ignatiusjreilly
Footballguy
I'm saying that, to the extent momentum exists, you can't possibly understand it enough to make it worthwhile to factor into your decision making. Bill Barnwell did a two-part deep dive on momentum years ago at Grantland where he explored a lot of the common assumptions about momentum, including, yes, teams' offensive performance after their D gets a fourth-down stop compared to situations where the ball changed possessions via other methods, such as a punt. He found little to no correlation.What is it about this so called momentum are you denying? Are you saying the 9ers players weren’t pumped they got a HUGE break there? What happens physiologically when people get pumped?You're conflating two totally separate issues. As a Lions fan, my feeling is that I still think Campbell is an excellent coach. I think the two decisions were essentially coin flips where you could make an argument either way. I think he definitely screwed up the sequence on Detroit's final drive. But I'm not willing to say that makes him a bad coach. If you think that means I'm in the tank for him, fine.Sometimes losses are hard to come to grips with, but you're in the tank deep when you start coming up with the crazy notion that everything in sports is played straight and there's no such thing as momentum or the like. That said, momentum isn't why Detroit lost. They lost because they went for it on 4th down. The dropped pass by Reynolds doesn't forgive the decision to pass up the FG attempt.
And Campbell didn't pass up the 24-10 FG because he didn't have Justin Tucker. Make no mistake, he was going for it, regardless. His actual explanation mentioned something akin to momentum, but his main goal was trying to kneecap the 9ers right then and there. Problem is, he got so sidetracked with trying to put the nail in the coffin, he forgot to realize a makeable FG would give his team a huge advantage midway through the 3rd quarter.
It's one thing to be down 14...it's another to be up 14. Campbell plays like he's always down. It's the right strategy for comebacks, not so much for holding a lead, especially against good teams.
The reason I'm skeptical of all the claims being made in this thread regarding momentum has zero to do with the Lions. It's because momentum -- as a prospective factor that can be applied in decision making -- is one of those things that seems obvious at first glance, but when you think about it, completely falls apart.
For example, we were discussing earlier the fact that the Aiyuk catch came right after the first failed attempt. Obviously, no one thinks that the swing in momentum was a direct cause of Vigdor letting the ball bounce off his facemask. So imagine for a second that he had brought in the INT. Now Detroit has the ball back and they're still up by 14. If that had happened, what would have become of all the momentum the Niners gained on the 4th-down stop? Would it have completely dissipated? Would it have transferred back to Detroit? And if momentum can change on a single play, how can you claim it has any predictive power?
People who deny “momentum” or whatever you want to call it are essentially saying big situational swings in sports have no possible way to influence human performance. That’s a stretch to say the least. Humans are a complex machine and the thought situational play doesn’t affect performance is a little whack. You can call it momentum, you can call it hope, whatever, but decades of playing and watching sports tells me it’s a thing.
All that said, I’m not sure how much momentum had to do with Detroit losing. I’m sure it helped some, but the simple act of needlessly taking a gamble and passing up a good chance to go 3 scores up was the main culprit.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Barnwell is a nerd who's never played the game, and his fancy-pants numbers can't tell the real story. But again, consider the two questions I posed in my post last night: Do you believe momentum caused the potential INT to bounce off of Vildor's facemask? And if not, what would have happened to the supposed momentum the 49ers gained from the fourth-down stop if he had held on to the ball?