Go For It
It was the final seconds of my last Big Game at Stanford. Cal was up, 24-23, and Stanford had just scored a touchdown. It was 1994 and there was no overtime in college football. Coach
Bill Walsh decided that a tie with the hated Golden Bears wasn't enough - he would go for the win. The two-point conversion failed and Cal got to keep
the
Axe, but that moment ignited a spark in me - a love affair with risk-taking in sports.
After that loss, Stanford won seven straight Big Games.
Jump ahead to the 2002 NFL season. Week 15. Minnesota at
New Orleans. Minnesota is down, 31-30, having just scored a touchdown to pull within one. Coach
Mike Tice decides that, at 3-10, he'd show his team some confidence and go for two.
Daunte Culpepper runs the ball up the middle, the Vikes won that game and have won every game since (that's seven in a row).
Which brings us to Week 4 of the 2003 NFL season.
You hear all the time about teams "playing not to lose." It's a terrible epidemic in sports. Last week,
Cleveland shocked San Francisco in large part because San Francisco played a soft deep zone. By preventing just preventing the big play, they figured they'd just not lose. They lost.
The team that plays not to lose often ends up doing exactly that: losing. Still, coaches in the NFL and college football continue to lose their aggressiveness, lose faith in their players, and opt for the non-controversial calls.
Week 4. Jacksonville at Houston. Loser is dead last in the AFC South.
Dom Capers made a believer out of me on Sunday.
With his Houston Texans trailing, 20-17, with two seconds left and the ball resting inside the 1-yard line, he's "supposed" to kick the field goal and, with home field advantage, take his chances in overtime.
Kris Brown, his kicker, was 3-3 on the season under 40 yards. Even when he struggled with the
Steelers in 2001, Brown was still 7-7 in kicks under 30 yards. This was an 18-yard chip shot - shorter than a PAT. A guaranteed tie in regulation.
This was Week 4 - not Week 15 and out of the playoffs; the Texans have bigger plans than resting in the offseason. Almost any other coach in the NFL would have settled for playing 59 minutes and 58 seconds of regulation, then handing the Jaguars a tie.
Dom Capers let his team play for 60 minutes.
After six plays inside the five-yard-line netted 1 gained yard (plus two more on penalties), Capers made a call that the Jaguars had stopped just five plays earlier for no gain. With fans praying to Allah in the stands, quarterback
David Carr took the snap, leapt over his offensive line, and stretched the ball into the end zone.
Texans win. No overtime needed.
There is another side to this: the bad call in a risky situation. Three hours later in the Meadowlands,
Herman Edwards' New York Jets were down to the
Dallas Cowboys, 17-6. They need a field goal, a touchdown and a two-point conversion to win the game. There's 2:38 left in the game and the Jets have the ball at the Cowboys' 10-yard line. It's fourth and three.
Vinny Testaverde sits back in the pocket and fires a one-yard pass to
Wayne Chrebet, who runs for another yard. Two yards. On fourth and three. Huh?
Instead of kicking a field goal and forcing Dallas to try to use up the rest of the clock, Edwards decided that the entire game would come down to that one play, with 2:38 left. Asked why he chose to "go for it":
"They had already run the ball for about 200 yards on us. I wasn't feeling real good about giving them the ball back with two minutes left, and they've already run the ball for 200 yards."
In the most crucial time of the game, Edwards coached scared and without confidence in his team. Capers coached with confidence and pride.
Said Capers after the Texans' game: "I couldn't be prouder of our football team. We talked all week about the ability to go out and play for 60 minutes and I don't think we have had a greater example of that than we had today."
60 minutes. Not 59:58. 60 minutes.
Pride. Playing for 60 minutes. Those are the things that undermanned football teams turn to to find success. Will the Texans follow the lead of the Vikings and Stanford Cardinal and win seven straight games now? That's doubtful at best. Hopefully, though, they have given the rest of the League a good example of what can happen if you just go for it.
Drew's Brain Fade
I couldn't believe my
eyes. The Buffalo Bills were down at home,
23-13. It was fourth and eight and quarterback Drew
Bledsoe had his team in the hurry-up. Drew takes
the snap, gets pressured, and throws the ball away
out-of-bounds.
He didn't throw it at a
receiver - he intentionally threw it out of bounds. On
fourth and eight. Down by 10.
