A couple of bad coaching examples from the last week. Maybe they’re seeing something I don’t see.
San Diego has 4th and 2 (maybe 4th and 3?) in their own territory with 3:00 left. They have 2 timeouts. Obviously, if they go for it, it’s the ballgame. Coaches don’t want to the whole game to hinge on one play. But it did anyway, and Turner should have seen it coming. They punt. Indy runs 2 running plays, killing the Chargers timeouts. It’s 3rd and 2 with 2:30 left and no Charger timeouts. If they convert, you can get to the 2 min warning with a fresh set of downs and San Diego is done. So that play decides if the San Diego has a chance, and it’s one play. If the ball game is coming down to 1 play regardless, I’d rather roll the dice when I’m calling the play. I trust my offense more to get a couple of yards, than my defense to stop Peyton Manning from getting a couple of yards. It worked out for the Chargers in the end, but it clearly wasn’t the best choice.
Second, It hurt last night to watch Ohio State move the ball so quickly once in field goal range. Sure, You can point to a lot of things in this game… Pryor choked on a lot of passes (he tends to “push” the ball instead of throw when he’s nervous and throw and ugly knuckle ball), stupid penalties, etc. But the management of that drive falls on the coaches. I’ll go as far as to say, I think there is a good chance Mack Brown let them. Sure, you hate to give up the TD, but the field goal was certain from that distance. I think Mack Brown chose to be down by 4,5, or 6 with 2 min left, rather than down by 1 with 20 seconds or less.
In my mind, that is a major piece of a coach’s job. To mock up and workthrough so many scenarios that when the situations come up in gametime, they can make the smart decision while on the clock.