I said so at the time, and I stand by it. Tip to Shake who found the number crunching to back it up.
Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it, and by a good amount. However, these numbers are baselines for the league as a
whole. You’d have to expect the Colts had a better than a 30% chance of scoring from their 34, and an accordingly higher chance to
score from the Pats’ 28. But any adjustment in their likelihood of scoring from either field positionincreases the advantage of going for it. You can play with the numbers any way you like, but it’s pretty hard to come up with a realistic combination of numbers that make punting the better option. At best, you could make it a wash.
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