Comment by discardedrefuse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by discardedrefuse | Hacker News Reader

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discardedrefuse

> The incentive to pull off this kind of move, running the clock down a bit, that was already present. But there's a certain social expectation that you won't game the rules so blatantly, so that's a disincentive.

Clock management is a pretty big aspect of (American) football strategy and very much expected. I don't think anyone considers it gaming the rules. Just off the top of my head:

- Teams with comfortable leads tend to switch to conservative play calling. This keeps the ball safe and the clock running.

- Inside of 2:00, getting tackled on the field keeps the clock running. But running out of bounds or throwing an incomplete pass will stop the clock. So plays are always chosen to take advantage of this.

- Quarterbacks will spike the ball to quickly the stop the clock (incomplete pass).

- Calling a timeout stops the clock, so teams save these for the 2:00 drill. The 2:00 warning also stops the clocks, teams consider this a free timeout.

- Coaches will call timeout just as a kicker is about to kick a field goal. This is called "freezing the kicker". When timed right, it makes the kicker have to kick it again.

The Super Bowl in 2013 featured an intentional safety. Losing points but running the clock down. The play was predicted by one attendee at the party I was at —- a British gentleman whose introduction to football had been the Madden games.

I was trying to figure out if you meant the SB held for the 2013 season or the SB actually held in 2013 but then I remembered that it happened in both lol

You're obviously very familiar with football but the accuracy here is so high I just had to point out that I've never heard "freezing the kicker". The idiom I hear most often is "icing" the kicker.

You are correct. I messed that one up.

Even victory formation, this is an ultra cautious time waste. It’s also a thing in association football (soccer). Teams are praised for passing the ball around aimlessly denying the opposition possession to defend a lead. It’s boring to watch, unless it’s your team.

An interesting note is that basketball was like this until the introduction of the backcourt violation and shot clock.

The difference, of course, is that basketball is a fast-paced, high-scoring game, and the entertainment value suffers mightily when it is slowed down. Soccer is about deliberately building to a scoring opportunity, so forcibly speeding up the game would simply ruin the structure. Obviously, "turtling" can be a bit of a problem as a result, but it's not hard for a team to sacrifice some defensive structure to press for a turnover.

Maybe the most interesting end-of-game play that would've been influenced by the existence of a "victory formation" strategy https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/11/14/miracle-meadowlands-40th-a...

Fun fact, two of those five things are known to be counterproductive, but coaches still do them, presumably due to social expectation and/or job security.

Conservative play calling with a lead, particularly on defense, is known to reduce your chances of holding the lead. Sticking to more balanced tactics leads to losses that look more spectacular, but fewer of them.

And depending on how you look at the stats, the "icing the kicker" timeout either doesn't really work, or only works if done before the offense is set, which is not when most coaches call it.

I’ve heard for years that, statistically, icing the kicker doesn’t work. But whenever I actually see it happen, it’s in a situation where the defending team has no other productive use for the timeout, which means there’s also no reason not to ice the kicker.

You're correct, I misspoke. One is counterproductive and one (icing the kicker) is benignly useless.

There are books on it - https://johntreed.com/products/football-clock-management-5th... for example, and they're quite worth the read if you're interested in football at all. Some of the clock management tricks are relatively unintuitive - and some only work if you do it most but not all the time.

Football is a really interesting sport above/behind the field.

>I don't think anyone considers it gaming the rules.

Explicit clock management is part of the game.

But if you start messing around when the other team has ended pursuit, you are definitely breaking an "unwritten rule" (of which there are many in sports).

A good example of this is when defenders try to "blow up" a victory formation. It's perfectly legal, but generally considered bad sportsmanship.

This, and many other "bad sportsmanship" behaviors, are taboo because they are far less likely to affect the result of the game than they are to injure someone.

Behaviors like this will typically result in some variation of an on-field fight, which honestly seems like a pretty fair means of enforcement.

Not to mention that big money sports relies on spectatorship so you'll see adjustments to the rules to encourage exciting and offensive play. The English Premier League has adjusted rules over the years and ONE FC also attempts to encourage offensive action for fights.

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