Einstein

You’re an oldmanfan - you should have seen thousands of examples of teams doing just that over the years. In fact, I can show you examples of McVay doing that if you’d like. But let’s pretend that he goes against all NFL conventional wisdom, and comes out and becomes aggressive, throwing the ball 3 times. First, that could lead to the Bills getting the ball back with tons of time AND three timeouts. Secondly, there is an increased chance of INT. Thirdly, it STILL gives us a higher percentage chance of winning. Why? We stopped them on 9% of third downs. That is 3x the rate of a successful onside. There’s no universe we are kicking and anti-kick is the better choice than kicking off and playing defense. with the kick, you have a 3% chance of converting. And only one shot of doing so. kicking off and you likely 3 chances at them throwing a bad ball, fumbling, dropping a pass, etc. Mathematically, kicking off is the right play.

A 3x increase in chance of converting is actually worth mentioning No, the game wasn’t over. Thousands of teams have won games in that same situation. One stop and you get the ball back. That’s the entire reason why coaches covet all 3 timeouts.

Which is exactly what we needed yesterday.

Then that’s idiotic of the coaching staff. You 100% kick it deep and play defense.z It would not have been a normal drive by the Rams. They would do what every team in that situation does - they would run the ball twice and then throw on 3rd and long. And because teams play those drives so conservatively, there is a decent chance we get a stop. I know they had converted all day, but anyone who has watched football for a long time know that those type of series often go to the defense because of how conservatively they’re called (to avoid a turnover) and the pressure. Even if it’s only an 8% chance we stop them, it’s a lot better than the 3% chance we convert the onside kick.

And we spent 1 of those 9 guys to punt return…. think about that we used 1 of our guys to RETURN a punt that everyone knew that the Rams would either kick out of bounds or into the endzone that little stuff drives me nuts your only chance is a blocked punt … put every freaking defender rushing the punter

It also felt like Martin took an unusually long time to get the ball off. But here’s the thing - Reid made a mistake on 1 play. McD and Babich refused to change defensive scheme for 3.5 quarters. That’s what drove me nuts. They were getting carved up for 3.5 quarters and they just stayed the course. So it’s 1 mistake by Reid vs repeated mistakes by McD/Babich. .

McD is so up and down with those sort of things. Last year he went for 4th and 1 at around the 30 yard line in a 1 score game. This year, he punts from 10 yards further.

There has never been a luckier team in NFL history.

It’s absurd

I’m not sure, but between him and Hamlin we were playing with 9 guys some plays. Which ironically is the amount of guys we had on the field when we were trying to block that final punt.

Thanks for sharing. So he thought the defense would hold them to 10 or less yards. He’s more confident in the defense than I was.

Im not sure I want them back right now

He was unbelievable.

I would be happy to accept but the line between ‘explain’ and ‘defend’ is so thin. Im sure he’ll explain it. But I doubt he ever does it again in that situation. One thing i’ll say about McD is that he tends to learn from mistakes.

Go Chargers.

A minute of clock wasted with 4 minutes left is literally 25% of the game remaining! Maybe in a different game where the defense was playing well. Not in a game where the defense was getting gashed and it was more probable than not that they get gashed on the next play. I don’t think that even McD would defend the decision right now.

You quoted someone who was agreeing with me and laughing at McD. There was no time to return because they were going to punt the ball out of bounds, or out of the back of the endzone, and the hang-time would be 6 seconds alone.

There may be logic to accepting the penalty in a different game where the defense was playing well and we had more time. There was no logic in accepting the penalty in a game where the defense was getting gashed and we were running out of time.

ah, that’s right - McD is an offensive coach forgot

Dude played out of his mind.

The answer is right in your post. They burned nearly ANOTHER FULL MINUTE off the clock by accepting that penalty. So we gave them an extra yard AND a gift of burning a minute. It was a lose-lose!

Listen, I don’t care about losing this particular game. I wanted to win of course, and put pressure on KC tonight, but we already punched our playoff ticket and will be at worst the 3 seed in my opinion. The issue I have has nothing to do with this particular game. The issue is that this game shows that our coaching staff still sucks at late game decision making. And that’s a fundamental flaw that can hurt us long after this game. Thats what I care about.

Exactly. It was a “trick”. Then the receiver motions to behind him.

They hadn’t stopped the Rams all game. The Head Coach should know that. It was a given that they were either converting it or getting a lot of yards. Not to mention the time waste.