Should The Titans Have Gone For Two?

After a weekend of playoff football overflowing with more memorable moments and inconceivable plays than points scored in the last two minutes between the Chiefs and Bills, a play that might find itself forgotten amidst such esteemed company occurred with six minutes and seven seconds left on the clock in the first half between the Tennessee Titans and Cincinnati Bengals. 

The Titans had just scored a touchdown on a Derrick Henry three-yard run from the wildcat and tied the game at 6-6. As is standard practice, Titans kicker Randy Bullock lined up for the extra point to give the Titans a 7-6 lead, (such is the advantage of getting into the endzone instead of settling for two field goals as the Bengals had done). However, flags flew as the ball was snapped, and the Bengals were penalized for having twelve men on the field. Titans coach Mike Vrabel now had the option to either move the kick forward five yards, or push a two-point attempt from the two-yard line to the one. The NFL’s top candidate for coach of the year chose the latter and watched on as Derrick Henry was stopped just short. A little over thirty minutes of football later, so was the Titans’ season.

The two-point conversion was introduced into the NFL in 1994, and since then has been used significantly less than its single extra point counterpart, even after the standard point after attempt was moved from a 20, to a 33-yard kick. The conventional logic was pretty straightforward. It is always better to ensure yourself one point than risk getting nothing going for two. It was what made a touchdown better than two field goals. And unless late-game desperation called for it, no coach wanted to have to answer the inevitable questions after a failed two-point try. But in the modern sports world, you need look no further than baseball and its analytics revolution to realize the impact modern data can have on a sport and how it changes the way a game is played. In 2021, more football teams are going for two than ever before.

Since the extra point was changed to a 33-yard kick, extra points have been successful about 94 percent of the time, compared to about 49 percent of two-point conversions. A little bit of math over a larger sample size shows that, in theory, a team that always goes for two will score more total points than a team that always settles for one. And more points means more wins. In practice, however, over the course of a season this small statistical difference may only account for a handful of extra points, and if your team has a top-notch kicker like Justin Tucker on the Ravens, who has only missed four attempts in his ten-year career, this bonus can disappear altogether. Football is also a very situational game, and there are instances where ensuring yourself one point is more valuable than getting two. But those instances are proving to be significantly more rare than teams ever thought possible. 

The value of the two-point conversion stems from trying to beat the standard multiples that football scoring usually produces. With a field goal worth three points, and a touchdown worth (normally) seven, scores of 3, 10, 17, 21, and such are quite common. But with a tie leading to only a 50-50 chance of winning, (especially considering the NFL’s coin flip overtime rules, but that’s an article for a different day), attempting a two-point conversion to break those multiples and change a lead from 10 to 11, or cut a deficit from 7 to 6, and so on, drastically increases a team’s chance to win above that 50-50 coin flip, and warrants the potential risk of missing out altogether. 

Perhaps the most extreme example of this comes after a team has scored a touchdown to bring them within one point, with time effectively expired. A kick ties the game, completing the comeback, and sending the game to overtime. A failed two-point try, and the game is over. It seems like an obvious decision. But combining a 50-50 win probability after the kick, with a 6 percent chance of the kick itself missing, and going for the win with a two-point conversion theoretically is the better choice. 

The Baltimore Ravens found themselves in this scenario two times in the final four weeks of the regular season as they competed for a playoff spot, their coach John Harbaugh both times electing to attempt to win the game on a two-point try and leave Justin Tucker on the bench. Perhaps the fact that both games were quarterbacked by backup Tyler Huntly instead of injured star Lamar Jackson factored in, but in both instances, the Ravens followed the numbers, tried for two points, and failed. The decisions to go for two were held under extra scrutiny as the Ravens completed a late-season collapse, losing their last six games in a row and narrowly missing out on a chance to make the playoffs. It left fans fuming and critics critiquing. Despite what the numbers said, it was hard to fathom that the Ravens had lost, and many blamed an over-reliance on analytics. 

The Titans decision to go for two last Saturday was heavily criticized by many, and some cited it as the reason they lost the game, but it was not the same as the Ravens going for two in the fleeting moments of their games, nor was it even a standard two-point try. In fact, before the Bengals’ penalty moved the ball to the one-yard line, Vrabel had already made the decision to play it safe, and take the point. But with the penalty, a one-yard addition offered an enticing opportunity. The Titans on standard two-point attempts ranked ninth in the NFL in 2021, succeeding two-thirds of the time, and from the one-yard line that number could only go up. It is difficult to argue with the play call either, as the Titans gave the ball to their best player, and possibly the best back in the league in Derrick Henry, only needing one yard. The Seahawks learned the hard way what happens when you don’t hand the ball off from the one. And if they failed, the game would still be tied. There seemed to be less risk than in a normal two-point call. In the end, it took a spectacular play from Bengals linebacker Clay Johnston to bring Henry down, just inches short. 

On the flipside, Vrabel had obviously already decided that even a two-thirds success rate did not warrant the risk of failing. How much difference could one yard make? Kicking the extra point didn’t just tie the game, or bring it to a normal football interval of three or seven. It would give the Titans a one point lead. A lead in a game where points were proving exceptionally hard to come by, and a lead that would have drastically altered the way each team treated the game from that point on. 

Playing “what if” is a dangerous game in sports, with teams making decisions about what to do next based on what happened before. Each pitch, each shot, each play call likely different from what it could have been with just one change prior. 

But what if the Titans had kicked their extra point? Some would say they might have won, as their play calling would have undoubtedly been different leading by one, running more, wasting more clock, and never throwing an interception to allow the Bengals their game-winning field goal chance. But that’s assuming each team played the rest of their game the same way. They wouldn’t have.

The Bengals kicked another field goal before halftime, and eventually found the endzone themselves in the third quarter. Had the Titans kicked their own extra point, the Bengals would have likely gone for two themselves here to make it a 10 point game. If they were successful, then the game proceeds exactly as it did, except with the teams tied 17-17 instead of 16-16, and the Titans still lose. If the Bengals don’t make it, then the Titans likely win per the play calling points above. However, if the Titans make their two-point try, and the game proceeds as it did, there is no scenario in which the game ends up tied, and the Titans almost certainly win. Essentially, the Titans risked one yard in the hands of Derrick Henry to drastically increase their chances of winning the game. 

All of the what-ifs are just that, what-ifs. With the benefit of hindsight, it was obviously the wrong choice to go for two, just as the Ravens made the wrong choice going for two in their own losses. Perhaps in the playoffs the numbers differ, going up against stronger defenses, with points harder to come by. Each play is afterall men vs. men, not robots on a spreadsheet. Taking the lead by one might have been exactly what the Titans needed to win. I’m no statistician, nor am I a football coach, and it is not my place to say. Vrabel will likely be the coach of the year. Who am I, or anyone else, to question his decision? And who knows, perhaps in ten years, much to the dismay of football purists, the extra point will have gone the way of the bunt, the steal, the two-point shot, and the dinosaur.

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