I view picking a football game like a gymnast making a vault.
The run towards the springboard is parallel to all the work on the stats and facts related to an upcoming game. When the gymnast hits the springboard it is like the kickoff and the action begins. When the routine is performed to perfection all that remains is to stick the landing, or in football, win the wager.
Last Sunday, our Buffalo Bills pick over the Kansas City Chiefs appeared to hit all the marks and all that was left was to stick the landing.
That is when it all went to hell.
Many might point to the missed field goal that would have tied the game inside the two minute warning as the reason we didn’t stick the landing. As a 2½ point favorite, we lost the game with the Bills by three points, 27-24. I suggest that the game was lost before we missed the field goal, first by an open touchdown pass on second down that fell incomplete on the Bills final drive and ultimately by the decision to go for the field goal.
Coaches play the game mostly by the book, but the book is often wrong. In recent years, more and more coaches are going for a new set of downs on fourth down and short even on their own side of the field. Somebody did the math and found out that punting was often a bad percentage play as opposed to having a quarterback sneak for a yard or so on fourth down.
So now that is what is acceptable in the NFL. Fifteen years ago, Bill Belichick chose to go for it on fourth-and-two from his own 28-yard line in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter while leading 34-28 in Indianapolis. Tom Brady’s pass was complete to Kevin Faulk but the play only gained a yard and the Patriots turned the ball over to Peyton Manning, who got the Colts into the endzone with 13 seconds left on the clock to win the game for Indianapolis, 35-34.
Some skewered Belichick for the decision without the benefit of what the coach knew and responded to. The Patriots had led 31-14 early in the fourth quarter before Manning went off, and his full head of steam was destined to get the Colts into the endzone again if he got the ball back. It really didn’t seem to matter what side of the field the Colts would have started their final drive, Manning and his Colts had the Patriots defense on their heels so Belichick determined that the only way to protect his lead was to keep the ball. He saw the chances of the Patriots picking up two yards were a lot better than stopping Manning from getting the Colts into the end zone again.
Because there was so much controversy around this play, it got the attention of the mathematicians at some of our most respected universities, and they determined that Belichick did statistically make the right call.
Belichick was dealing with more real knowledge than the sportswriter in the press box who went for the quick conclusion that the Patriots didn’t convert the first down and lost the game so it must have been a mistake.
It wasn’t, it just didn’t work.
I had a first hand experience of a similar decision that could have changed the result of an NFL game.
In 1974, while I was in the front office of the Oakland Raiders, we opened the season in Buffalo against the Bills. With just over a minute remaining on the clock and trailing 14-13, the Bills fumbled and Art Thoms picked the ball up and ran 29-yards for a go ahead score. Then, in the final seconds, Buffalo Quarterback Joe Ferguson drove the Bills to a winning touchdown, 21-20.
When we boarded our flight home in the dead of night I posed the prospect that Thoms should have not gone into the endzone. Rather, I suggested, he should have gone down at the 1-yard-line allowing us to run the clock down and either punch the ball in the endzone or have George Blanda kick the winning field goal on the game’s last play.
“Easy to think of that now,” Madden said in disgust that this 24-year-old kid would even mention that in the wake of the only Monday Night Football loss the Raiders would suffer in the 1970’s.
“I was thinking of it as soon as he picked up the ball,” I countered.
Madden became more dismissive of me, and then said,” You can’t tell a player not to score.”
Not then, but you can now. We see a number of times now when it is best not to score for competitive reasons. In today’s game, players occasionally stop short of the end zone to lock down a win.
Which brings us back to the Buffalo Bills game last Sunday when the decision was made to go for the field goal inside the two minute warning. I suggest that the Bills should have always been playing to get into the endzone last week. They had engineered a 15 play drive that took six-and-a-half minutes off the game clock and gained 54 yards. If they would have had the mindset that with time running out, but not all the way out, the job should have been to get into the end zone and advance their lead to four with the extra point at all costs. Going for it on fourth-and-nine instead of attempting the 44-yard field goal seemed the right call to me.
A touchdown would have forced the Chiefs to score a touchdown to win, the field goal would have only tied the game and given the ball back to Patrick Mahomes and company with just under two minutes left on the game clock. That opens up the possibility that Mahomes could have driven the Chiefs into field goal range and won it for his team in regulation.
If, instead, the game went to overtime you are playing a hand that has Josh Allen on your side who has never won an overtime game in six attempts.
Now, had Sean McDermott gone for the first and not gotten it, the criticism would have been far and wide for him not kicking the tying field goal. But, how did that turn out? Those field goals are not sure things, as the Bills proved on Sunday.
This week, Andy Reid takes his Chiefs, who last week lost the turnover battle, total yards and first down stats to the Bills but still got the win, to Baltimore to meet John Harbaugh’s Ravens. The home team this week is not carrying the load Buffalo is saddled with on postseason woes, particularly, wide right.
All that is left for the Ravens is to stick the landing.
Qoxhi Picks: Baltimore Ravens (-4) over Kansas City Chiefs