NFL FIeld Goals - Visualized

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From Decision Science News, comes this little bit of awesomeness regarding field-goals.
They took all 10,705 of the field goals in the NFL from 2002 - 2012, and it basically came out to the following
  • At D > 50 yards, you make the Field Goal with probability 0
  • At D < 50 yards, it is 0.951 + .0062*D - 0.005*D^2
Mind you, the other thing I found fascinating was that the coaches not only know this, they pretty much live by this too - with them basically not even bothering at  D > 50
Check out the original!


Comments

Rick said…
This data assumes that any field goal of a given distance is comparable to another of the same distance. The other factors and context that affect the success of a field goal are many - location (elevation), weather, wind, who the kicker is - some have a pretty good record over 50 yards, situation (e.g., is the game on the line?). To use this data to generalize probability of your own kicker is totally invalid.
January 30, 2013 at 2:02 PM
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