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Does Sark know that field goals get you 3 points?


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Posted

but we are in year 4 of this nightmare, i'm done assuming he will fix it. so really it's the hopeful vs. the pessimists. and the pessimists have thrown their hands up and said, fuck it, just kick the FG. which I recognize is also a futile exercise.

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Posted
49 minutes ago, Park Gothic said:

This is the whole fucking thing here. Everyone is using stats to support the argument for going for the TD or settling for a FG, but the real problem is that Sark's playcalling inside the 10 has been terrible. I swear he was better at playcalling in the RZ when we had worse athletes. It's like he loses all feel for the game and for the defense. He's so worried about doing something stupid (like the final RZ sequence at the end of last season) that he decides to basically do nothing at all.

Run inside the tackles three times? With a QB sneak to cap it off? Everyone saw that coming. An idiot phoning in plays from his couch could have called those plays. You cannot play bully ball with a team like OSU. If you are going hard up the middle, do it when they aren't expecting it, or at least do it when they have to worry that you might do something else. 

Exactly.  I swear there is something about the field shrinking and the defense compressing that makes Sark's usually proudly swinging nuts retreat all the way up into his torso. 

I think it's mostly that he doesn't want to ruin a good drive with an interception and take points off the board.  But, Sark, my guy, we don't get the points half the fucking time anyway.  Let your nuts back out.

Posted
On 8/30/2025 at 7:21 PM, mdmost said:

Going for it wasn't the issue. The play calling on 4th was. 

Yeah.  Against that defense, if I was going up the middle I would have used Baxter.  Arch is for going off tackle or outside in that situation.

Posted
21 minutes ago, bullet said:

Yeah.  Against that defense, if I was going up the middle I would have used Baxter.  Arch is for going off tackle or outside in that situation.

Years back, Arky had a goal line specialty back who was  high-jump track guy. With the D-line going low, the O-line did, too, and the ball carrier went up and over, six feet high... not a hurdle, but a high jump. Seemed to work pretty well. 

Posted

cbssn inside college football just now....

rick neuheisel said the way to prove to your team that you believe in them is to take 3 and tell the team it's on the defense, and sark didn't have to go 1 for 5 on 4th to prove his belief in the offense, and if he had taken some points maybe the game ends differently

 

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

cbssn inside college football just now....

rick neuheisel said the way to prove to your team that you believe in them is to take 3 and tell the team it's on the defense, and sark didn't have to go 1 for 5 on 4th to prove his belief in the offense, and if he had taken some points maybe the game ends differently

 

Everyone has been flipping out about Arch having a sub-par game, yet I'm really not worried about him in the least.  It's Sark's miserable decision making that's been our Achilles heel and it doesn't seem like it's going to get better anytime soon.  Take the points or just decide to make some smarter decisions besides run it up the gut repeatedly on the goal line and we win that game easily.  

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Posted

yup

haven't read the arch thread

there is so much win waiting to be sprung across the entire program

the ONLY ISSUE right now is the topic of this thread

at some point the hue and cry throughout the land will force the issue

the question is going to get asked whether cdc or sark want to hear it

coach, why do you run up the gut on every 4th down?  you are 10% on those calls - what does the binder say?  what should your success rate be?  what about taking free points in the red zone?

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Posted
5 hours ago, Tex Long said:

Years back, Arky had a goal line specialty back who was  high-jump track guy. With the D-line going low, the O-line did, too, and the ball carrier went up and over, six feet high... not a hurdle, but a high jump. Seemed to work pretty well. 

We need this guy…

 

IMG_7738.jpeg

Posted
49 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

coach, why do you run up the gut on every 4th down?  you are 10% on those calls - what does the binder say?  what should your success rate be?  what about taking free points in the red zone?

It's weird, because it's like Sark doesn't even understand his own personnel or the defenses he's going up against.

If you have Tim Tebow or even if this was back in the Henry Melton/Swoopes era, ok maybe.  And even Urban was smart enough to start incorporating the jump ball pass when it was obvious ol' Timmy was going to be diving right off center.  But Arch ain't that guy.  He's more quick than he is powerful.  And OSU is kinda strong up the middle.  They were last year when they stonewalled us on the same shitty plays.  

Dude just goes completely brain dead once the team gets near the goal line.  It was a problem for him in the NFL, too, and one of the main reasons he got axed from the Falcons.  You'd think this genius level offensive mind would have figured it out by now.  

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Posted (edited)

The problem with analytics based decision making is that it is limited to exactly one metric to guide decision making: “expected” points. In plain English we could say “how many points would I expect to score, on average, if I made this decision 1000000 times”. This value is going to be primarily based on data from other teams, with other players, and other coaches, in other places.

Well, first of all, we don’t get to score 3.7 or 4.1 points. We get 7, 3, or 0 as others have already point out. And we don’t get to retry the same decision a billion times and approach the statistical average outcome. We get one chance.

