Not everyone understood why the Panthers attempted a two-point conversion when they scored a touchdown to cut the Packers’ lead to 24-16 on Sunday. But Panthers coach Ron Rivera understood why it was the right call.
Rivera said after the game that he has studied the analytics and knows that a two-point conversion attempt when down by eight points in the fourth quarter is smarter than kicking the extra point.
“Yes, that was purely analytics, 100 percent,” Rivera said, via Jourdan Rodrigue of TheAthletic.com. “The thing is, if you get there and then you score at the end, then you’re kicking to win the game. If you don’t get it there, you get an opportunity to go for two again. We feel pretty good about the play we had called the first time, and we felt good about having the second one up. It’s most certainly something where we went ahead and followed the analytics of it.”
Although the two-point conversion attempt was unsuccessful, the reasoning behind it was correct. Rivera made the right call.