RENTON, Wash. _ Fourth-down decisions, at any level of football, can be excruciatingly difficult for a coach. Go for it? Kick it? Punt it? They can, and often do, make or a break a team's fortunes. They can, and often do, ignite a round of second-guessing from fans and the media.
And yet for Pete Carroll, a fourth-down decision can be his favorite thing on a Sunday.
"There's a lot of stuff out there, a lot of plays happening I don't get to do much," the Seahawks coach said this week. "I do have the opportunities sometimes. At times, I often think about, there's about three or four plays in a game that really come down to _ I have the choice to do something.
"Really, I'm trying to maximize those."
There remains a divide between traditional coaching strategy and advanced statistical analysis of how to "maximize" those difficult fourth-down situations. That's true of most teams in the NFL, and it's true for the Seahawks, who have attempted fourth-down conversions at a slightly lower rate than the NFL average in each of the past four seasons.
How big of a deal is that?
It depends, in part, on how much you value the data.
And while some coaches around the NFL have shown a willingness to embrace a forward-thinking fourth-down strategy _ the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles, on their way to a Super Bowl title, have widely been used as example of that _ studies show there is still a significant gap between how often teams "go for it" on fourth down and how often they should go for it.
According to a study from Journal of Sports Analytics published in August, which calculated the NFL's fourth-down data from 13 seasons between 2004 to 2016, a "more aggressive" fourth-down strategy would yield an extra 0.4 wins per team per season.
The study calculated the Seahawks specifically could have had five additional wins in those 13 seasons if they had been more aggressive on fourth down.
