In hindsight it worked but punting was crazy reckless, especially with the game tied. If Chiefs are up 4 maybe a diff story. I don't care how hurt they are, 87 and 15 gotta make a play.
I read some ESPN article that used some kind of risk/reward metric to say that the punt was in the 99.9% of most cowardly calls this season (or something like that).
https://twitter.com/surrender_index/status/1619889790161125376
It's high in surrender index but Jon Bois' own video on it has punts that creep into the 200s/300s. So it's high overall but like, it's an exponential graph (and why the value is so high, but not like crazy high).
It's no much arbitrary as the one post has it, he breaks down why he thinks that way, of course you can argue the value could/should change based on how he came up with that formula but w/e. Honestly it can be both things, it was simultaneously cowardly but also I think the unique position of the game, who they are playing, and why, and how sorta undermanned the Chiefs were in that drive I understand why they did it. I think the odds more favor the punt in the sense of trying to make it harder on the Bengals, but the punt algo is more driven to "should you have punted there given the fact you had the chance to win." That punt was to in my mind hope to 1) Force the Bengals to go further to get their own score 2) Give yourself either another shot (like it did) or worst case take it to OT. It did that job.
That number would've been way worse had they been down in that situation.
It's a long but good watch anyways if you got an hour this evening.
