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Post here when coaches do something you disagree with (5 Viewers)

Gally said:
I had no problems with the clock management aspect.  They wanted to score at the buzzer (either FG or TD and with the timeouts they had left the clock was really irrelevant.  They had plenty of time to run whatever play type they wanted to. 

The problem was the play calling and personnel choices.  I understand that they have used Perine all season as 3rd down back (probably to save Mixon some touches) but with the game on the line you need to have your best guys on the field and that includes Mixon.  Mixon had been running at a nice clip all night.  He needed to get the ball at that juncture.  That was the real problem.  Not clock management.  
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Scoring a TD is approximately infinitely better than turning it over on downs, even if you do it with 1:00 left.

It's also at least 50% better than scoring a field goal, even if you do that with 0:00 on the clock.

And if the logic is that they want to score with 0:00 on the clock, why would the play call be to send Chase long after wasting 20 seconds?

The whole thing makes no sense.

 
CalBear said:
Scoring a TD is approximately infinitely better than turning it over on downs, even if you do it with 1:00 left.

It's also at least 50% better than scoring a field goal, even if you do that with 0:00 on the clock.

And if the logic is that they want to score with 0:00 on the clock, why would the play call be to send Chase long after wasting 20 seconds?

The whole thing makes no sense.
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My comment had nothing to do with scoring a TD or a FG.  My entire point was that they could run their normal offense as time was not critical.  They had the timeouts and time on the clock to run whatever plays they wanted to.  They were never up against the clock on that final drive so there was no need to hurry.  

Play calling/personnel usage is a different issue and was botched horribly.  However, there was no issue with time management. 

 
Leroy Hoard said:
Also Stafford has a history of last minute comebacks that make this correct. Didn't always work,  but he has a solid resume of last gasp wins where the hurry up offense had the opposing defense on their heels.
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What's amazing is that despite playing for the Lions for 12 seasons, a franchise not exactly know for winning often, Stafford is still 5th all-time in 4th quarter comebacks (link below).  I think it is fair to say that the Rams don't win any of the last three playoff games without Stafford, all of which took last minute drives to win.  

https://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/comebacks_career.htm

 
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ignatiusjreilly said:
BobbyLayne said:
It helps to have a quarterback who can do this
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I gotta say, I watched that video again in more detail. The play was amazing, but the way he broke it down so that you could see exactly how Stafford's eyes affected Vonn Bell was a master class in how to use video to teach football.
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Noticed this morning the L.A. Rams Twitter account posted the view from the other end zone (e.g., the defenders perspective) at field level. Stafford goes through his progressions….left…center…right…step/throw, right up until it comes off his hand it feels like for sure he’s going R, to the TE sitting down after running the curl.

https://twitter.com/ramsnfl/status/1493342097142779909?s=21

 
Interesting anecdote from Peter King's FMIA column about Ron Rivera and John Madden:

In his first two years as head coach in Carolina, Rivera’s teams were 2-12 in games decided by seven points or less. Then-Carolina owner Jerry Richardson asked Rivera to meet with a friend, Madden, to discuss what Rivera might do differently in close games. A meeting was set. Madden told Rivera before he came to California to see him, go back and look at the close games to see what he might have done differently. 

“Just as we’re about to start,” Rivera said, “I said I got that homework assignment you gave me. I pull it out, it’s about 15, 20 pages. I go to hand it to him, and he goes, That’s not for me. That’s for you. What did you learn? Well, I said, as I started to flip through, I said, ‘You know this instance, I went by the book. I did it the way you’re supposed to.’ He goes, ‘What do you mean, by the book? There is no book, Ron, you know that. You’ve played enough football, you know enough football, you’ve coached enough football, to go by your gut instinct, by what you feel.’

“From that point on, it made sense. It hit me that you know, what I was doing was safe. It was the least critical thing, criticize-able thing to do, if that’s a word. From that point, now I would get into game situations and I would think them through. Those things, he really helped me to understand and that really changed my thought process going forward. It really did. It really helped me. I really do believe that that was kinda the evolution I needed to become the coach I am today.”

