The Fourth Down Revolution

Read the Article

The full text of “The Fourth Down Revolution”, from the Vol 2 — Summer 2025 issue.

Few coaches embody this aggressive, data-informed philosophy more starkly than Kevin Kelley. During his highly successful tenure at Pulaski Academy in Arkansas, Kelley gained national attention for his near-complete abandonment of the punt, famously going for it on virtually every fourth down, regardless of field position. His approach wasn't reckless; it was rooted in a deep understanding of probability and possession value.

As Kelley himself has articulated through his work and resources available at AFM, including his insightful video **"Going For It On Fourth Down"**, the traditional approach often plays not to win, but *not to lose*. **"Punting is often just surrendering possession with the *hope* your defense holds,"** one might paraphrase Kelley's core belief. **"Why hope when you can control your own destiny by keeping the ball?

The math consistently shows that aggression, over the long run, gives you a better chance to win."** His success forced many in the coaching community to re-evaluate long-held assumptions. While Kelley's "always go for it" approach remains an outlier, its influence is undeniable. We see top college programs and NFL teams increasingly using analytics departments to inform their fourth-down decisions.

Coaches are now armed with charts and data suggesting the percentage play, often leaning towards aggression in situations where previous generations would have automatically sent out the punt team. The image of a coach like Dabo Swinney signaling for a two-point conversion captures this same spirit – a willingness to trust offensive execution and play for maximum points, challenging traditional norms. This trend isn't just happening at the elite levels.

High school coaches, with greater access to analytical tools and inspired by pioneers like Kelley, are also becoming bolder. They recognize that, especially with potentially dominant offenses or defenses that struggle, maintaining possession can be their most potent strategy. Of course, context still matters immensely. Score, time remaining, specific matchups, field position, weather, and confidence in your offensive and defensive units all play a role in the final decision.

No chart can perfectly capture the feel of a game or the momentum swings. However, the underlying shift is clear. The automatic punt on fourth-and-manageable is fading. Fueled by analytics and validated by coaches willing to challenge convention, aggressive, calculated fourth-down decision-making is no longer a novelty; it's a crucial component of modern football strategy at every level. The revolution is here, and it's keeping the offense on the field.

Coaches like Dabo Swinney increasingly embrace aggressive play-calling, reflecting a broader shift seen in both fourth-down decisions and point-after attempts.

By Bill Mountjoy - Associate Editor American Football Quarterly    BILL WALSH GAVE ME THIS! Continued from Vol CCVIV pg. 24 GOAL LINE OFFENSE. In this phase they have substituted their goal line defense. I suppose there are teams that don’t substitute, but by and large, let’s assume they do. They use 6 linemen and the gap charge. Often you have to make a change in the blocking patterns that you’ll use to face up to that goal line defense.

Like our short yardage offense, when we talk about our goal

35 line offense, we are talking about what we need. Certainly there is certain situation where we need inches. So we would start our list with those plays where we need inches to score. We would move our list down to let’s say the six plays we might run if we are sitting with 3rd down and 3 on the 3 yard line and they are still in their goal line defense. You will see varied charges. When we get to the six inch line or the 1 foot line, we are going to see everyone in the gap, coming straight ahead.

When we are on the 3 yard line with 3 yards to go, often there is an out charge. There is a substitute man coming in for one of the linebackers. There is a free safety back in the game, those kind of things happen. We have to account for those situations. You can’t account for these situations if you haven’t planned to do it because you will look down at that far end of the field and you will just see a bunch of bodies and rear ends facing you. You can’t tell where you are.

You have to have a method you have worked

36 with and your coach in the press box has to tell you just where you are. We talk to our quarterback about signaling distance. He will put up his hands and you think it is something that it is not. He will signal and it looks like we need 3 yards and later you will see the film and we only needed 1 yard. You have ways to talk to him about what that means to you and then you have that part of your football developed. The first two weeks of practice you have to have some goal line football.

Every week you have a certain number of plays. You place the ball on the 3 yard line, the 2 yard line, the 1 yard line, the 6 inch line, and the 1 inch line. Bring it out to the 3 and it is 3rd and 3 on the 3. Here’s what we are going to run. Practice it that way and often these plays run together. Your players have so much more confidence, coming out of the huddle knowing what they have been in those situations before. Obviously, line splits make a difference.

Hopefully there is an extra blocker on the weakside, the tight end or some big wide rear ended guy, to help protect his gap. But whatever you have, if you have planned it and fail, you can’t blame yourself for losing your poise. You can’t blame yourself for panicking if you have planned these things and they fail. You may really search yourself for the kinds of decisions you made on Thursday night, but you certainly can’t make the decision during the game.

