Here I Go Again

OK, Football Decision Time. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an embeddable version of the Whitesnake video to match the title, but this one is almost identical.

So here’s the situation last night. Ravens are down by 3 points to the Steelers. They face 4th and 5 with about 3:30 left. They call timeout, leaving them 1. And then to the surprise of Chris and Al in the booth, they opt to go for the 1st down. That despite having a defense that everyone pretends is as good as they were in their Super Bowl year (hey, Ray Lewis still plays great…..).

The pundit reaction is exactly like it was when Belichek went on 4th and 2. Tony Dungy after the game just pounced, saying “you have to punt there and trust your defense”. Rodney Harrison called it the worst decision John Harbaugh ever made. Tedy Bruschi said if he was in the locker room he’d be steaming that his coach had no confidence in his defense. Peter King called it the worst move by a Baltimore sports franchise since Grady Little didn’t take out Pedro during Game 7 of the 2003 Yankees-Red Sox series. When advised that the Red Sox actually play in Boston, King said “that’s my analogy and I’m sticking with it”.

OK, obviously I made up everything in that last paragraph. The Ravens did however go for the 1st in that above situation. The reason you probably didn’t know that unless you were watching is that they were successful, and better still, ultimately won the game.

Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe the ultimate fallout of Fourth and Two is that intelligent risk taking will now become acceptable. Belichek is secure enough in his job he can afford it, but John Harbaugh? He’s a 2nd year coach playing his arch-rival with basically his whole season on the line. But looking at it, the risk/reward feels pretty good here. The Ravens are a pretty average offense, so the odds of making 4th and 5 are likely under 50%. They would then need to get into at least FG range to tie just to become a 50% chance to win in OT. They could of course go on to score a TD and win in regulation. Throw it all in the mix and right then and there, they likely faced steep odds to ultimately win the game.

But what were they actually risking by going for it as opposed to punting? With 3:30 left and Ravens with 1 timeout, the Steelers basically only need one first down to salt the game away. It doesn’t matter whether the Steelers get that 1st on their own 11 or the Ravens 20. All the punt does is add field position for the Ravens if the Steelers do fail. And not even that much field position. If the Ravens punt from near midfield, the Steelers get the ball at about the 20. If the Steelers go 3 and out, the Ravens get the ball back around their own 35. If instead of all that, the Ravens go on 4th and fail, but then hold the Steelers, the punt goes to maybe the 15 yard line. The clock is the same, so the Ravens only risked about 20 yards of field position.

Of course if the Ravens failed on 4th, then the Steelers got the 1st down and took a knee, we would have had scant mention that they could have gotten that same 1st down after a punt. So while I can hope that we’re reaching a little crossroad here where inteligent risk will see some appreciation, more likely it’s all about hindsight. If it works, then we can look back and say it was a good risk.

….Oh, and Thank You NFL Red Zone. Got to see the Titans 99 yard game winning drive last night live while FOX continued showed the Vikings clinging to a 27 point over the Bears. Favre wasn’t even playing at that point.


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