The Panthers were 9-4-1 in the next two seasons in those close games, and Riverboat Ron was born, and now you know the rest of the story.
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Not sure what Madden was like as a coach, but the two examples that jump to mind from his announcing career were him going off on Barry Switzer for going for it on fourth down vs. the Eagles and urging the Pats to play for OT in Brady's first Super Bowl. Now granted, the first decision was highly controversial (not sure what the 4th Down Bot would have said) and he later admitted he was wrong about the second one. Still, it's pretty interesting that Madden was the one who pushed Rivera to be more aggressive on fourth down, a move that may well have saved his coaching career.

 
ignatiusjreilly said:
Interesting anecdote from Peter King's FMIA column about Ron Rivera and John Madden:

Not sure what Madden was like as a coach, but the two examples that jump to mind from his announcing career were him going off on Barry Switzer for going for it on fourth down vs. the Eagles and urging the Pats to play for OT in Brady's first Super Bowl. Now granted, the first decision was highly controversial (not sure what the 4th Down Bot would have said) and he later admitted he was wrong about the second one. Still, it's pretty interesting that Madden was the one who pushed Rivera to be more aggressive on fourth down, a move that may well have saved his coaching career.
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I didn't get that from the quote.  All Madden said was to follow your gut because you have been in and around football long enough that your gut instinct should be followed.  It wasn't to be extra aggressive and go for everything.  It was just to follow your instincts.  It was Rivera who had the instincts to start being more aggressive.  Someone else (like Zimmer, ugh) follows their instincts and it's to be ultra conservative.  

My take away from Madden was to trust your own beliefs and not just blindly follow something your instincts say is incorrect.  Some can do that and be successful (the good coaches) and some can't (the bad coaches).  

 
Welcome one and all to the 2022 season!

I didn't love the decision of the Colts to kick on 4th and goal from the 4 down 17 with 10 minutes left in the game, though the 4th down bot rated it a tossup. (To be fair, they initially tried to draw the Texans offside, took the delay penalty, then kicked). I think it Week 1, getting your butt kicked by an inferior opponent, you should be more aggressive, but I don't think it's a slam-dunk decision.

Fortunately for the Colts, they immediately got the ball back on a turnover and scored, at which point Reich definitely made a big mistake by kicking the XP. Numbers couldn't be clearer that you go for two there
 
Packers in the 1st galf. 4th and goal inside the one. Shotgun handoff…gets stuffed near the line finished off by the unblocked OLB.
 
Bengals attempt a game winning field goal on 3rd down. High snap, kicker losses his rhythm and misses badly.

Have to wonder if the special teams coach told the holder and kicker to abort the kick in case of a bad snap.
 
My single biggest coaching pet peeve: Falcons facing 4th and 1 from NO 42, leading 26-24 with 54 seconds left. Saints out of timeouts.

This is one of those situations where the nerds and the old-school footballers can agree. 4th down bot gives this the rare "YOU BETTER DO THIS" rating, says going for it adds 15.5 WP%. And anyone who's watched a minute of football knows, you get one yard and you win the game. What you don't do is give the ball back to the other team to give them a chance to win.

Falcons do the "Try to draw them offside" maneuver and then punt. Saints need less than 30 seconds to get in range for game winner.
 
ignatiusjreilly said:
Everything about the way Hackett handled that end-of-game sequence. Good Lord.
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OK, let's break this down a little. First, there was the 3rd down call. Throwing it short of the sticks makes sense if you're planning on going for it on 4th down, but not if you're doing it to set up a 60+ FGA. Then, letting the clock run down, which I suppose makes sense if you know you're going to kick the FG. Then again, attempting a FG there was idiotic, especially given how much time was left in the game.
 
