It was probably Manuels call going through progressions, and was certainly not the first or second option. Hard to expect the QB to just throw it away when he is a rookie and his progressions are beaten into his skull, but its hard to expect a RB to be smart enough to drop it there, and FJax did it, which is impressive as hell

Please explain to me why it's better to run a play with 12 seconds left and no timeouts down 10 than to kick the field goal. FWIW I only read the quoted above

holy **** ron rivera posts here, amazing

lol

I wanted to touch on this post and bring in an example from the CFL (LOL me right?).

There is a team called the Saskatchewan Roughriders that have a QB named Darian Durant who is a decent rusher and should be pretty good at QB sneaks but they actually have a backup QB who is much better named Drew Willy that comes in for short yardages such as 3rd & 1 or 3rd & 2 (Only 3 downs in CFL) and I believe his conversion rate this year is 100% because he executes the QB sneak amazingly well.

A couple of years ago they had the worst coach in the league who decided to run a shotgun formation consistently on 3rd & 1 for god knows what reason but as you would probably guess, they were one of the worst teams in the league at 3rd down conversions.

I started writing a reply and binned it, so to this reply.

Though clearly it isn't Rivera, or he'd be talking about how smart a decision punting down 10 was. Gotta trust your defence.

worst coach in the league

Most annoying cliche out of the following?

1. Trust your defence
2. Establish the run
3. Keep the ball out of <opposing QB>'s hands.
4. Get points on the board

I know nothing about the CFL but let me guess, going for it on 3rd down is a lot more common than going for it on 4th down is in the NFL? Even though logically, the opposite should be the case. Because gaining ground offensively is harder to achieve, teams lose less by giving up their own offensive opportunity and giving the other team one. So teams should punt more often on 3rd and short than they do on 4th and short in the NFL. But I bet the opposite is the case, because the lack of downs emphasises the need to take risks to put a drive together.

Going for it with RG III vs sending out a kicker that you signed the day before the game, making his first NFL FG attempt, while down 24 tho.

I think it is more common but there are other factors in play. One factor is that defenses line up 1 yard off the ball but other than that, I think that the coaches mentality is similar to what you expressed in that it's hard to sustain drives so they go for it more often on 3rd & short.

Trust your defense. Because you're actually putting far more trust in your defense when you go for it on 4th.

so that's what happened to Drew Willy

Coaches are usually wrong when they kick the field goal first, especially when they are around the 10 or 20 yard line and kick the field goal first then go for the onside kick as they are giving up their best chance at scoring a TD, especially when they could be taking shots into the end zone that take little time off the clock, and they normally do this with enough time on the clock to get into field goal range if they recover an onside kick after scoring a TD.

Kicking would have been correct last night as they were not close enough to the end zone to make a TD much more likely than a hail mary after recovering the onside kick, not to mention, with the amount of time left they only had enough time to kick the field goal, recover onside, hail mary was their only chance of winning.

I am surprised this one hasn't generated more of a response. My instinct is that it is better to go for it. Given that you need a touchdown, a fg and an onside recovery, don't you gain more in probability to tie the game by [going for the TD close-in, as you are now vs after recovering the onside at midfield] versus what you lose in [not kicking close, but kicking after recovering and kicking long]

OR did I miss the point, in that you will only get one play after the onside recovery, and a hail mary is a better option than a 70 yd fg attempt?

Looks like Shoe above answered my question. Thx.

I say it's Trust Your D. Because using deduction all it means is "don't trust your offense". If announcers were forced to say "Trust your defense - do not trust you offense." every time, then they'd probably stop saying it because they would realize how arbitrary it sounds.

Establish the Run is just funny. Nothing better than watching the Packers shove the pile forward 12 inches 30 times a game when they have Aaron Rodgers as their QB.

Assuming there was genuinely only 12s left you have to think scoring a TD is at least half as likely as the FG being good for going for the TD to be correct (tie vs win when the miracle happens). There is basically 0% chance you get more than 1 play off after the onside kick, so your only option is to go for the TD afterwards regardless. I can't imagine there is any place on the field outside of 10 (being generous, probably outside the 3 or 4 is closer) yards whereby kicking the FG isn't twice as likely as scoring a TD in a single play.

I think the point at which it starts to swing rapidly in favour of going for it would be ~30s, because then you start to have a chance of getting a play to get into FG range after the onside kick and being able to spike the ball. I think it's pretty rare for any coach to kick the FG with >30s left so I can't imagine coaches are making mistakes by kicking very often.

5. Keep the defense guessing

Blindly spouting "establish the run" while ignoring the composition of the team is just stupid. Yes, you should run if you have a good line and Adrian Petersen. But if you can't run, but have an elite QB with decent receivers, by all means pass all you want. When the Cardinals were making their run back in 08, it was so annoying reading and hearing about "establishing the run" or seeing them actually give the ball to Edgerrin James 30 times a game when they had a terrible run game (less than 3 yards per carry), yet had Kurt Warner, Boldin, and Fitzgerald. Then, when they finally realized they should just stop trying to run the ball and rely on their super accurate QB, having to read about how "pass-wacky" they were.

The worst cliche that hasn't been mentioned is "take the points". Especially when it's used in a situation where the team's only like 50% to make the field goal in the first place, and you could probably "take the first down" by going for it easier than you could "take the points" by kicking.

All this talk about running/passing got me interested in the early days of the forward pass.

Wiki talks about it a bit, it's pretty funny:
"The forward pass had been attempted at least 30 years before the play was actually made legal. Passes "had been carried out successfully but illegally several times, including the 1876 Yale–Princeton game in which Yale’s Walter Camp threw forward to teammate Oliver Thompson as he was being tackled. Princeton's protest, one account said, went for naught when the referee 'tossed a coin to make his decision and allowed the touchdown to stand' ".[1] By 1884, a Green Bay, Wisconsin area cheese farmer named Seamus McCarthy proposed that the forward pass be allowed "if and only when ten rushing attack plays have been attempted by that team wishing to pass forward." He would go on to say "After which, the referee would deem that said team had 'established the run' and was now able to attack its opponent by two methods." The proposal would be voted down 13-2 and the legal forward pass would not be seen for twenty-two years. [2]

also, holy hell how has "you've got to play the percentages" not made it on here? usually immediately following analysis that is 100% mathematically incorrect

hahaha I was about to say that "established the run" part had to be some smartass vandal.

wait did I just lol at an ARC poast? what are these feels?

+1