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Whenever a team is down by seven points late in a game and is driving, the discussion quickly turns to whether they will go for 2 and win if they happen to score a touchdown.
Tampa Bay, New England and Seattle all opted against it in Week 9 and finished as overtime losers.
The situations weren’t exactly identical, with the Seahawks scoring with 51 seconds left, the Patriots on the last play with an exhausted Drake Maye, and the Buccaneers with 27 seconds left and Patrick Mahomes on the other end. But the decisions and results were.
Were they necessarily bad decisions?
The data might not say, with teams opting to kick the extra point in the final minute of regulation having a slightly higher winning percentage than teams that historically go for 2.
New England Patriots running back Rhamondre Stevenson (38) makes a catch in front of Tennessee Titans cornerback Darrell Baker Jr. (39) for a touchdown late in the fourth quarter of an NFL football game in Nashville, Tenn., Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. Credit: AP/George Walker IV
According to numbers tracked by Sportradar going back to 2000, teams that attempted the extra point have a 37-49-2 (.432) record in those scenarios even after the three losses this week.
That includes two losses when the kicker missed the extra point, another 10 losses when the opposing team scored before the end of regulation and six wins when the team recovered the ball and scored – with five of them coming on turnovers.
Teams that attempted 2 had a record of 10-15 (.400), having made 12 of the 2-point attempts. But two of those marks resulted in losses when the opposing team drove for a late field goal — including one game in 2019 when the Bears converted a fourth down after giving up the go-ahead two-point try to Denver about to kick a game-winning field goal.
Complicating the decision this year is the fact that teams are converting two-point attempts at a record low rate. From 2010-23, making the two-point attempt had essentially been a coin-flip proposition with teams converting 48.7% of attempts. It has dropped to 32.4% in the first half of this season.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, right, catches a touchdown pass against Los Angeles Rams cornerback Darious Williams, left, and cornerback Cobie Durant (14) during the second half of an NFL football game in Seattle, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024 . Credit: AP/Lindsey Wasson
Streaking Chiefs
Kansas City’s overtime win against Tampa Bay gave another tight win to a Chiefs team that just seems to have a knack for pulling out nail biters.
The Chiefs improved to 8-0 and became the sixth Super Bowl champion to start the next season with eight straight wins – with six of those wins coming by seven points or fewer.
The Chiefs are the 41st team overall to start a season 8-0 and their average margin of victory of 7.0 points per game is the lowest of any of those teams, edging out the 2006 Colts, who had 7.4 points per game in the road. to win it all.
Kansas City has won 14 straight since a Christmas loss to Las Vegas last year for the longest winning streak in the NFL since Carolina began the 2015 campaign with a 14-0 record. A win Sunday against Denver would give the Chiefs their first 15-game streak since Green Bay won 19 in a row from 2010-11.
Winning close games is nothing new for Mahomes, who has a 49-12 (.712) career record in the regular season and playoffs in games decided by seven points or fewer. Only Daryle Lamonica has a better winning percentage (.771) among quarterbacks who have started at least 30 close games.
Perfection
When it comes to “perfect” passer ratings, Lamar Jackson now stands alone.
Jackson completed 16 of 19 passes for 280 yards, three TDs and no interceptions in Baltimore’s win over Denver on Sunday to record his fourth career game with a career-high 158.3 passer rating.
Jackson has the most career regular-season games with at least 15 attempts and a perfect grade, having done it once last season and twice in his first full season as a starter in 2019.
Four other QBs have done it three times: Peyton Manning, Kurt Warner, Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger. Manning also had a fourth-place finish in the playoffs, doing so in a 2003 wild-card victory over Denver.
Jackson has seven straight games this season with a rating of 100 or better, tied for the eighth-longest streak ever.
Catch them all
Jared Goff and Amon-Ra St. Brown has a near-perfect connection this season.
St. Brown has caught his last 30 targets from Goff after the two went 7-for-7 in Detroit’s win over Green Bay. That’s tied with Buffalo’s Khalil Shakir for the longest streak of catches without an incompletion by a wide receiver since NextGen Stats began tracking the stat in 2016.
Zebra Sports calculated the probability that a player would have caught all of those targets based on the difficulty of each throw and said it had a probability of about 1 in 780,000.
For the season, St. Brown caught 48 of 59 passes from Goff, with a 133.3 passer rating on those throws that ranks No. 1 among all duos with at least 40 attempts, according to Sportradar.
