Rant re: Moronic Coaching Decisions in Football

I was watching the Monday Night Football game between the Vikings and the Packers and for the fourth or fifth time this year (a few of them were in college ball...once by my beloved Cal Bears) I saw a monumentally stupid coaching blunder in the last few minutes of the game that on this occasion cost Green Bay a chance to win. And, once again, it went by without a mention from the commentating booth (the announcers very rarely pick up on this particular mistake).

What am I talking about, you ask.

I am talking about a failure by one team to allow the other team to score rather than permit them to run out the clock.

The score is tied 17-17. Koren Robinson has a catch that goes to about the five yard line. Green Bay tries as hard as they can to tackle him, and succeed. There's about a minute left. Minnesota than proceeds to kneel down three times, Green Bay wastes both their time-outs, and Minnesota kicks a twenty five yard field goal as time expires.

I would fire a coach who did not have his team mentally prepared as to what to do in that situation. What you do is LET KOREN ROBINSON SCORE!!!! He scores, you're down seven (or if there is a miracle, you're down six), then you have a minute left and two timeouts to let Brett Favre engineer a touchdown drive. Sure, he has maybe a one in four or five chance of succeeding, but a professional NFL kicker is only going to miss/have blocked a twenty-five yard field goal maybe once in forty or fifty tries. Which offers you better odds of winning? Who cares whether you lose by three points or one hundred, a loss is a loss. Don't teams want to give themselves the best chance to win? Minnesota probably would have refused to score if Green Bay didn't mount a defense, they simply wanted to run out the clock.

I see this all the time, and it is monumentally stupid. If a team can run out the clock, you're better off being down 14 points and going for an onside kick than you are allowing yourself to lose the game.

The NBA offers a great analogy: if there were 23 seconds left, and a team was down by 1, can you imagine a coach telling his team NOT to foul. The clock would run out, and they would lose. No way, they foul on purpose. Same rationale in the NFL. A loss is a loss, you're better off giving your team a chance to win than you are keeping points off the board.

I've heard a few coaches defend their position, and it's always preposterous. "These guys are warriors...etc. etc.

*vomit*".

And it is almost NEVER commented on, and if it is, it is always done gently. I mean, c'mon. Is there some sort of Vegas-jedi influence going on here to prevent "artificial" score inflation? How can Al Michaels and John Madden not comment on absolutely terrible coaching by Mike Sherman.

Having your team prepared to handle that situation (i.e., if they are within the red zone, LET THEM SCORE) seems to me as basic as knowing how to run the two minute offense or spike the ball to stop the clock.

You're right Hell Paso. Guttenberg, I do not know what football league you're watching, but I'm telling you that blocking a 25 yard kick is much, much less common than a one and a half minute touchdown drive.

Chris Allen: The guys just have to be coached to know where they are on the field and what the situation is. It is know different than teaching guys when they need to get out of bounds.

There really should be no discussion here: it is absolutely better to let a team score a TD and go for the tie than it is to let them run the clock down to one second and then kick a twenty-five yard field goal. If a team can run out the clock, it is better to let them get two scores ahead...at least you have a one in thousand chance of winning than zero chances of winning. I saw Dick Vermeil do that, and KC actually managed to score once, but did not recover the onside kick and ended up losing....but it was a good try. The KC guys just mobbed each other at the line of scrimmage and let the RB score unmolested.

K.C. v. Oakland comes to mind. So does Jacksonville v. (I think) N.Y. Also Indy v. Cincy (might have been in the last four or five minutes).

Do you truly think that blocking/missing a twenty-five yard kick is more common than a one minute TD drive to tie/win the game?

Thank you for proving my point for me with hard evidence (I apparently am too lazy...). Let's assume that there is at least a ten percent chance of tieing the game on a last second drive. you increase your chances greatly by allowing the other team to score.

Apparently video-gamers think outside the box and are creative, while head football coaches (other than Bill Belichick and a few others) do not.

Undergrad from Michigan and a J.D. from George Washington...impressive, most impressive.

Clearly, with our combined might we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to this thread, and others.

Yes. If I was Mike Tice, I would eviscerate any idiot who didn't kneel down on the one yard line in that situation.

But, if I was Mike Sherman, I would gamble that Tice hadn't prepared his players for that situation, and recognize that every instinct in the typical WR and RB in the NFL is to score if at all possible.

I wouldn't go for two, make the other team have to go for two instead.

The prevent defense is not designed to prevent the team from scoring, it's only designed to prevent the team from scoring quickly. It can be a good idea if time is more precious than points, but if you are ahead by eight points or fewer, or if there is more than a few minutes left, it is a bone-head defense to play.

Well, these minds aren't apparently wiser than "our own" minds on this issue, since they haven't figured this out yet and we have.

As Hell Paso stated, we're not talking about long field goals, we're talking about twenty-five yard chip shots.

I gave you at least two examples of games decided by TD drives in literally the last minute, the Oakland v. KC game, and the JVille v. NYJ game. The chances of scoring a touchdown in a minute with two timeouts is far greater than the chance of a particular field goal of 20-29 yards being missed/blocked.

Of course, it's better to be behind by three with zero time left on the clock, then it is to be behind by seven with a minute left on the clock and possession of the ball...is basically what you're saying.

You're being unbelievably stubborn about this.

They're giving up the winning points when they kick the chip shot field goal with one second left! If they give up a TD, they get the ball back and a chance to tie.

When you say "macho" has nothing to do with it, I know for certain you have never seen this issue addressed in the media. Every player/coach who discusses this issue admits that the "macho", and "we're going to war" syndrome plays into it. They don't want to allow point and be seen as soft. Another word for this is stupidity.

I give up. You're not looking at this rationally. Assume these two facts are true.

1)You have a 1 in 100 chance of the kick being blocked/missed.
2)You have a 1 in 99 chance of scoring a TD in one minute if you have two timeouts left (you have just let the other team score to go up by 7).

If those two facts are true, wouldn't you always choose option (2)? I'm asking you to simply assume that the facts are true.

Now, what if option (2) suddenly became a 1 in 10 chance. Now, wouldn't that be a much, much better scenario than option (1)? That is basically how I understand the odds to actually be.

They also do it because they want to make sure the ball stays centered on the field, but I don't want to confuse this debate with facts.

I didn't say it was a big reason, but it's a reason. I've seen college games (wider hash marks) where the QB runs straight right or left to center the ball, then basically falls down.

The 20 yard field goal that is about to be kicked with one second left will ensure that the game won't end in a tie.