Since I know that many of us are armchair coaches, I am wondering what you think of the following:
1. In last night's Raven-Chargers game, the situation is that Balt. leads 16-10 with 3:12 to go and faces 4th and 6 from their own 6. LA has two timeouts remaining.
2. What do you do. The announcers said nothing and Baltimore punted. Did not work out very well as the punt went 57 yards and was returned 24 yards to Baltimore's 39. LA needed a TD (or two field goals) and had 3 minutes, two timeouts, and the 2:00 minute warning.
3. It worked out well as LA was penalized and then fumbled it for a back-breaking TD return by Baltimore.
4. At the time, I thought, and still do, that the proper call, albeit unusual, would have been for the punter to take a safety. If they did, they would still leave by 4, they could either punt from the 20 with a lot of fast cover guys covering the punt return, or kick off with Tucker from the 20 (he can kick it 70 yards in the air). Either way they had an excellent chance of limiting LA to their own 40.
5. Seems to me that Balt really only had to worry about one drive and with or without the safety, LA would need to score a TD. With the free kick, Balt could expect to put LA in worse field position.
6. The only reason not to punt, in my mind, is if Balt was worried that LA would kick a FG, stop Balt on downs, and have enough time to kick another FG. To me, that was a much lower probability that LA using the better field position to score a TD.
Your thoughts.
1. In last night's Raven-Chargers game, the situation is that Balt. leads 16-10 with 3:12 to go and faces 4th and 6 from their own 6. LA has two timeouts remaining.
2. What do you do. The announcers said nothing and Baltimore punted. Did not work out very well as the punt went 57 yards and was returned 24 yards to Baltimore's 39. LA needed a TD (or two field goals) and had 3 minutes, two timeouts, and the 2:00 minute warning.
3. It worked out well as LA was penalized and then fumbled it for a back-breaking TD return by Baltimore.
4. At the time, I thought, and still do, that the proper call, albeit unusual, would have been for the punter to take a safety. If they did, they would still leave by 4, they could either punt from the 20 with a lot of fast cover guys covering the punt return, or kick off with Tucker from the 20 (he can kick it 70 yards in the air). Either way they had an excellent chance of limiting LA to their own 40.
5. Seems to me that Balt really only had to worry about one drive and with or without the safety, LA would need to score a TD. With the free kick, Balt could expect to put LA in worse field position.
6. The only reason not to punt, in my mind, is if Balt was worried that LA would kick a FG, stop Balt on downs, and have enough time to kick another FG. To me, that was a much lower probability that LA using the better field position to score a TD.
Your thoughts.
