Hey, what a SUPER Wild Card Weekend, am I proper? We may not have seen nice NFL soccer, or nice officiating, and even nice decision-making from gamers and coaches alike, however we did see loads of chaos. And, as everyone knows, chaos is the place the actual enjoyable begins — until your group is the one fumbling round at nighttime regardless of the tough glare of the nationwide highlight. But with apologies to Vikings, Dolphins, and Ravens followers, let’s check out a few of yesterday’s truly-terrible-but-als0-kinda-hysterical game-ending choices.
Gotta get the play in, Mike
We’ll begin with the primary sport of the day, Dolphins – Bills. Could Miami survive and advance with out Tua? Is Josh Allen the subsequent Patrick Mahomes? Is this lastly the 12 months the Bills Mafia will get their final reward? Well, possibly. And this one was quite a bit nearer than it most likely ought to have been, thanks to 3 turnovers from Allen. Nevertheless, America waited, breathless, on the sting of its seat… as Miami head coach Mike McDaniel inexplicably let a minute expire with out getting a play in. Look:
So what did McDaniel need to say for himself afterwards? Reader, he mentioned this:
“There was some crowd noise that had to do with mishearing some reading of digits of the wristband. There was some issues within the huddles of communication and getting to the line of scrimmage.
“And there’s the excuse that you don’t use, that is a real compounding variable, that there is a multiple amount of different people in the huddle, where communicating — when you’re in a nice routine, or maybe there’s a group of offensive linemen that are being communicated to by the same person. When you have flux like that, it happens, it shouldn’t happen as much as it did.
We were deploying a group of players for the first-and-10 call. It was articulated that, no, it was fourth down. That miscommunication — that’s all the stuff that you do in this business. You never stop finding the things that you can improve on. And it was a piece of the reason why were unable to come out with a victory. But it definitely wasn’t the only reason.”
G/O Media might get a fee
Up to $100 credit score
Samsung Reserve
Reserve the subsequent gen Samsung system
All you should do is enroll together with your electronic mail and increase: credit score on your preorder on a brand new Samsung system.
That’s actually extra of an outline of what occurred than an evidence, however okay. The worst half was that McDaniel mentioned all of this whereas nonetheless carrying a very horrible Dolphins’ hat, which I get was presupposed to look distressed and edgy, however simply wound up trying like a number of folks had sweated in it a number of instances. Yarg.
Kirk Cousins: Never not conservative
Up subsequent, we now have the Vikings and Giants, and kudos to our Jon Hoefling for calling this one accurately. The Vikings by no means regarded nice (although Kirk Cousins truly performed fairly effectively), however at no level did they give the impression of being worse than on the ultimate play:
So, there’s no method this was the precise play name, proper? This needed to be a test down. And in the event you’re going to test down on a play that has the whole season using on it, what do you even have Justin Jefferson for? Seems just like the time to let one fly and hope Jefferson grabs it was within the last seconds of a sport with the postseason on the road, no? Alas. It doesn’t even matter how effectively Cousins performed on Sunday — that is the one play anybody goes to recollect.
Here’s what Cousins needed to say:
“Yeah, it was just a shell read there. I saw single-high (coverage) and tried to work Justin (Jefferson) and didn’t feel good about putting it up to Justin. And when I went to progress, I just felt like I was about to get sacked. I felt I had to put the ball in play. I couldn’t go down with a sack.
So I just kicked it out to T.J., and I had thrown short of the sticks on a few occasions in the game and going back a few weeks. I just felt like throwing short of the sticks isn’t the end of the world, and it was obviously tight coverage. But I felt like I was going to go down and take a sack and put it out.”
Understandable, I suppose, however you possibly can’t dance round post-win shirtless in large chains and then take the protected choice when it issues. Cousins has all the time had a repute for being too conservative by half (on and off the sector), and Sunday’s choice isn’t going to alter anybody’s thoughts.
Finally, we deliver ourselves to the ultimate Sunday sport, Ravens – Bengals. We all knew Lamar Jackson was on the bench for this one, which was the supply of some disappointingly low-key beef amongst former gamers. Still, even with out Jackson on the sector, Baltimore had an opportunity.
What the hell was John Harbaugh doing?
Head coach John Harbaugh was off to tough begin in Ravens – Bengals, having been a whole jackaass to sideline reporter Melissa Stark earlier than halftime:
Harbaugh’s dangerous day continued, together with his group going into the huddle TWICE through the last minute of the sport, trailing 24-17. Not solely that, Harbaugh left TWO time outs on the board till there have been solely 8 seconds remaining within the sport. And then Harbaugh took a day out with the clock already stopped. What within the identify of all that’s holy…
Guess what occurred? THEY RAN OUT OF TIME. QB Tyler Huntley heaved one in the direction of the heavens that Baltimore virtually got here down with. Imagine what they may have achieved in the event that they’d truly, oh, I don’t know, used a day out to reset and name in a play? Have we not reached the purpose in American soccer the place youngsters spend years studying clock administration by way of Madden? Isn’t there anybody on Harbaugh’s workers beneath 40?
Anyway, right here’s what Harbaugh needed to say:
“We wanted to save the timeouts for the red zone. The thing that killed us was the holding penalty. That knocked us back. The idea was, we wanted to keep those timeouts to throw the ball. So, we tried to pop a run there, we were gonna call a timeout after that, and we would still have a run/pass option. We wanted to score without giving the ball back. We think we’re going to get in the red zone, we think it’s going to be a certain number of plays, and we’re going to work right down to the end of the game. Rather than score with 30, 35 seconds left, you give them a chance to go kick a field goal at the end.
“So, I think we played it right. Didn’t work out in the sense that after that, we had incomplete passes. If you complete the passes, you get the ball in the red zone, you call the timeouts. So, I think that at an elementary level, you can say, ‘Ah (expletive), they should have used the timeouts.’ But we had the timeouts worked right.”
In the enduring phrases of J. Peterman, that actually is a variety of phrases. I don’t actually know what to say besides that nothing about that last minute “worked right,” there’s no method Harbaugh goes to persuade anybody it did, and saving your timeouts for the pink zone solely works in the event you can truly get to the pink zone.
I can’t wait to see what tonight brings.
Discussion about this post