Punting from the 40 or 50 allows you to bury opponent in his own end zone. Increases probability of a safety and allows you to pressure offense into making careless plays.

Field position isn't meaningless because it will effect whether or not the offense and defense will engage in high risk/high reward behavior (deep passes, putting an 8th man in the box, etc.) Statistics also show you want to keep offense out of FG range, or confine them there out of the Red Zone.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31169876)

1) Punt and force the opposing team to drive long.

2) Turnover on downs, guarantee my opponent a field goal, or give him position to get a TD on a short pass (which has a higher probability of success than a long ball).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31169957)

you? post.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208919)

hell, it might be even more effective in the pros, although i doubt it

the point is, we don't know and analyzing it within the framework of what we do know is prone to giving incorrect or misleading conclusions

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208947)

huh?????

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31169851)

You're wrong.

Coaches are cowardly pussies and their conventional wisdom is bunk.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31169982)

For example, I am a Seahawks fan. The Seahawks have been successful over the last several years with a strong defense and a strategy of "shortening" games. Their games are typically lower scoring, and field position is huge for them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31170010)

Yea field position strategy has nothing to do with how long or short games are.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31170034)

It's also situational dependent. For example, if you're up 3 TDs in the forth quarter, there is a lot more benefit from punting compared to the opportunity cost of scoring if it means that it forces the other team to use more clock.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31170000)

Small sample, etc., but there is a pretty big turning point between the 40s. Probabilities are pretty similar either way once you get past there.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31170114)

you don't look to punting teams to try to figure out the odds of non-punting teams

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208929)

We are talking about the odds of scoring if you start your drive on your own 20 v. on your own 40. How do you suggest analyzing that?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208948)

i suggest you get some knowledgeable programmers and football people and you start creating simulations to see what happens and you continue making tweaks until you have some confidence that the results you are getting can be trusted.

it's not completely different from trying to figure out if a pitcher should bat in the 8th or 9th spot.

however, ultimately i think it will require some teams to actually do it to see what happens. right now, we have a sample size of about 1, in high school, and it has been extremely successful.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208977)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31209013)

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-high-school-football-coach-who-never-punts/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31169871)

it doesn't work in the nfl because everyone is so fucking fast, but i can see how laterals on every play could work against hs speed

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172079)

If you're on your own ten, a punt probably makes it much harder for them to score (and more likely that if they do, it'll be for 3 and not 7),so it's likely the right call.

On the other hand, don't punt in fg range (which no one does).

Whether to punt on your own 40 is a reasonable question, etc. And it obviously depends on how far you are from first down, and your odds of maeking it.

But there's tons of other strategic shit going on as well, some of which has been mentioned. If you let the opposing offense start in fg range every drive, you're going to lose. Make them drive the whole field each time and they'll get tired and make mistakes more often, etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31170003)

This is such bullshit. They're gonna score from your 40 anyway.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31170049)

to their detriment

that Kelley guy, as i recall, only punted on ridiculous 4th and 40 type situations. i don't believe field position came into the equation all that much.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172094)

If Bill belicheck went Kevin Kelly and started to go for every 4th down, how long would it take everyone to copy him?

Not long right?

So if you're belicheck is it smart to do something that's so easy for everyone to copy?

Maybe you're better off showing some restraint and only going for it occasionally when you really need it (but still more than most other people)

To preserve it as a differentiation between you and everyone else

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172514)

Once everyone copies you, the advantage is gone

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172595)

if doing something a different way makes you better than doing it another way, you don't worry that others will copy you and take away your

advantage.

i think your logical fallacy in thinking this is known as

stupidity

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208927)

The first idea of the curse is that innovations that can’t be protected frequently don’t benefit the innovator, an issue for Kelly given that one can’t patent football play, and any play that works one week is sure to be used across the league by the next. Indeed, NFL coaches as diverse as Hue Jackson, Pete Carroll, Mike McCarthy, Mike McCoy, Bill O’Brien, Adam Gase, and even Belichick have co-opted Kelly’s ideas, and Kelly’s former quarterbacks coach, current Raiders offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave, said frankly that “the majority of what we’re doing [on offense] is Chip Kelly stuff.” The history of football is in many ways the history of men who watched others win with their ideas.

But the second idea behind the Innovator’s Curse is that, having once innovated, it’s increasingly difficult for the innovator to continue innovating. To use Silicon Valley examples, there are countless IBMs, Xeroxes, and Yahoos: one-time disruptors whose cultures and ideas ossified and who eventually became the disrupted.

If Kelly fails to innovate and evolve, he’ll just be yet another in a long line of football coaches, once considered cutting edge, who themselves were disrupted. But there is some reason for hope. Kelly is a smart coach in a sport where those are in short supply, and, in his first press conference as 49ers head coach, he hinted at introspection when he said he was performing an “autopsy” on what exactly went wrong during his Eagles tenure. But Kelly’s actions since — from his uninspired assistant-coaching hires to his team’s play this preseason — showed nothing that would indicate anything except more of the same, and just Thursday Kelly said the only thing he’s done differently since his time in Philadelphia is “put a lot more sunscreen on.” If Kelly 2.0 fails in San Francisco, it will be a shame for those of us who continue to admire what he did to push the game of football forward, but it certainly won’t be a surprise.

https://theringer.com/chip-kelly-san-francisco-49ers-offense-f332f053870e

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31367989)

More than people realize

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172715)

Not punting doesn't change that, if anything it makes it more so

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172739)

Sort of like how full court pressing works best in basketball at lower levels of play.

I think stats show that NFL coaches still punt too much, but I can see punting when you are in your own territory just to try to minimize damage.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172597)

Never punt seems a little too far

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172693)

(Phil Simms lauding him, saying, "no doubt this is the right decision, let your defense win this game for you")

Lol at the sheeple in this thread. Nopunt is not realistic, but rarelypunt is tc strategy.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172612)

Much to the relief of the Ryan Field crowd—yes, the Northwestern crowd—Shaw sent out his punt team, hoping to "pin em deep," as they say in the football world. Stanford did not pin 'em deep. The Cardinal's punt went into the endzone for a touchback, netting 17 yards on the play. Playing for field position did not work, as Stanford failed to score on the next drive, or the next, and only scored after a Northwestern field goal led to a kickoff return. Stanford lost the game, 16-6.

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/punt-happy-college-football-coaches-are-afraid-of-unemployment-and-math

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31172622)

you can't go for it in certain situations. just too much pressure and too much on the line. play it safe is smart too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#38251609)

in that david shaw story posted above, the numbers actually were correct if he'd managed to get NW pinned within the five. the issue was that it was really, really unlikely that his garbage punter could stick that, as evidenced by alex robinson and jake baileys complete garbage seasons. the influx of aussie rules punters will radically - RADICALLY - change the game over the next decade

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31176589)

Really? That seems surprising to me. Maybe it's because punters work out a lot more now and kick for distance which actually makes them much worse in the situations where punting into the endzone loses you about 15+ yards of field position.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208816)

Congrats to :D for spending some of that bort social capital he's been building up all this time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3319776&forum_id=2#31208949)