It also completely ignores very important factors like:

- The psychological effects of a goal line stand on both teams.

- The pressure applied to the opponent when the lead is narrowed. They may be forced to throw the ball where they otherwise would run, which increases the likelihood of a sack or turnover and may also preserve clock in the case of incompletions. 

- Each team’s particular strength or, ahem, weakness near the goal line.

How did we lose to OSU when we had more passing yards, more rushing yards, greater TOP, more total plays, etc? Because we didn’t lose the turnover battle 1-0. We lost 5-1. A turnover on downs is absolutely back breaking, especially when it takes points off the board.

Take the fucking points on the road against a top 5 team with a QB making his first real start who is clearly overwhelmed. Let the team build even a little bit of confidence and momentum. No one gives a fuck about what the binder says. 

Edited by Auto Driller
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Posted
13 minutes ago, Auto Driller said:

The problem with analytics based decision making is that it is limited to exactly one metric to guide decision making: “expected” points. In plain English we could say “how many points would I expect to score, on average, if I made this decision 1000000 times”. This value is going to be primarily based on data from other teams, with other players, and other coaches, in other places.

Well, first of all, we don’t get to score 3.7 or 4.1 points. We get 7, 3, or 0 as others have already point out. And we don’t get to retry the same decision a billion times and approach the statistical average outcome. We get one chance.

It also completely ignores very important factors like:

- The psychological effects of a goal line stand on both teams.

- The pressure applied to the opponent when the lead is narrowed. They may be forced to throw the ball where they otherwise would run, which increases the likelihood of a sack or turnover and may also preserve clock in the case of incompletions. 

- Each team’s particular strength or, ahem, weakness near the goal line.

How did we lose to OSU when we had more passing yards, more rushing yards, greater TOP, more total plays, etc? Because we didn’t lose the turnover battle 1-0. We lost 5-1. A turnover on downs is absolutely back breaking, especially when it takes points off the board.

Take the fucking points on the road against a top 5 team with a QB making his first real start who is clearly overwhelmed. Let the team build even a little bit of confidence and momentum. No one gives a fuck about what the binder says. 

Exactly this.  There's nuance to all of this and Sark seems incapable of understanding this.

Posted

Nothing gives a team and offense confidence like the coach saying let’s kick a FG from the 1 foot line to make a 1 touchdown a game a 1 touchdown game.

I’m sure the offense would feel all warm and fuzzy jogging off the field.

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Posted

In 2024 the top 50 offenses in NCAA averaged approximately 8 yards per attempt passing.

Those same offenses averaged about 5 yards per attempt rushing.

Should we pass on every down? The analytics suggest we should, no?

Posted
1 hour ago, Hookem2147 said:

Nothing gives a team and offense confidence like the coach saying let’s kick a FG from the 1 foot line to make a 1 touchdown a game a 1 touchdown game.

I’m sure the offense would feel all warm and fuzzy jogging off the field.

Does it give them more confidence when they get stuffed at the 1 over and over?

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Anyone actually suggesting we should kick a fucking FG down 7-0 at the 1 foot line should just do us all a favor and stop posting.

I agree that going for it in that situation was the right call. But that’s because the current score, game dynamics up to that point, and outcome in the failure case tipped the balance in favor of going.

What I disagree with is the notion that you should always go for it on 4th and less than X inside the Y yard line because the expected outcome of such a decision is 0.2 points per drive higher. Football isn’t a mathematical simulation. 

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Posted (edited)
36 minutes ago, Skipper said:

Anyone actually suggesting we should kick a fucking FG down 7-0 at the 1 foot line should just do us all a favor and stop posting.

There's nuance.  If you are Sark and you struggle against top 5 defenses with elite DL talent then probably yes.  If you are against fucking SJSU then of course not.

Edited by westexhorn
Posted (edited)

Some charts based on the red zone scoring numbers I posted. Trigger warning: Texas is going to be the worst in a lot of these metrics. 

This first one is essentially the premise for going for it instead of taking the FG in the red zone, and completely unsurprising. Points per red zone attempt by red zone td %. 

1PPG-TDP.jpeg.304587ac74b182cdd796a3921d9ed993.jpeg

The more often you score a td when you’re in the red zone the more points you score. Shocking, right? Texas is really bad at this. 54th in FBS at scoring TDs once they get in the red zone. 

But what about when you don’t score a TD? This next one is points per red zone attempt vs points per red zone attempt that didn’t result in a TD. 

3PPG-PPNTD.jpeg.09ebca8cb3b94f9ba5c22d94d85dfe72.jpeg

Inversely, points per red zone attempt by the percentage of times that you come away with nothing.