As a coach, one of the things you are always fighting during the game is the stress factor, breaking your will. The stress factor will affect your thinking. I have been in situations where I could not even begin to think what to do. From that point on, I knew that I had better rehearse everything.

END OF THE GAME (LAST 3 PLAYS). To save your own sanity, you’d better practice the last three plays of the game. I don’t worry so much what they are. Don’t get yourself in a position to try to think of something to do with just a few seconds left because you will always wonder why you didn’t do something else. Through experience we said that we were going to have 3 plays. Often they are the kind of plays with a very low percentage.

I have seen the Atlanta Falcons win their division in three consecutive games, I think it was, throwing the ball way down the field on their so-called planned play with a tipped pass. I won’t talk about those plays in detail, but certainly one would be catching the ball and lateralling it. Our team has practiced those last three plays and when it gets down to that point, they go in the game knowing just what they are going to do. I say, “Good luck” and amazingly enough, a couple of those have worked.

We walked off the field with our heads up. “My God, we almost pulled it out.” Rather than throwing the ball up in the air and having it intercepted and humiliating you. 3RD AND 8 YARDS TO GO (OR MORE). You have plays that you are going to call for that kind of situation. A lot of high school teams will run the ball on 3rd and 8. If they can run it, they should run it because it is certainly the best way to attack somebody. 3rd down and 8 should mean something to you.

Number one, the best single pass in Football is the hook. It’s not an out. Percentages throwing an accurate out drop considerably compared to a hooking pass. Obviously, a receiver can adjust to a hook. The receiver can see the ball leave the quarterback’s hands and the receiver can adjust to coverages. You will need some type of a hook pass that gets you 8 yards on 3rd and 8. You hear the sportscaster comment that the receiver did not run the distance he needed to make a first down.

You have to school your team on the fact that half of the yardage you make forward passing is after the catch. If we have 3rd down and 15 yards to go, it does not mean we are going to run a 15 yard pass pattern. We will generally throw the ball 10 and get up into the 20’s. We remind our team, it is 2nd and 20, 3rd and 25, we are going to run a basic pattern, get all we can out of the completion and run for the rest of it. We are constantly reminding our receivers what their stats are running after the catch.

Dwight Clark might be 4.2; Fred Soloman might be 9.3. This is one way you measure a receivers performance and his contribution to the ball club. 3rd down and 8 does not mean you have to throw an 8 yard pass. LONG YARDAGE - LAST THREE PLAYS. What are you going to do when you have 15 yards to go on a given down? You count on your best receiver catching the ball and then have running room to make the yardage. In each of these situations, you will practice them. TIME FACTOR.

The next thing you talk about is the time factor in a game. There is a dramatic difference for example, between the end of the first half and the end of the second half.

Obviously at the end of the game if you are behind, you are not going to be very cautious. You have to do certain things. Some of the gross errors are made at the end of the first half. So often teams leave the field after attempting to drive and score with time outs remaining. I suggest, if you have a so called two minute offense, you first decide whether you are going to score or run the clock out. You can run the clock out in a way that your principal and students won’t notice.

You have to call certain sweep type plays, but you are looking at the clock and you want to get the heck out of there. We know, we may try to go for it with a two minute offense, but the minute I see the odds start to turn the other way, I signal to our quarterback and now we watch the clock run. We want to get out of there. Let’s say that we feel we can get into position to score and we have been a reasonably effective team in doing that. We are a team that uses our time outs.

We want to use our time outs even if it is at the wrong time as far as the clock is concerned. What we really need to do is discuss strategy with the quarterback. We will give the quarterback two or maybe three plays to call. We will talk about what the defense is doing, what defense they are in, remind him what our game plan was. We are not going to be able to send plays in at that point. So we will set our strategy at the expense of the clock.

We know that with a minute and 20 seconds left in the half, call your time outs if the clock is running because if that clock is running with a minute and 20 seconds, if you have any kind of play, by the time you run the next play you have probably run 20-25 seconds off the clock. You do that twice and it is now third down and you are really in trouble, because the other team is going to get the ball back. I say use your time outs and don’t wait too long.

Almost the first day of practice you install your basic running game. It might be a 16 Power or a 17 Power, whatever it is, you simply talk to your team in a meeting and tell them that we are going to call two plays. The quarterback is going to call the formation, the plays are going to be on a certain snap count, for us it is on set which is the second sound, and the quarterback is going to say “two plays” 16 Power twice. You come up to the line of scrimmage and you run 16 power on set.

