In his two years coaching the erstwhile laughingstock New York Knicks in the late ’80s, the forward thinking Rick Pitino had his young and athletic players operate a full-court press on every play. It didn’t make them an NBA champion, but it maximized the talent at hand and earned the team its first division title in two decades. Years later, Malcolm Gladwell published “How David Beats Goliath” in the New Yorker, making a convincing case that this strategy was sound and should be employed more. But conventional wisdom is hard to shake so no one has ever tried it again, and current Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni has taken a lot of flak for his similarly aggressive “Seven Seconds or Less” offensive scheme
I wonder if a young and athletic NFL team should use similar aggression. You couldn’t blitz on every play because offenses are too proficient and rules are stacked in favor of scoring, But how about this for a team that went 2-14 last year: Never punt from anywhere outside your own 35-yard line. Never kick field goals inside the other team’s 35 except during the last two minutes of a game when it would give you the lead.
It’s unlikely we’d ever see such an experiment in a league were most coaches get flustered by basic time management, but a gradual shift to using four downs much better is possible. From Brian Burke’s smart Slate piece on the topic:
“There are many doubters when it comes to four-down football. If you’re in that camp, indulge me in a quick thought experiment. Let’s imagine a football world where the punt and field goal had never been invented. (Sorry, Ray Guy and Jan Stenerud.) In this universe, there would be no second-guessing: Teams would go for it on every fourth down.
Then one day, some smart guy invents the punt and approaches a head coach with his new idea. ‘Hey coach,’ he’d say, ‘instead of trying for a first down every time, let’s voluntarily give the ball to the other team.’ Our coach would be incredulous at this suggestion. ‘You want me to give up 25 percent of our precious downs for just 35 yards of field position? Do you have any idea how difficult it would be for us to score?’ And the coach would be right.
Since that’s not how the game evolved, our thinking about fourth-down strategy is a lot different. But as the sport has changed, with offense securing a firm upper hand over defense, coaches need to rethink their fourth-down orthodoxy. Accounting for interceptions, teams netted around 3.5 yards per pass attempt in 1977, back when many of today’s head coaches were playing and learning the sport. In the modern game, teams are almost twice as productive when they throw the ball, netting close to six yards per passing attempt. As it gets easier for offenses to move down the field, possession (and maintaining possession by going for it on fourth down) becomes more important and field position becomes less important.”
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