Sunday, January 16, 2011
Icing the kicker
Asking the important questions: Does "icing the kicker" actually work? Or does it only appear to work?
Discuss amongst yourselves.
4 Comments:
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sun Jan 16, 09:21:00 PM:
Willisms questions about selection bias likely do influence the 80-66 difference considerably. The question would be whether it explains the entire variance.
By Gary Rosen, at
Mon Jan 17, 02:01:00 AM:
That was good, that they considered the issue of selection bias. So often you get stats like these "raw" without considering that kind of stuff.
I have heard that some kickers actually like it if the timeout is called just in time but late enough that it doesn't stop the snap and kick - that way they get a free "practice" kick.
By Gary Rosen, at
Mon Jan 17, 02:08:00 AM:
Oops, didn't actually "discuss". My guess is that if you take selection bias out you would be down to something almost statistically insignificant, 3-4%. But if it's a game-deciding kick with no time left and the coach has a timeout to burn, he might as well use it even for a trivial advantage. I bet that drives a lot of these decisions - the coach saw it work once so why not give it a shot?
By 
, at
Mon Jan 17, 02:17:00 PM:
That's an awfully small sample size. My first reaction is that a much larger sample would likely tell you that more factors are at work than simply the time out issue.
