Anon’s question and the response illustrate the nebulous advantage that a successful two point conversion brings early in the game. Early on, the biggest advantage may be a gain in momentum. That’s difficult to measure and you’re risking losing momentum if the try fails. A critical factor in the decision to go for two has to be a assessment of a team’s chances for success. The league average may be 50% success but some teams personnel against that week’s opponent are going to significantly increase or decrease those odds.

I strongly suspect that we won’t be seeing a lot of teams going for two early in the games anytime soon. Fans and the press have brilliant hindsight. Any time that a strategy that is this unconventional fails and ends up having an effect on the outcome of a game the coach will be roasted regardless of the merits of the decision. This is the kind of thing that people remember and gets coaches fired and that’s something that most coaches try to avoid.

There is very little marginal value to being up 2 points instead of 1. This becomes more true the closer you get to the end of the game when the amount of scoring opportunities are limited. (At time=60-:00 being up 0 points is worth 50% payout, and being up 1 or 2 points are both worth 100% of a win). Your guaranteed retaliatory touchdown scenario probably best applies in such an endgame scenario where there is ~2:00 or less on the clock (so your offense won’t be likely to score again) and you are facing an opponent with a strong offense and a conservative conversion decision matrix. In this case it is indeed terrible to be the first actor since the opponent can make perfect decisions after seeing the result of your conversion.

This line of thought is much less useful the closer we are to t=0 in the game because there are going to be many more scoring opportunities for each team. Our hero team isn’t in such a bad spot being down by one since they can always opt to go for 2 on their next TD, and their next one and their next one… Clearly missing your first conversion attempt puts you at a disadvantage, but not a very large one, since even missing 3 conversion attempts in a row against a team steadily nailing extra points can be tied with a FG.

Finally, my intuition says that the marginal value of being up 1 vs 2 points matters more at the start of the game. When you are up 2 from a successful hero conversion+ failed villain conversion you are now in a position to simply kick extra points after TDs giving you a lead of 9 and forcing the villain team to score on two possessions to get even or ahead. This should mostly offset the twice-as-often downside of trailing by one since half the time a TD+conversion re-ties the game, and the other half hero is in the reverse 2-possession scenario.

I’m falling asleep as I write this so apologies in advance for syntax/spelling/grammar/logical failings/faulty assumptions.