The Vikings Have Played Two Weeks and Had Two Key 4th Down Decisions

The Vikings have leapt out of the gate to a 2-0 start with wins against NFC North rivals. Both of these games featured pivotal 4th down decisions—the first for Matt LaFleur and the Packers, the second for Kevin O’Connell and the Vikings. What happened, what was the right decision, and what can we learn from each of these scenarios?

The Vikings See a Pair of Pivotal 4th Down Calls Arrive

Week 1

The turning point of their week 1 clash with the Packers was a key Vikings stop on a 4th and 1 QB sneak by Jordan Love with 13:17 remaining in the 4th quarter.

The play before, the Packers kicked a field goal on 4th and 6, but a Dallas Turner offside gave head coach Matt LaFleur a decision: take the 3 points to make it an 8-point game or attempt a 4th-down conversion in hopes of eventually making it a 2-score game. LaFleur chose the latter, and the rest is history.

But was it the right decision by LaFleur? In hindsight, it didn’t work as he had hoped, but decisions are never made with the benefit of hindsight. In general, one of the clearest lessons from the analytics revolution in football is that—when it comes to 4th down decisions—fortune tends to favor the brave.

For decades, coaches have tended to punt or kick even when the optimal strategy is to go for it. In recent years, guided by the data, teams have become aware of this fact and become more aggressive, with 4th down attempts growing significantly since 2017.

But what about the LaFleur decision, in particular? The 4th down calculator on rbsdm.com yields the following chart:

In general, the numbers narrowly favor the decision to kick a field goal and secure an 8-point lead. Furthermore, in this specific case, the Packers had already made the field goal to go up 8 points, which removed the risk of a missed field goal.

The relevant comparison was then between the win probability after a successful field goal (81%) and the win probability before going for it (79%), which shows that declining the penalty and taking the 3 points was actually the right decision.

Aggressive 4th down decision-making often draws the ire of more traditional football fans, who generally want their teams to “just take the [three] points.” It is sometimes true that a guaranteed 3 points would be better than a chance at a touchdown, but field goals are seldom guaranteed (see e.g. the Vikings’ block of a 23-yard FG attempt by Chicago in week 2). LaFleur found himself in the rare situation of actually having a guaranteed 3 points, and to his detriment, he incorrectly turned it down.

Week 2

With 1:13 remaining, the Vikings kicked a field goal on 4th and 7 from the Bears’ 21 yard line to increase their lead from 3 to 6. This prompted commentator Greg Olsen to argue that it’s better to be up by 3 than 6, since teams trailing by 3 tend to get too conservative and settle for a field goal to send the game to overtime, whereas a team trailing by 6 knows they have to go for the touchdown to win.

Analyst Eric Eager looked into this question in 2020 and found that, contrary to Olsen’s claims, teams are slightly more likely to come back from down 3 than down 6. More updated data from 1999 to the present (courtesy of nflverse) confirms this, as shown by the plot below:

That said, the difference between a 3-point lead and a 6-point lead is sufficiently small that it’s rarely worth it to settle for a late field goal to increase your lead to 6: most of the time, a team up by 3 at the 21 yard line is better off going for the first down to ice the game.

However, several important mitigating factors came into play in the specific situation the Vikings faced in week 2 against the Bears. On a rainy day at Soldier Field, neither team had managed to score a touchdown in 59 minutes of gameplay, and injuries had forced both teams to turn to backup QBs. This made both a Vikings 4th and 7 conversion and a Bears TD drive much less likely than they might have been on a typical day.

Furthermore, the Bears had just over a minute remaining and had already used all of their timeouts. Scoring a touchdown under those conditions requires near-flawless execution, and even a single sack can spell disaster.

In the final analysis, the Vikings probably made the right decision to kick a field goal, and while their defense made things more difficult than they needed to be on the final drive, they ultimately proved the wisdom of the team’s decision.

Tom’s writing features expertise in mathematics, statistics  and rules. Readers can expect to learn from this life-long Vikings’ fans … More about Tom Rudelius