Run or Pass the Football at the 1 Yard Line?

Game Theory

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Super Bowl XLIX has one of the most mind-blowing endings to Super Bowl Ever. It’s the Seattle Seahawks vs the New England Patriots. The Patriots are winning 28 – 24 with 26 seconds left on the clock. The Seahawks have the ball on the Patriots 1 yard line.

Here’s what happened.

A pick pass play was called and Russel Wilson throws an interception at the 1 yard line. The Patriots stop the Seahawks from scoring and go on to win Super Bowl XLIX.

Beast Mode

For those that don’t know. That season Marshawn Lynch, the Seattle Seahawks running back, was an absolute menace. He had 1,673 scrimmage yards and led the league in total touchdowns with 17. He was unstoppable, to say the least. So much so that he got the nickname Beast Mode.

In the Super Bowl that year he already had 133 scrimmage yards and 1 touchdown. All the Seahawks needed to do was hand the ball to Beast Mode. All he needed to get was 1 yard and they would be Super Bowl XLIX Champions. Yet Peter Carol, the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks at the time, decided to throw the ball. Why?

It is consistently at the top of the list of worst play calls of all time. There are endless memes and jokes about the play call and there will be for a very long time. One video I found about the play call is this one by The League featuring Marshawn Lynch himself.

Almost everyone can agree that what happened was the worst possible outcome for the Seahawks. But is the play calling really what should be blamed for the bad ending?

Predicting Your Opponent

On the 1 yard line, most teams suspect you to run the ball, especially if you have Beast Mode in the backfield. Football is like chess in that respect, you try to predict your opponent’s move and play the best response to that. The Patriots stacked the box, meaning they put more players between the two tackles. This helps stop the offense from running the ball.

The Patriots, like everyone else watching that game, predicted the Seahawks to run the ball. Thus the Patriots prepared using their best run defense.

Now the Seahawks know everyone is thinking you are going to run the ball. Therefore they want to trick their opponent into thinking they are going to run the ball and instead throw the ball. This is because the Patriots defense isn’t set up for optimal pass defense. Hopefully increasing the chances of a successful pass play.

If the pass was caught and the Seahawks scored and ultimately won the Super Bowl it would go down as one of the greatest play calls in history. Players and coaches would use Pete Carol as an example of how to use Game Theory in football to win. But instead, it blew up in his face.

The Human Move

This is the risk of using Game Theory and Statistics to make decisions, it’s not the human move. The Human Move is a decision that has been made not because it is statistically or mathematically the best move but instead the most “rational looking” move.

This is the move that would bring you the least amount of humiliation of failure. It incorporates the social aspect of decision-making, something a computer could never calculate.

Imagine if the Seahawks ran the ball with Marshawn Lynch, but he didn’t make it in. The Patriots stop the run and win the Super Bowl. No one would be talking about how terrible of a play it was, they would talking about how great the Patriots’ defense was stopping Beast Mode at the 1 yard line. That’s why they call gets so much criticism, it wasn’t the Human Move. It was a move driven by Game Theory.

The Penalty Kick

My idea of the Human Move began from the penalty kick example given in the book “Think Like a Freak” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The world cup is on the line and your team needs to score a penalty kick. Where do you kick the ball?

Kickers have about a 75% chance of scoring on a penalty kick. And those odds increase if the goalie jumps the wrong way. Many kickers find kicking the ball in the opposite direction of the foot their kicking with is easier. Most kickers are righty, therefore, making it easier to kick the ball to the left side of the goal. This is why goalies jump to the left 57% of the time and right only 41% of the time.

That means the goal stays in the middle of the goal only 2% of the time. If you want to kick the ball in the direction where the goalie is not, there is a 98% chance the goal would have jumped if you kick it straight down the middle. In fact, kicking the ball down the middle increases your chance of scoring by 7%. If the world cup is on the line, do you kick it down the middle?

Humiliation

The human move is to kick either left or right. If you score, well you did it, you won! But if the goalie saves it, oh well, you tried your best and the goalie was better. The Game Theory and statistics move is to kick directly down the center. If you score, the same thing, you won! But if the goalie doesn’t move and saves it you look like a fool for kicking directly towards the goalie. You’d be criticized and probably be called the decisions in sports history.

The success rate of scoring a touchdown on the 1 yard line by rushing is about 60% and passing is about 52% according to Matthew C.F. Tso. Although passing the ball on the 1 yard line is statistically less successful, many other factors can change these statistics. From how good your team is compared to the other team, the formation of the defense, and well the play call. Pete Carol used game theory and swallowed his pride and ego to try and throw off the defense. Unfortunately, he ended up throwing the win to the defense.