It’s not the rarest of situations.
It’s not mathematically hard to figure out on an immediate level.
You’ve seen plenty of football games in which a team, trailing by 11 points inside the final five minutes of regulation, kicks a field goal to trim its deficit to eight points.
Thursday night, Miami coach Al Golden did not kick the field goal in such a situation against the Cincinnati Bearcats. When his offense failed to get a touchdown on fourth and goal, the Canes were pretty much done at the 4:41 mark of regulation. Had they kicked the field goal, they still would have been (realistically) alive.
Most observers on Twitter did not think much of the move, and to immediately get something straight, they had ample reason to react as they did.
What follows here is not so much a “Why Twitter Was Wrong” argument, but an explanation of why going for the touchdown made more sense than you might have first thought. This piece is not attempting to get you to switch sides; it’s meant to get you to accept the other side of this and other similar (not necessarily identical) decisions.
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I recall an NFL game last season in which the St. Louis Rams trailed the Arizona Cardinals by nine points in the fourth quarter, and had fourth and goal inside the Arizona 2. The Rams kicked the under-20-yard field goal to move within six points. Given that they did need a touchdown at some point, kicking a field goal when inside the 2 seemed to work against their best interests. You have to get a touchdown, so if you’re extremely close, why wouldn’t you try?
Yes, math — the Rams were down two scores, so they got one of them. They kept themselves alive. That’s a common theme in decision making by football coaches: Extend the game. Live to fight another possession. Give yourself options. That IS a part of endgame management. No one should deny that.
However, one principle which often gets ignored by many fans and coaches alike is that when you’re trailing, you don’t have the luxury of making the safe decision all the time. You can choose to “stay alive” or “stay in the game,” but that is often not the same as “giving yourself the best chance to win.”
Kicking a field goal to trail by only one score instead of two can seem like an airtight principle to adhere to. (It’s a lot easier to universally adhere to the idea of increasing a one-score lead to two when you’re ahead.) Yet, in both the Arizona-St. Louis case and here with Miami versus Cincinnati, the decision which enables you to stay alive is also not the most aggressive pursuit of victory. Whether it’s kicking a field goal inside the 2 when down by nine, or kicking a field goal when down 11 to trail by eight, those two decisions are motivated by a desire to avoid the worst-case scenario: “If we don’t get the field goal, we’re down by two scores, and it’s all over.”
Yes, the finality of defeat looms if you go for a first down or touchdown and fail. An utter failure does lead to disaster.
However, are you really giving up leverage or ceding competitive terrain here? If you’re already losing by two scores, you need at least one touchdown in a relatively short period of time. I understand wanting to be down by only one score, but if you’re close to the goal line or another part of the overall game reset suggests that you should be aggressive… that’s what you should be.
Al Golden was aggressive in this situation; it just didn’t work out for him against Cincinnati.
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First of all, it has to be acknowledged that being down eight (as opposed to seven or six) is unique.
https://twitter.com/BPredict/status/649779568782503936
https://twitter.com/BPredict/status/649779973356711937
Now, I wouldn’t say — in an absolute way — that an eight-point deficit isn’t a one-possession deficit. It is. You can score eight points in one possession; ergo, it is.
However, the entirely salient point being made above is that it’s not an ordinary one-score deficit. You have to make a (two-point) play in which teams normally fail more than they succeed in order to score eight points on that one possession. With an eight-point deficit, the opportunity exists to make up the entirety of the deficit in one possession… but you know that a little more than half the time, you will probably need a second possession. That’s what’s complicated about the eight-point deficit relative to any other one-score margin.
(Jeff, the tweep above, is a highly recommended follow for football gamedays; his insights on decision-making, college or pro, are always worth reading.)
Al Golden, then, wanted to get the touchdown and two-point conversion first. If the two-point try failed, Golden — with ample time left — would have been able to get the ball back for a possession in which his team would have needed a touchdown. This is not a foreign or rare concept: Get the two-point try earlier rather than later, so if it fails, you can map out your approach for the remainder of the game. (What we still have not seen in football, college or pro? Coaches with seven-point LEADS going for the knockout two-point try to go up nine. We’re waiting for someone to take the initiative there, but it hasn’t happened.)
You might think this exhausts the conversation pertaining to Golden’s move with 4:41 left.
It doesn’t.
There’s one more point to be made about this move, which wasn’t airtight in its wisdom (again, that’s not what’s being argued here), but had more to recommend it than you might have thought at first glance.
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One of the central truths of coaching is that while on many occasions, coaches should make moves simply because of the math involved (Butch Jones should have gone for two last Saturday against Florida; Chris Petersen of Washington should have knelt with the ball three times last season at Arizona), they need to make moves in other instances for the purpose of inspiring better performance.
How many times do we see a team’s offensive line play better after a quarterback switch? It’s not a verdict on the quarterbacks themselves, but when a coach switches the quarterback, that sends a message to the linemen to play better. The focal point of the move wasn’t to criticize the benched quarterback in this case, but to light a fire under the rest of the offense, getting those 10 players to wake up.
How many times do we see a team soar in terms of confidence and energy after it converts a fourth down in an unconventional go-for-it situation (the middle of the field, more than one or two yards… down 11, not 12, in the fourth quarter, when many coaches would have kicked the field goal)?
Miami had not scored a touchdown in the second half — 25 minutes of second-half play, to be clear. The Hurricanes and Golden erred, in fact, not when they went for the touchdown, but when they kicked a field goal on their previous drive, when trailing by a 27-20 score. Settling for three inside the 10 gave Cincinnati a lift, and when the Bearcats then tallied a touchdown, Miami was down 11 instead of seven because of Golden’s timidity.
In many ways, Golden was trying to compensate for his own lack of stones on the previous drive. He was also trying to “coach for performance,” as outlined above: By making what was a questionable decision — one most coaches probably wouldn’t have made — Golden was trying to challenge his then-struggling offense (which had shown a lot of promise in the first half) to rediscover its winning form. That’s sound coaching.
What was not sound coaching? Burning two timeouts on that drive, when trailing by a 34-23 count. Using two timeouts on offense when down two scores in the middle of the fourth quarter? That’s brutal, and there’s no cover for Golden on that one. He has to take the heat.
That said, since Miami did have only one timeout with 4:41 left, going for the touchdown makes even more sense, right?
If you have fewer timeouts left, and you’re on the doorstep of the goal line, wouldn’t you want to get the touchdown then and there, so that with less time on the clock (since you have only one timeout), you would not have to drive as far for a (potentially) game-tying field goal in the event of a touchdown and a successful two-point try?
No one denies that Al Golden is in huge trouble in Miami. The schedule is brutal over the next four weeks. This team does not seem remotely ready to win the ACC Coastal for the first time in the program’s history. When coaches inhabit tenuous positions and negative environments as Golden does, it’s that much easier to pounce on a decision which is unconventional. Moreover, Golden had to make this decision only because his team squandered two timeouts and failed to score a touchdown in the first 25 minutes of the second half, so it’s not as though Golden’s decision was preceded by good coaching; it wasn’t.
In this case, though, from a number of different vantage points, Golden had a lot of reasons to pursue a touchdown when trailing by 11.
That the play didn’t work is really what we should criticize Miami for. Nothing is working for the Hurricanes right now… and no coach looks good when a fourth-down play fails.