Analytics, analytics, analytics!!!!!
Costs a team a win again. By now the analytics should be saying kick the damn FG!!!!!!!
 
I would also add that Denver should never have had three TOs on that final drive. Hackett should have used one of them on their previous drive, when they were so discombobulated that they blew a chance to score the go-ahead TD via delay-of-game penalties and rushed snaps. I would usually be in favor of going for it on 4th down in a situation like the one they were facing (4th and goal from 8, down 4 with 6 min left), but by that point I had zero confidence Denver was going to convert, so I thought the FG made more sense. But he should have taken a TO before 2nd or 3rd down, calmed Russ down, and called a better play.
 
Just when you're convinced the experts might be right and that your questioning of authority is misplaced, along comes Nathaniel Hackett and the NFL to ensure that charges of mis or malfeasance regarding hiring practices are always best listened to rather than shunted out the door.
 
There has to be a better way to determine qualifications/skills that make a good head coach.

Something like testing their abilities under duress - like playing Resident Evil while having the sounds of G.W.A.R. blasted at then.
 
4th and 5, 1:00+ on the clock, 3 time-outs, Russell Wilson behind center.

Burns 24 seconds, calls a TO, sends in the K for a 64 yard FG.

Why trade for Russ if you’re gonna do that?

What’s more likely? russ getting 5, or McManus kicking a 64 yarder?

Terrible.
 
I will likely be tarred and feathered for this but I have no idea what analytics would favour between Russ at 4th and 5 and McManus from 64. I'm betting they're both on the not-so-great side. The real problem is the sequence of events and decisions that causes you to arrive at that choice.

I'm sure they aren't thinking about negative outcomes but one is missing a kick that would be the second longest ever (I think?). The other is your new QB losing with the ball in his hands in his first game in his old stadium against his old team (who most have predicted will be comically bad).
 
habsfan said:
I will likely be tarred and feathered for this but I have no idea what analytics would favour between Russ at 4th and 5 and McManus from 64. I'm betting they're both on the not-so-great side. The real problem is the sequence of events and decisions that causes you to arrive at that choice.

I'm sure they aren't thinking about negative outcomes but one is missing a kick that would be the second longest ever (I think?). The other is your new QB losing with the ball in his hands in his first game in his old stadium against his old team (who most have predicted will be comically bad).
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I am not an analytics guy, but I think I heard it said that the odds of picking up the 1st down were 40-something %, while the odds of making the FG were like 7%.

Factor in being a new coach and still trying to win over your new team and being aggressive there is the right call. Call the timeout with a minute left, get a 4th down play ready, and if you get it, you still have plenty of time and 2 timeouts to get in better FG range. And if you fail on 4th, at least you went down swinging.

I will also say that I don't know what Wilson was thinking on 3rd down. It was 3rd and 12 and he almost immediately threw the pass into the flat. You need 12 yards, why not wait for the play to develop a little? It's not like he was being pressured right away IIRC. That was a bit strange as well.
 
Hot Sauce Guy said:
4th and 5, 1:00+ on the clock, 3 time-outs, Russell Wilson behind center.

Burns 24 seconds, calls a TO, sends in the K for a 64 yard FG.

Why trade for Russ if you’re gonna do that?

What’s more likely? russ getting 5, or McManus kicking a 64 yarder?

Terrible.
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It is even worse than that. Even if you make the FG there is still plenty of time for the other team to kick a fg and win anyways. You go for the first down. Run a few more plays to get into a fg range where you can make 80 plus percent, and then kick the fg with almost no time on the clock so you win with no chance foe the other team.
 
Coaches need to learn from Belicheck. When you are down multiple score in the 4th quarter, you go hurry up. That is how the Patriots came back from 28-3. You need to maximize the number of possessions so you don't have to be perfect in your comeback. Too many coaches lose so much clock time, then all the other team needs to do is get one lousy first down to run out the clock.
 