You don’t jump around, you take your time and run it again. If you will do that in your early camp once or twice a day, just a couple of plays, you have established a system in which you can call your plays. Most two minute offensive plays are not elaborate plays. You can repeat the same one three or four times. It could be a very simple hooking type pass or an out. The point is, all you need is

39 the facility to do it. You simply say, two plays and name them. The next thing you might do is call your formation Red Right, check with me, you come to the line of scrimmage and say 16. Now you can run two plays. Remember if you huddle up it could cost you at least 25 seconds. The two minute offense is related to one, being able to call two plays in the huddle; two, to use your time outs; three, know when you are not going to make it. Those are the key things. FOUR MINUTE OFFENSE.

Four minute offense does not mean you are trying to score. In the two minute offense you want to score points. Four minute offense, you want to use the clock and control the ball. This was brought home in 1972 when I was with the Cincinnati Bengals. With four minutes left in the game, we had an 11 point lead and had the ball. We lost the game. We know this, we can use 35 seconds on the clock by simply not going out of bounds, not throwing an incompletion and not being penalized.

But 35 seconds is 4 forward passes that your opponent can get if you don’t use it up. In a four minute offense, every play can use 35 seconds. All we really have to do is make a first down and we are going to win that thing. You must practice the four minute offense. It has to be live, you don’t tackle people necessarily because you can blow the whistle when you think the man would have been stopped. You have to talk to your team about it. You are going to win the game and here is how you are going to do it.

You are going to have the lead with four minutes to go and you are going to have a first down. You will win if you can maintain control.You know you have 35 seconds if you don’t go out of bounds. You know the clock will stop on a penalty. You know that a fumble is disastrous, that if you can just squeak out a first down by good play calling and aggressive blocking, you will win. Always feel that when you go into a game, the other team has a one point edge on you.

As a coach even if they have a 40 point edge on you, don’t think about that. You figure every time you play, you are a one point underdog. They are one point better than you are. You will be a little more alert about it. If you think the opponent is one point better, you have to control the ball. We have plays that we are going to run. We are looking at the clock and unfortunately, we may have to throw a pass to get that first down, which we have had to do and have been successful.

But we have practiced it and our quarterback knows the fears he can have with a mistake. Your four minute offense can win you the game. If you will talk about it, you will be surprised. If you practice it each week, four of five plays. You can say, here we are, on our 30 yard line, four minutes to go, let’s see what we can do. Let’s see if we can get a first down and how we will use the clock. Throughout much of this situational football, there is pressure on the offense.

Bill Mountjoy - Associate Editor American Foootball Quarterly Coach has 33 years of High School football coaching in Virginia – most of it as Head Football Coach at 6 different High Schools. Four of his former High School players played in the NFL, including “Parade All-American” James Farrior (2005 All-Pro Lber with the Steelers), AND “Parade All-American” Darren Perry (9 year starter at Free Safety for the Steelers, & was the Packers Secondary Coach).

Won the 1971 VAAC Private School State Championship at Huguenot Academy. Coached 6 years on the college level (including Offensive Assistant at Division III National Champion Randolph-Macon College from 1968 to 1971) and Passing Game Coordinator at CIAA Div. II Virginia Union University in 1995 & 1996). One of his former College players played in the NFL. Coached 1 year of Semi-Pro football with the Richmond Ravens.

During the 1987 strike – the team sent 9 players to the Redskins (including starting QB Tony Robinson) – who helped the Skins go 4-0 during the strike – including a win over the Cowboys’ regulars! 19 of Coach Mountjoy’s Assistant Coaches became Head Football Coaches in High School, and 1 in College (Andrew Faison at Virginia State University).

Coach Bill Mountjoy is a Life Member of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), and has authored articles on football for American Football Monthly, Scholastic Coach, Texas Coach, Coach & Athlete, Gridiron Strategies, etc. He has spoken at many Clinics, including the 2006 & 2007 Mega Clinics. SNAP COUNT. One of the big mistakes you can make is to play around with the snap count. Any time we are backed up, we are going to snap the ball on set.

Any time we are sitting there in short yardage, we are not going to play around with the snap count. We have seen teams try to draw teams offside and one of their own linemen moves and then it is 3rd down and 6 to go. We are going to snap the ball on the regular count that makes sense. Paul Brown has a certain snap count for every play and Paul was right because with certain plays it makes a dramatic difference in the way you use your cadence. The first thing you remind yourself, don’t outsmart yourself.

Give the offense every chance to come off the ball together. Further down the list you might say, let’s disrupt the defense by getting them off balance. Your snap count is very important to you. If you are talking about offensive football, the running game is the most vital part of the game, but when you talk about your running game, what you are saying is you have to be able to run when you are backed up. You have to be able to run on 3rd and 3, you have to be able to run on short yardage.

You have to be able to run through tough situations. In the professional level, the forward pass dominates the rest of the game. But if you can’t run in tough situations, your chances of success are minimal.