The Long View

Go For It: The Fourth-Down Ladder

Fourth-and-1 converts two times in three and has beaten a coin flip in every season since 1999. The steepest price on the ladder is the second yard, the worst call on the board is a midfield punt, and one taboo still stands untouched.

Every fourth-down argument in a living room eventually comes down to one question: how often does it actually work? So here they are, the whole ladder, from a quarter century of charted snaps.

Start at the top rung, because it settles the oldest argument first. Fourth-and-1 is a yes. Go attempts there have converted 66.4 percent of the time across 5,662 snaps, and the rate has beaten a coin flip in every season since 1999, never dipping below 54.5 percent even in its worst year. Fans judge go calls by the memorable failures, the stuffed sneak that lost a playoff game, but as a standing policy, fourth-and-1 is a two-in-three proposition, not a reckless one.

The two-yard cliff

The steepest step on the ladder is the first one. One added yard, from fourth-and-1 to fourth-and-2, costs about twelve points of conversion rate, the biggest single-yard drop anywhere on the table, and fourth-and-1 has out-converted fourth-and-2 in every season of the span. Yard markers are charted to the nearest yard, so some of those and-1s are long and some and-2s are short, which blurs the cliff, and it shows up anyway. There is a real sense in which fourth-and-1 is a different play from every other fourth down: the whole playbook is live, the defense must honor the sneak, and the math knows it.

The no-man's-land punt tax

Now the geography. At the opponent 33 to 40, the awkward zone past comfortable field-goal range but too close to flip the field, the punt is the worst entry in the choice table, and it is not close. Punting from there has averaged minus half an expected point while every alternative graded positive. The same lag shows up just shy of midfield: at the opponent 41 to 50, teams punted on 79.1 percent of decision snaps pooled, still 58.9 percent in 2025, even though the run go grades +0.90 expected points there. That band is where the league's decisions trail the math the most.

The punt from the opponent 35 is a donation, not caution, and the league has been making it for a quarter century.

The last taboo

For all the aggression the modern game has learned, one wall has not cracked: a team's own side of the field. On fourth downs in their own territory across the first three quarters, coaches chose the punt or the kick on 97.2 percent of more than 40,000 decision snaps, above 90 percent in every season since 1999. Whatever the analytics movement changed, the own-territory go call remains the decision a coach still cannot survive getting wrong.

One discount to remember

The same short-yardage call pays worse when everyone in the stadium knows you have to take it. Fourth-and-1-or-2 attempts made while trailing in the fourth quarter converted 58.5 percent, versus 65.8 percent for the identical distances earlier in the game, a discount of about seven points that showed up in 23 of the 27 seasons. Part of that is the defense teeing off on an obvious go. So when your team goes for it early, up seven in the second quarter, that is buying the conversion at its cheapest price, not recklessness.

How to use it: cheer the fourth-and-1 go, everywhere. Groan at the punt from the opponent 38. And when the broadcast calls an early go call reckless, remember that the numbers say the real risk is waiting until you are desperate.