Lovie Smith wasn’t on national television but what he did was beyond worse Sunday. At least Hackett tried to win even if very poorly executed/reasoned. Lovie decided to take a tie instead of trying to win. He was afraid to risk losing, completely gutless. And he doesn’t have being a first time coach to fall back on as an excuse either.
 
Buckna said:
Lovie Smith wasn’t on national television but what he did was beyond worse Sunday. At least Hackett tried to win even if very poorly executed/reasoned. Lovie decided to take a tie instead of trying to win. He was afraid to risk losing, completely gutless. And he doesn’t have being a first time coach to fall back on as an excuse either.
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To be fair to Lovie, he literally looks like spent the last few years living in a cave.
 
Interesting contrast between two of the first-time head coaches this week. Daboll challenges his team to win or die tryin', Hackett openly admits that he trusts his kicker to make the second-longest FG in NFL history more than he trusts his franchise QB to get 5 yards.
 
Buckna said:
Lovie Smith wasn’t on national television but what he did was beyond worse Sunday. At least Hackett tried to win even if very poorly executed/reasoned. Lovie decided to take a tie instead of trying to win. He was afraid to risk losing, completely gutless. And he doesn’t have being a first time coach to fall back on as an excuse either.
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I disagree and think there's nothing wrong with what Lovie did. Everyone loves to sit and blast them, but if he goes for it and is stopped, that sucks way more than losing.

A tie vs Indy is a big win for Houston.
 
What the numbers say about Nathaniel Hackett's decision to attempt a 64-yard field goal vs. letting Russ cook

In 2021, NFL offenses went for it 47 times on 4th-and-5 and converted 23 of those attempts into first downs — a near 50 percent success rate. By contrast, only two NFL kickers have ever made field goals of 64 or more yards in a game, Matt Prater in Denver’s thin air in 2013 and Justin Tucker inside a domed stadium in Detroit last October.

There are a couple reasons that it is difficult for NFL analytics experts to quantify exactly how much Hackett's decision to attempt a field goal impacted Denver's chances of winning. Not only do win-probability models struggle to offer accurate projections during the final minute of games, estimating the probability of making a 60-plus-yard kick only adds to the guesswork because there aren't a lot of prior kicks of that distance to go on.

Aaron Schatz, a pioneer in NFL advanced stats and the creator of Football Outsiders, described Hackett electing to kick a field goal as “a flabbergasting decision.” Schatz’s win-probability model suggests that with 20 seconds to go the Broncos had a 36.1% chance of victory by going for it on 4th-and-5 compared to only 7.4% by attempting the field goal.

“If the field goal had been from 58 or 59 yards, our model has it as more of a coin flip decision,” Schatz told Yahoo Sports. “But that difference of 6 or 7 yards is a big difference. They get really hard after 60. There's a reason why there have only been two field goals ever from 64 yards or longer.”
 
jon_mx said:
Hot Sauce Guy said:
4th and 5, 1:00+ on the clock, 3 time-outs, Russell Wilson behind center.

Burns 24 seconds, calls a TO, sends in the K for a 64 yard FG.

Why trade for Russ if you’re gonna do that?

What’s more likely? russ getting 5, or McManus kicking a 64 yarder?

Terrible.
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It is even worse than that. Even if you make the FG there is still plenty of time for the other team to kick a fg and win anyways. You go for the first down. Run a few more plays to get into a fg range where you can make 80 plus percent, and then kick the fg with almost no time on the clock so you win with no chance foe the other team.
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The FG choice was obviously awful. But not because of this. Geno needing a FG with 15 seconds and no TO is pretty safe.

I always hate icing the kicker, but I think Carroll's timeout call to give McManus a practice try was dumb too.
 
joeschmo said:
I always hate icing the kicker, but I think Carroll's timeout call to give McManus a practice try was dumb too.
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In another game the announcer said the LS should be coached to snap as soon as he hears a whistle, knowing they’ll get a free practice kick. If someone in the media has thought of it, coaches have too. I would [not] be surprised to learn that’s exactly what teams tell the ST group in practice. Whistle (timeout) = warmup kick.
 