2PPG-0P.jpeg.35c731eb1964371787af8f41296af3c1.jpeg


Again, unsurprising that coming away with nothing is bad and Texas came away with nothing the most. 111th in FBS in scoring % in the red zone. 

And points per red zone attempt by the percentage of times that a team attempted to kick a field goal instead of going for it on 4th down. 

4PPG-FGA.jpeg.0f19ac9c2b75e5688c332f83385e1f41.jpeg

At this point I was pretty strongly in the camp of taking the points vs going for it on 4th down. So what would it look like if they took the field goal as much as the highest of these teams. Same chart, bumping Texas to taking the field goal 72% of the time.

5PPG-FGA2.jpeg.105dc635c77a01eec647b80bb5696e23.jpeg

Only from 4.98 points per red zone attempt to 5.24. 

They would only have to increase their red zone td% from their actual 64% to 68% to achieve the same result. That’s moving from 54th in fbs to 38th. 

What if they kicked and made the FG 100% of the time? That would increase points per red zone attempt to 5.55, still below average for the group. They’d need to increase their TD % from 64% to 72% to achieve the same result, 14th in fbs, 4th of these 8 teams.

So the problem isn’t in the decision to go for it. It’s the inability to score TDs in the red zone.

For comparison, 2023 was even worse in red zone td %. 120th in FBS in red zone td%. They the field goal more often, came away with nothing less often, scored more points on drives that didn’t result in a TD, but still score half a point less per red zone attempt. 

What’s mind bottling is how a team with this level of talent is underperforming so badly once they get in the red zone. 

Edit to add, not only is Texas bad at converting red zone opportunities into TDs, because they are so aggressive in going for it, they compound the problem and end up worse than the peer group in all of the other red zone metrics. 

Edited by heso
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Posted
1 hour ago, westexhorn said:

There's nuance.  If you are Sark and you struggle against top 5 defenses with elite DL talent then probably yes.  If you are against fucking SJSU then of course not.

This is such a bad take it reminds me why I need to stay away from this board during football season LOL.

Posted
39 minutes ago, heso said:

Some charts based on the red zone scoring numbers I posted. Trigger warning: Texas is going to be the worst in a lot of these metrics. 

This first one is essentially the premise for going for it instead of taking the FG in the red zone, and completely unsurprising. Points per red zone attempt by red zone td %. 

1PPG-TDP.jpeg.304587ac74b182cdd796a3921d9ed993.jpeg

The more often you score a td when you’re in the red zone the more points you score. Shocking, right? Texas is really bad at this. 54th in FBS at scoring TDs once they get in the red zone. 

But what about when you don’t score a TD? This next one is points per red zone attempt vs points per red zone attempt that didn’t result in a TD. 

3PPG-PPNTD.jpeg.09ebca8cb3b94f9ba5c22d94d85dfe72.jpeg

Inversely, points per red zone attempt by the percentage of times that you come away with nothing.

2PPG-0P.jpeg.35c731eb1964371787af8f41296af3c1.jpeg


Again, unsurprising that coming away with nothing is bad and Texas came away with nothing the most. 111th in FBS in scoring % in the red zone. 

And points per red zone attempt by the percentage of times that a team attempted to kick a field goal instead of going for it on 4th down. 

4PPG-FGA.jpeg.0f19ac9c2b75e5688c332f83385e1f41.jpeg

At this point I was pretty strongly in the camp of taking the points vs going for it on 4th down. So what would it look like if they took the field goal as much as the highest of these teams. Same chart, bumping Texas to taking the field goal 72% of the time.

5PPG-FGA2.jpeg.105dc635c77a01eec647b80bb5696e23.jpeg

Only from 4.98 points per red zone attempt to 5.24. 

They would only have to increase their red zone td% from their actual 64% to 68% to achieve the same result. That’s moving from 54th in fbs to 38th. 

What if they kicked and made the FG 100% of the time? That would increase points per red zone attempt to 5.55, still below average for the group. They’d need to increase their TD % from 64% to 72% to achieve the same result, 14th in fbs, 4th of these 8 teams.

So the problem isn’t in the decision to go for it. It’s the inability to score TDs in the red zone.

For comparison, 2023 was even worse in red zone td %. 120th in FBS in red zone td%. They the field goal more often, came away with nothing less often, scored more points on drives that didn’t result in a TD, but still score half a point less per red zone attempt. 

What’s mind bottling is how a team with this level of talent is underperforming so badly once they get in the red zone. 

Edit to add, not only is Texas bad at converting red zone opportunities into TDs, because they are so aggressive in going for it, they compound the problem and end up worse than the peer group in all of the other red zone metrics. 

Those charts are disgusting, but not necessarily surprising.

CONCLUSION: It's despicable that with the talent Texas has and a coach that's supposed to be an offensive guru Texas shows so poorly. Sark should get a D- in the thing he's supposed to be really good at.

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