Home / General / Game theory

Game theory

/
/
/
214 Views

Interesting situation at the end of the Buffalo-Jacksonville game:

Buffalo has first and goal at the 1-yard line with 1:05 left, trailing by four points. Jacksonville is out of time outs, while the Bills have all three left. A key piece of information here is that Jacksonville has a field goal kicker with a bionic leg, so if Buffalo scores and kicks the extra point, the Jaguars will be in position to tie the game if they can get to midfield, and will almost certainly do so if they get to the Buffalo 40.

Now I’ve never seen a coach do this, but from a game management perspective it seems to me that by far the most sensible play on first down would be for Josh Allen to sneak the ball forward a foot or two, but intentionally not score. This would allow Buffalo to run the clock down to 20 seconds or so before the second down play. This would leave Buffalo with three chances to score from the one foot line, which given they have Allen under center has got to be about a 95% chance of success. This in turn would leave Jacksonville with at best 15 seconds and no time outs to get into field goal range. Instead, Allen scored on first down, leaving the Jags with 1:04 to do that.

What do you all think?

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Bluesky
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar