Punt or Onside Kick?
In their opening game of this year’s National Football League (NFL) season, the Buccaneers (Bucs) lost to the Lions by a mere 7 points, one touchdown, but that could have all changed if the Bucs had completed their onside kick.
Suppose you are down by 14 points with minutes to go in the fourth quarter. You have to do everything you can in order to score and at least tie the game. Now, suppose that you get that first touchdown and are now only down by 7 points with 1 minute to go. What do you do? Punt the ball or try for an onside kick? Punting the ball would result in the opposing team gaining immediate possession of the ball and having the opportunity to knee-down and secure the win. On the other hand, you could try an onside kick and give your team an opportunity to gain possession of the ball and try to score once again to tie up the game. Is an onside kick worth the risk though?
Below is a table showing arbitrary values to describe the game theory behind onside kicks and punt returns versus expecting an onside kick and not expecting one. The values show the payoffs of the punting team (A) deciding if they should do the onside kick or punt, and the receiving team (B) deciding on whether or not they expect an onside kick. These values also assume that if B expects the onside kick, the kick will not succeed and B will gain possession of the ball and therefore win the game. If B does not expect the onside kick, we will assume that A has succeeded in its onside kick.
From these values, we can see that B has a strictly dominant strategy of expecting an onside kick. We can also see that A has a dominant strategy of choosing to do an onside kick. With this, we can predict that an expected onside kick will occur and thus A will lose the game. In general, this is what tends to happen when a losing team is faced with a decision at the end of the game on whether or not to do an onside kick.