Then he started shaking his
head and smiling: he didn't even realize it was fourth
down.
I've always liked Drew.
He showed some real guts at times in New England. But,
he also showed a propensity to throw ill-timed interceptions
during momentary lapses in judgment.
This might have been the
worst.
They probably would have lost
the game, even if he had completed a first down. But,
when a quarterback doesn't realize it's fourth down - that's
a huge problem. These last two games - scoring
20 points in two games after scoring 69 in two games - are
indicative of what Bill Bellichick must have seen in New
England: Drew isn't a franchise player.
When Drew Bledsoe had Curtis
Martin rushing for 1,000 yards, he was a star. The
year he lost Curtis Martin, his star faded quickly.
With Travis Henry in
the backfield the first two weeks of this season, Bledsoe
and the offense were on fire. Without him, they have
suffered two straight losses and have looked bad
offensively.
Drew's a good quarterback,
don't get me wrong. He's just not a franchise player -
a guy who can lift a team on his shoulders and carry
them. He needs a franchise running back behind him to
be able to do that. Until Travis Henry returns, Drew
and the Bills will continue to struggle.
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--Gutsy call of the year was the
decision by Houston coach Dom Capers to go for the
win instead of overtime. With the Texans behind
Jacksonville, 20-17, Capers faced this dilemma: 2 seconds
left, down by 3, with the ball at the half-yard line; kick
the almost certain field goal and force OT or try to win.
Capers did the latter, David Carr reached the ball
over and the Texans won. There is no doubt that Capers
cemented his relationship with his team right there. As they
say, No guts, no glory.
--Quite a performance by
Peyton Manning on Sunday night. The Indianapolis Colts
QB threw for 314 yards and six touchdowns in a 55-21 rout of
New Orleans. Manning is the first quarterback since 1991 to
throw six TDs in a game. The Colts are 4-0 and have a great
matchup next Monday night at Tampa Bay, the team current
Indy coach Tony Dungy used to coach.
--Interesting how the seemingly smallest of penalties
can make a difference. In the Kansas City Chiefs-Baltimore
Ravens game, the Ravens kicked off after tying the game at
10 with five minutes to go. The Chiefs’ Dante Hall
got about a 20-yard return. But the Ravens were called for
holding and had to kick off again. This time Hall took it to
the house, 97 yards in what proved to be the winning margin.
Hall has now returned six kicks for scores in his last nine
games, an amazing feat.
--I guess
the Vikings are for real. I wasn’t impressed with
their wins over Chicago and Detroit, but pounding a decent
San Francisco team with Minnesota having its backup QB was
impressive. Randy Moss was phenomenal (eight catches,
171 yards and three TDs) and I guess he came to play. For
those uninitiated, Moss has said several times that “I play
when I want to play.”
--Nice
choke job by San Diego, which blew a 14-point lead at
Oakland with less than five minutes remaining, then
lost in overtime, 34-31. Has Marty Schottenheimer forgotten
to coach all of a sudden? He is 2-11 since starting 6-1 in
2002.
--What a
turnaround in Pittsburgh, where the Steelers got
hammered 30-13 by the Tennessee Titans. The Steelers
led 10-0 and were dominating. Then the Titans got a safety,
an interception return for a TD, another interception return
to set up a TD and a close game became a romp. The Titans
are the type of team that often looks underwhelming but they
much more often than not wind up with more points than the
other guys.
--Looks
like the best thing for the Philadelphia Eagle was to
play on the road. The Iggles, who looked awful in dropping
their first two games at home, played like their old selves
(especially Donovan McNabb) in shuffling off to
Buffalo for a 23-13 win. The Bills, meanwhile, have only
scored 23 points in their last two games (both losses) after
scoring 66 in their first two. QB Drew Bledsoe really
misses RB Travis Henry (rib injury) and his offensive
line looks pretty shaky.
--Nice win
by the Cincinnati Bengals over Cleveland to give new coach
Marvin Lewis his first head-coaching victory. The
Bengals are actually playing like they have a clue, a
radical departure from the previous decade.
--Looking
ahead to Week 5, we have two marquee games and one
dog. The dog is 0-4 San Diego at 0-4 Jacksonville. The
marquee games are 4-0 Denver at 4-0 KC and 4-0 Indy at 2-1
Tampa Bay. |
