, say to increase my lead from 10 to 13 late in a game, and I have a long field goal. Sometimes in those situations, maybe I like my odds better if I can pin them in with a short punt(though punting it into the end zone so they start at the 20 isn't so bad either). I don't see that done(except from very long range field goals ranges), and maybe it's harder to do short punts(but that wouldn't apply to punting it in the back of the end zone), maybe they're more likely to be blocked, maybe covering the punts is harder, I don't know. It sure seems to me though that it's just coaches don't do it because they would rather kick the field goal. But I feel like punting is often a better option. Pin the opposing offense down, make it take even longer for them to put together a drive late in the game where the clock is their enemy. It seems a strange decision since you're giving up an attempt at more points, but the less confident I am in a field goal unit(also more confident in the punting unit), the more I would consider doing such a thing. It's worth noting in this context that punts in the NFL are blocked less often than field goals are*

I won't go any further, TLDR: I'm not world's biggest field goal fan, I think going for it on fourth down is probably underrated, and I sure do love punting!

* https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/p ... 2015-10-26
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/f ... 2015-10-26
First link is for punts, second for field goals, this site has data that goes back to 2003 and there seems to be a consistent trend.

Lots of excitement that is happening (or that's happened!)

MLS: All three Canadian teams are headed to the playoffs, including an all-Canadian winner moves on match between the Montreal Impact and the Toronto FC (which ironically played each other yesterday). That playoff game is on Thursday. The Vancouver Whitecaps have a "bye" week.

NFL: At least five teams have a 6-0 record through seven weeks, which is the best in the history of the league.

The Atlanta Falcons lost their second game, and worse, it's a division game. That makes them 0-2 in division games. They're record at 6-2 is still good, and beating Carolina who is on top of the NFC South both times they play them would be enough to even both team's records overall and division wise. But if you're Atlanta, it's going to be very important to win the rest of the division games.

In terms of the team's offense(which is all I really care about), they seem to be moving the ball fine every game. But lately they have had odd, often self-inflicted errors like bad snaps or bad hand-offs that are killing scoring opportunities. I hope they get things worked out, because there's really no excuse for those kinds of problems week after week. In last Sunday's game against Tampa, I feel like they struggled to block for the running game a bit more than usual, but they were still able to drive the ball down the field. It should probably be expected that at some point in the season the Falcons will face some defense that they will genuinely have a hard time moving the ball against, so it's all the more important not to make stupid mistakes that ruin scoring opportunities. We'll see if they overcome this adversity in the coming weeks.

The Denver Broncos' offense on the other hand seems to be starting to play better. Even though they are undefeated, Denver's offense has been very shaky this season, but they had a nice game against Green Bay, so perhaps they are starting to gel.

Carolina is the only undefeated team in the NFL.

Gronk a injury was so sad props to Denver for cheering him off like that the guys a beast.

Slurmee wrote:Gronk a injury was so sad props to Denver for cheering him off like that the guys a beast.

He is a beast. But go Denver!

I finally watched the Green Bay v Detroit game today.

For Kreegs:

HAHAHA KREEEG

*realizes the Seahawks are still in the playoff and begins to cry*