NFL coaches typically adhere to what's known as the Vermeil Chart for making two-point decisions. The chart was created by Dick Vermeil when he was offensive coordinator for UCLA over 40 years ago. It's a very simple chart that simply looks at score difference prior to any conversion attempt and does not consider time remaining, with one caveat. It applies only when the coach expects there to be three or fewer (meaningful) possessions left in the game.
With just over 7 minutes to play, there could be three possessions at most left, especially considering that at least one of those possessions would need to be a KC scoring drive for any of this to matter. (In actuality, there were only two possessions left, one for each team.) Even the tried-and-true Vermeil chart says go for two when trailing by 5. But it's not the 1970s any more and this isn't college ball, so let's apply the numbers and create a better way of analyzing go-for-two decisions.
Except for rare exceptions I've resisted analyzing two-point conversion decisions with the Win Probability model because, as will become apparent, the analysis is particularly susceptible to noise. Now that we've got the new model, noise is extremely low, and I'm confident the model is more than up to the task.
First, let's walk through the possibilities for KC intuitively. If KC fails to score again or DEN gets a TD, none of this matters. Otherwise:
