This season, my approach on kicking and several other things is a bit contrarian: I go for the TD and not the FG. My max distance is set to 19.
Let's say my FG% is 90%. That means over the course of the season, every FGA is worth 2.7 points. That works out based on 3FG a game to 8.1 points.
Instead, I'm going for it on fourth down. My 4th down conversion percentage is 58.3% (14 out of 24). Going for 3 with a 90% success rate would have given me 59.4 points over 9 games or 6.6PPG. However I am happy to be doing it different. Just by converting, I am keeping the ball out of my opponents hands for another four downs (which pays off in a number of ways). Even the 12 fourth down attempts I failed to convert, not one turned into points for my opponent. And I still have a shot at 7 instead of 3. By turning just 45% of those 4th downs into 7, I come away with a total of 69.3 points -- or a total of 7.7PPG.
Will I face a situation at some point where a 21 yard FG would have given me the game winner? Yep. It is going to happen at some point. I'm fine with that too. The math tells me (and how I have seen it play out in terms of results), this approach is giving me more wins I would not have gotten by kicking.
5/22/2016 6:45 PM (edited)