The kickoff return safety was a good play call

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At that point in the game I would have rather just let Covey try to run it out and take my chances with his skills as a runner.

i’m ok with it but in bad weather, it’s probably best to save that for another day.

If Covey would have thrown the ball backwards like he should have, the play would have worked great actually because the entire left side of the field was wide open.

I’ve rewatched that play a few times and it appears the ball slips out of Covey’s gloved hand and goes forward instead of backward. I’m not sure they practiced that play with a glove on… the pass looked really weird coming out of his hand and I think if he didn’t have a glove on there’s a good chance it goes backwards, or he just kind of let his adrenalin take over.

But I agree even though the pass failed, I think this will cause teams to rethink how they cover Covey on kickoffs which may open up some running lanes.

I liked the idea, but the execution was somewhat lacking, Poole( I think he was the other returner) was never in position behind Covey. Covey should have seen that and just taken a knee.

Look at this play from a statistical point of view.

Probability and Expected Value of Success:
This season Utah has had 7 kick off returns, one was taken to the house for a TD. That’s one in 7 chances for the possibility of 7 points, or an expected value of 1 point.

Probability and Expected Value of Failure:
If the play fails, you know there’s 100% probability of a safety which yields an expected value of 2 points against Utah. Then there’s the repeat possession for the opponent with relatively good field position. Up to that point, ASU had 9 possessions (not including KO return for TD) and had scored one FG on offense. So there was a 1 in 9 chance that they would score 3 points on the next possession for an expected value of 0.333 points against Utah. ASU had not scored a TD and did not score a TD on offense the entire night, so there was no expected value for points from a TD, solely based on stats in this game up to that point in time. Total expected value from a fail on this play was 2.33 points against Utah, or -2.33 points.

Conclusion: Expected value from success on this play was 1 point. Expected value from a failure on this play was -2.33 point. The expected value of the two outcomes did not justify the play. Actual result was a fail and a 5 point swing against Utah. That is how they should use analytics to look at risk/reward trade offs in play calling. It was a bad call.

Take the forward pass off the table as that leads to 100% probability of a Safety. Assume they attempt a backwards pass. There are just a couple outcomes: 1) Success and results in a TD, 2) Success and results in a return with unknown field position, 3) Success and results in runner taking a knee for a touchback, 4) Fail resulting in a fumble, either recovered by return team or going out of bounds > Safety and 2 points, 5) Fail resulting in fumble recovered by kicking team > touchdown and 7 points. It’s hard to pinpoint the exactly probabilities for each possible outcome, but given there’s 100 yards to go for a TD and 70 for a FG, the odds and expected values of the play working are far less than the expected values from a fail. Again the risk/reward ratio was way off on this play choice.

Here let me put it more simply. You run a risky play for which the best successful outcome is a TD and the worst outcome in a failure is two scores against you. Risk/Reward not balanced.

If Covey puts that pass on point there’s a very good chance its a touchdown. ASU had their entire kick team on the other half of the field, behind a wall of our blockers.

If we execute it better, it probably gets the attention the fake punt return got against Oregon. Looks great when it works, awful when it doesnt.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by rbmw263.

Saw the replay of the play on The Drive. Receiver wandered forward as Covey was moving forward presumably to sell the play. There was nothing there as evidenced by how fast the defense was on the receiver as he was trying to pick up the dropped ball. Bad idea plus bad execution. Covey needs to know when to suck it down and not try to make something out of nothing.

Funny, when then Moose can no longer support his idiotic stance with sound logic, ha asks that the discussion be dropped.

Easy now.

Poor weather. Huge defensive stop that kept momentum status quo. Those two alone would tell me it’s the wrong time to make the call. But okay, call is made, let’s take a chance. But when the kick went that deep into the endzone, Covey would already have had to run 5-10 yards to get in front of Bubba, even if he didn’t move. Covey didn’t audible out (or whatever options might exist) and he should have just taken the knee. But a true freshman with all the emotion running, I can’t fault him for making the bad decision to continue to follow coach’s order. Not sure what Bubba could have done to limit the risks – if he took a few steps back so he’s behind Covey again or just stood still, it may have tipped off the special teams and result in a safety or s**tty field position.

I’m just glad in the end it didn’t matter and we still won. But can you imagine the heartache if we lost that game by less than 5 pts, or if their ensuing FG was the final score of the game!