Numbers Don’t Lie: McCarthy 4th-down gamble was right play

Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy had the stomach when the fans didn’t to go for it on fourth down in an uncomfortable situation.

Head coach Mike McCarthy made the right call going for it on fourth-and-3 from the 11-yard line. The numbers back that up.  For a decade, fans of the Dallas Cowboys clamored for someone that would be aggressive, especially on fourth downs. Turns out, they might not have the stomach for it after all. A quick Twitter search of “McCarthy field goal” has people telling on themselves left and right.

What the math says is easy enough to understand. From Michael Gehlken’s piece at the Dallas Morning News:

The Cowboys had a 46% chance of victory entering fourth down at the Rams’ 11-yard line with about 12 minutes remaining in regulation, he said. If they converted the fourth down, their win probability would’ve increased to 56%. If they kicked a field goal, it actually would have decreased to 45%.

Jason Garrett would have kicked the field goal. In fact, he might have won the game on Sunday night, and in the process confirmed all of his terrible previous biases that settling for field goals deep in the opponent’s territory is a good thing.

Going for it on fourth down carries an inherent risk that Garrett didn’t have the stomach for. Not once during his entire career in Dallas did Garrett go for it in that similar situation. In fact, most coaches don’t. They will try it once the game state gets to a point so desperate that the outcome of the play no longer matters. In the last decade, coaches in similar situations only went for it 54 times, yet it converted at a rate of 68.5%.

When Mike McCarthy made the rounds late in the 2019 season he was adamant that he would be incorporating analytics into his decision making process. He showed in Week 1 he was willing to do exactly that. Here’s hoping that one bump in the road doesn’t shake his confidence.

And not for nothing, because decisions should be judged on intent, but not execution, but the play likely would have worked if Blake Jarwin was in the game instead of the rarely used Dalton Schultz. Schultz collapsed the route window of receiver CeeDee Lamb, keeping him from having the space to carry his route past the yard marker.

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