Two-minute secret to success

The Green Bay Packers have been measurably better than the Seahawks in most statistical categories this season.

They have scored more points than Seattle and given up fewer.

They have gained more yards than Seattle and given up fewer.

Green Bay has more takeaways than Seattle this season, and the Packers have committed fewer turnovers.

You need to look hard to find the spots where Seattle has an edge. Geno Smith has thrown for more yards than his Green Bay counterparts, and Seattle’s place-kicking has been markedly better.

But if you want to see why the Seahawks are only a game back of the Packers in the NFC standings heading into Sunday’s game, I’d like to suggest putting a microscope over how these two teams have performed in end-of-half situations.

If you’d like that explained with words: The Seahawks have outscored their opponents by 42 points in the final 2 minutes of halves this season. The Packers, on the other hand, have been outscored by 37 points in the final 2 minutes.

That makes the rest of this season a very interesting test case for something I’ve become increasingly fascinated with, which I’ll explain when we go deep.

But first …

Bill Belichick is the new coach at North Carolina. This means that Steve Belichick is unlikely to remain the defensive coordinator at the University of Washington.

I am slightly disappointed by this. I thought he did a very good job with Washington’s defense. I am not, however, heartbroken.

I also may be alone in questioning just how effective Belichick is going to be as a college coach.

For as much as we talk about how college coaches tend to struggle when they get to the NFL, career NFL coaches don’t exactly have a great track record when they go to colleges. Dave Wannstedt was absolutely underwhelming at Pitt, Mike Sherman went 25-25 at Texas A&M and Jim Mora was so successful at UCLA that he’s now at UConn.

The rules of the game may be largely the same, but the jobs are very, very different.

The one thing that I could see Belichick excelling at, however, is transfers. If he billed North Carolina as a finishing school for the NFL, a place where a junior or senior could spend one year preparing himself for the pro game, I could see that working.

I just don’t see him being the kind of guy who can recruit and develop high-schoolers, though. I didn’t see his son being that kind of guy, either.

As I mentioned last week, I have become increasingly fascinated with end-of-half situations in professional football.

I believe there is a huge gap between the importance of these situations in determining the outcome of games, and the understanding of how a team can and should manage those situations to maximize its chances at victory.

I’m not just talking about the television announcers, either. There are coaches who consistently make sub-optimal decisions. This happens for a variety of reasons from failing to consider the full ramifications of a specific decision to relying on a rule of thumb football coaches were using 40 years ago when passing games weren’t as prolific nor as efficient as they are now.

The question I have is how much of a team’s success in end-of-half situations is the result of their skill, and how much of it is due to variance, random occurrences and luck.

That makes Seattle’s opponent on Sunday a great foil. The Seahawks have a better scoring differential in the final 2 minutes of halves this season, the Packers are significantly worse.

Green Bay and Seattle present a very interesting test case.

Now it seems to me there are two ways to look at this fact:

1. It is an aberration that will correct over time.

   Those inclined to this perspective will point to the overall results this season, which demonstrate that Green Bay has the better team. The fact that Seattle has outperformed the Packers in the final 2 minutes of halves this season may be one of those statistical oddities that can occur when you’ve got a sample size this small. The more games these two teams play, the more you can expect the point differentials over the final 2 minutes of halves to resemble the point differential of the first 28 minutes of halves.

2. End-of-half situations are a different animal in the NFL.

   The rules of the game don’t change per se, but the strategy is markedly different. It is possible to develop and refine systems and habits that allow a team to not just maximize their scoring opportunities, but minimize the opponent’s. The coach’s understanding of the clock is one aspect. The quarterback’s ability to avoid mistakes is another. In other words, succeeding at the end of halves is a skill that some teams develop while other teams lack.

Now is where the analysis would devolve into a largely theoretical debate about how much we chalk about to skill and execution and how much is the result of the good old fashioned variance that is endemic to a sport played with an oblong ball that doesn’t bounce straight.

Except this season isn’t over. These two teams are going to play each other on Sunday night, and they’ll each have three games after that and both very well could wind up in the playoffs.

Will Seattle be able to sustain its success in end-of-half situations? If so, it would lend credence to the idea that skill and expertise can give a team an edge in this specific component of the game.

If it’s a result of luck or variance, then the discrepancy should become less pronounced or perhaps even reverse itself.

I’m going to keeping a close eye on this not just with regard to the Seahawks and the Packers, but other teams in the NFL. In fact, I’ve talked to a couple of different publications about writing about end-of-half game management in the months and years ahead.

People in the NFL love to talk about how competitive people in the league are, how hard coaches work to find even the slighest edge. I don’t doubt their conviction on this matter and yet every week there are examples of teams making observably short-sighted decisions that compromise their own chances at success.

Just look at Buffalo’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams last Sunday.

The Buffalo Bills had the ball, first and goal at the Rams 1 with 1:06 remaining, the clock stopped because the Rams had just been penalized for pass interference.

Buffalo trailed by nine points, which meant the Bills needed to not only score, but get the ball back. The fact that they had all three of their timeouts gave them a meaningful chance at doing just that without having to resort to an onside kick. If Buffalo scored and kicked off to the Rams, the Bills would have been able to stop the clock three times on Los Angeles’s ensuing possession. If the Rams failed to get a first down, Los Angeles would punt the ball back to Buffalo with about 40 seconds left on the clock.

Let’s isolate the choice Buffalo faced on the first-and-goal with 1:06 left:

1. It could run the ball.

   It’s a safe play and the Bills needed just the 1 yard. However, if the Bills runner was tackled in-bounds, the clock would continue running. This would force Buffalo to choose between using one of those three timeouts or watching at least 10 seconds tick off the clock before it could snap the ball again.

2. It could pass the ball. There’s a higher risk of a turnover. However, the most likely outcomes of a pass would be a completion that resulted in a touchdown or an incompletion in which case the clock would stop. Buffalo would then face a second down with right around 1 minute remaining and still have the three timeouts.

The most important thing for Buffalo was not the success of this first-down play, but retaining the three timeouts.

So what did Buffalo do? Well, initially, Josh Allen lined up for what looked like it would be a shotgun snap. Then, he hustled up under center and the Bills ran a quarterback sneak.

Of all the run plays Buffalo could have used, a quarterback sneak was the riskiest not because it was the least likely to succeed, but because of what would happen if it failed:

• It is the most time-consuming type of running play because it results in a pile that officials must sort through.

• There’s no chance for the runner to get out of bounds and stop the clock.

• There’s no chance for the quarterback to ditch the play by throwing the ball away and stopping the clock as there would have been if Buffalo had rolled Allen out on a bootleg.

By running a quarterback sneak, Buffalo took on a huge risk. If Allen failed to score, the Bills would need to recover an onside kick to have a chance at winning. This season, the rate of recovery is 7.7 percent.

Had the Bills thrown the ball — or run a play in which Allen had at least a chance of throwing the ball — it wouldn’t have risked nearly so much.

Tom Brady was part of the broadcast team, and he declared that Buffalo was making a mistake as soon as it became clear the Bills were going to run a sneak.

The fact that Buffalo took on that level of risk is an indictment of Sean McDermott’s ability to manage a game. It’s also shows why I believe that the final 2 minutes are different than the rest of the game.