As stressful as they are, I love myself a good two-point conversion. In an extraordinarily deep and meaningful conversation I recently had, we brought up that two-point conversions are essentially just touchdowns from the two-yard line. That led us to our initial question, are teams just as likely to make a two-point conversion as they are to make a touchdown from the two-yard line? Our hypothesis, based on no data or factual information, was an overconfident yes. But we set out to find out (and would be overwhelmingly proved wrong).

Methodology
I used data from nflfastR which tracks every play from the NFL going back to 1999. Since the NFL has changed quite a bit since then, I only looked at data from the past 5 seasons (2018-2023). You can view the R code and results here.

Results
Teams are overwhelmingly more likely to make a two-point conversion than a touchdown from the two-yard line.

From 2018-2023, the average team made a two-point conversion 49.4% of the time (with a standard deviation of 0.0981), while making touchdowns from the two-yard line 40.5% of the time (with a standard deviation of 0.0638). Using Welch’s two-sample t-test, comparing the two-point conversion rates of all teams and the two-yard touchdown rates of all teams, we get a p-value of 7.152E-05, meaning we reject the hypothesis and conclude the alternative hypothesis that there is a statistically significant difference between the two rates.

Conclusion
If any football players or coaches are reading this (first, how the heck did I get your attention), I would love to know your thoughts on why this is happening. Making another hypothesis based on no data or factual information (which went so well the first time), I think it might be a result of an increased amount of confidence post-touchdown that occurs when teams are making a two-point conversion. There also tend to be higher stakes involved when teams have to resort to two-point conversions, meaning players are facing different circumstances psychologically when making a two-point conversion. This is all based on my limited knowledge of coaching decisions, football, psychology, and just what people are thinking as an overall concept.

Concluding Notes (yes, I needed this to be a different section)
It’s really interesting that teams perform differently under what is essentially the same task (at least to me), but there’s a bigger takeaway from all of this. If there’s anything you take away from this, it’s to have more conversations about the things you’re interested in. Talk about football, two sample t-tests, ranked-choice voting, garlic scape recipes, and whatever else you love talking about. The conversations might seem quite mundane at the time, but it’s pretty freaking cool to get to talk to someone about something you love, and we take that for granted a lot. People are great. Talk to them more. Who knows, you might end up writing an article about two-point conversions because of it.