There is a scenario where the head coach would look good. Detroit drives down the field gets to about the 5 yard line. Faces 4th and 1 and decides to kick the field goal to go to OT. The Cowboys win in OT.
But moving on.
Yes, there are errors in the win-probability calculator. It makes no sense that it's better to be up 3 than 7 but it consistently shows it's better to be up 3 than 4-5-6 so I believe my strategy very well could be correct. The model is based on past results so the 19% down 7 versus 18% down 3 may just be a random error.
I emailed the owner of the website - Brian Burke - to see if he had time to write an article on it. Here is what he wrote back:
[quote]Brian Burke wrote:
I probably wouldn't do an article on it, but here's what's going on. Teams down by 4 are more aggressive than teams down by 3. Down by 4, teams have no choice but to go for a TD to survive. But teams down by 3 see a tie as an intermediate victory and often settle for a FG attempt, which coaches often mistakenly think of as automatic. Playing for the TD is closer to the optimum risk-reward trade-off for an offense, so aggressive offenses tend to win more often.
(There is also some noise in the model, so it isn't always perfect. That's an important disclaimer.)[quote]
I'm going to write him back about the 7 point versus 3 point thing. I still think you may be more likely to win up 3 versus down 4-5-6 with less than 2 minutes to go, especially considering how bad the Cowboys D is.