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sho nuff said:
Packers in the 1st galf. 4th and goal inside the one. Shotgun handoff…gets stuffed near the line finished off by the unblocked OLB.
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Hackett plays along with how things are in GB...twice at the goalline...shot gun snaps to each of his RBs (who both fumble).

I don't get such a play...gives the RB no forward momentum in taking the handoff at all.
 
BobbyLayne said:
What the numbers say about Nathaniel Hackett's decision to attempt a 64-yard field goal vs. letting Russ cook

In 2021, NFL offenses went for it 47 times on 4th-and-5 and converted 23 of those attempts into first downs — a near 50 percent success rate. By contrast, only two NFL kickers have ever made field goals of 64 or more yards in a game, Matt Prater in Denver’s thin air in 2013 and Justin Tucker inside a domed stadium in Detroit last October.

There are a couple reasons that it is difficult for NFL analytics experts to quantify exactly how much Hackett's decision to attempt a field goal impacted Denver's chances of winning. Not only do win-probability models struggle to offer accurate projections during the final minute of games, estimating the probability of making a 60-plus-yard kick only adds to the guesswork because there aren't a lot of prior kicks of that distance to go on.

Aaron Schatz, a pioneer in NFL advanced stats and the creator of Football Outsiders, described Hackett electing to kick a field goal as “a flabbergasting decision.” Schatz’s win-probability model suggests that with 20 seconds to go the Broncos had a 36.1% chance of victory by going for it on 4th-and-5 compared to only 7.4% by attempting the field goal.

“If the field goal had been from 58 or 59 yards, our model has it as more of a coin flip decision,” Schatz told Yahoo Sports. “But that difference of 6 or 7 yards is a big difference. They get really hard after 60. There's a reason why there have only been two field goals ever from 64 yards or longer.”
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And McManus who is a pretty good FG, is still 0-7 from beyond 62 yards.
 
sho nuff said:
sho nuff said:
Packers in the 1st galf. 4th and goal inside the one. Shotgun handoff…gets stuffed near the line finished off by the unblocked OLB.
Click to expand...

Hackett plays along with how things are in GB...twice at the goalline...shot gun snaps to each of his RBs (who both fumble).

I don't get such a play...gives the RB no forward momentum in taking the handoff at all.
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Agreed - terrible play calling.

Again: why trade the farm for Russ Wilson if you’re not gonna let him cook? All those big/tall receivers and you’re going shotgun draws to RBs straight up the gut?

A PA pass on either of those woulda been a walk-in TD for Sutton or Albert O.
 
joeschmo said:
jon_mx said:
Hot Sauce Guy said:
4th and 5, 1:00+ on the clock, 3 time-outs, Russell Wilson behind center.

Burns 24 seconds, calls a TO, sends in the K for a 64 yard FG.

Why trade for Russ if you’re gonna do that?

What’s more likely? russ getting 5, or McManus kicking a 64 yarder?

Terrible.
Click to expand...

It is even worse than that. Even if you make the FG there is still plenty of time for the other team to kick a fg and win anyways. You go for the first down. Run a few more plays to get into a fg range where you can make 80 plus percent, and then kick the fg with almost no time on the clock so you win with no chance foe the other team.
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The FG choice was obviously awful. But not because of this. Geno needing a FG with 15 seconds and no TO is pretty safe.

I always hate icing the kicker, but I think Carroll's timeout call to give McManus a practice try was dumb too.
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At the time I was saying to my friend “there - now they know he can’t possibly make that kick. Carroll just gave them time to reconsider & send Russ back on the field.”

In that light it was an even worse decision by Carroll - he’s just lucky Hackett was dumber than he was in the moment.

Literally sees his K flail miserably & opts to *do the same thing again*.

Something something the definition of insanity….
 
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