Introduction
With the NFL season getting into full swing today we decided we wanted to take a look at one of the recent rule changes. The decision to move back the field goal point after attempt was done in an attempt to make it less of a certainty and increase the desire to go for two. The visualizations below attempt to see if teams should go for two more often.
Visualizations
Data Notes
As you can see from the data, the overall expected value of attempting a two point conversion is slightly higher, but the difference is very small and extremely variable. Some teams are definitely better than others at going for two. While it does seem that there is a slightly benifit overall in going for two, it is extremely inconsistent though and we would likely need to see an NFL team go for two more regularly and have them be successful at it to make any arguments of which is better.
Microsoft Excel was used to clean the data and Tableau were used to create this visualization. The NFL statistics about PATs were taken from sportingcharts.com One point attempts were taken from here and two point attempts came from here.
