Broncos Coach is a Dope

[EDGECRUSHER]

With a minute left the Broncos get to the Seahawks 47 and are down by 1 point. It is now 4th and 5. The head coach proceeds to let the play clock run down to 1 before calling a timeout. He wasn't trying to draw the other team offsides, he just didn't know what to do. He then proceeds to take his $250 Million QB off the field and attempt a 64 yard FG to win it. The kicker has a very strong leg but of course he misses it.

The Manning Brothers have a show where they watch the game live and comment and Peyton was almost hurting his hand by simulating calling a timeout. It was funny but painful to watch. One of the worst coached drives I have seen in the past few years. Really was breathtaking to see.

[CF DolFan]

Not the way a new head coch wants to debut. For whatever reason wht seemed obvious to many wasn't to him. He must have panicked or just had a major brain fart. I have to believe he somehow miscalculated the length of the kick because the analytics of the kicker making it is significantly less than Russell Wilson getting a first down. 

[EDGECRUSHER]

Not the way a new head coch wants to debut. For whatever reason wht seemed obvious to many wasn't to him. He must have panicked or just had a major brain fart. I have to believe he somehow miscalculated the length of the kick because the analytics of the kicker making it is significantly less than Russell Wilson getting a first down. 

Even if it was a 55 yard FG I don't know if you would take Wilson off the field. They just paid him huge money and traded away a lot of capital for him and moments like these are why.

[Dave Gray]

It's funny that this is the conversation.

Yes, it was the wrong call.

However, Wilson and the Denver offense sucks.  They overpaid for him -- it's lost money; it's a sunk cost.  You can't keep making bad decisions just because you paid a guy too much.  They had all game to produce and they couldn't.  They scored 3 points in the half, including a drive where they needed a TD earlier in the quarter and couldn't get it.  Sure, put Wilson in.  He's not making that series of plays either.  If anything, the coach's bad decision let him off the hook.

Denver made the big mistake in football I'm always warning about:  They overpaid for a guy's name...for something he already did.  Wilson can't be great when he's getting paid top money, because you can't afford the supporting cast to take advantage of his skillset.  He's a good QB but not enough to overcome.

[CF DolFan]

It's funny that this is the conversation.

Yes, it was the wrong call.

However, Wilson and the Denver offense sucks.  They overpaid for him -- it's lost money; it's a sunk cost.  You can't keep making bad decisions just because you paid a guy too much.  They had all game to produce and they couldn't.  They scored 3 points in the half, including a drive where they needed a TD earlier in the quarter and couldn't get it.  Sure, put Wilson in.  He's not making that series of plays either.  If anything, the coach's bad decision let him off the hook.

Denver made the big mistake in football I'm always warning about:  They overpaid for a guy's name...for something he already did.  Wilson can't be great when he's getting paid top money, because you can't afford the supporting cast to take advantage of his skillset.  He's a good QB but not enough to overcome.

They were on the goal line twice and didn't score. Melvin Gordon nor Javonte Williams could hold onto the ball on goal-line runs. A goal-line fumble is one thing but two straight goal-line fumbles is another.  They could have had 14, 10, or even 6 more points but came away with zero.  That isn't on Russell unless you think he's a failure for getting them there and then not changing the run plays that were called.

[Dave Gray]

They were on the goal line twice and didn't score. Melvin Gordon nor Javonte Williams could hold onto the ball on goal-line runs. A goal-line fumble is one thing but two straight goal-line fumbles is another.  They could have had 14, 10, or even 6 more points but came away with zero.  That isn't on Russell unless you think he's a failure for getting them there and then not changing the run plays that were called.

It's not ON Wilson, so far as he made a bad play.  But it's on Wilson, so far as he's the highest paid QB in the league so his RBs and WRs are fumbling bums that can't score instead of Marshawn Lynch.  It's my whole point.

When you pay a guy S+ tier money, he has to be able to do it on his own, and Wilson isn't that type of player, so they're fucked.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

It is a close judgement call.

If you go for it on 4th down and don't make it, you lose the game.  If you go for it and convert you still haven't won the game.

The offense was ineffective all day.  On the other hand McManus was having a good day. 

You go into every game with a finite set of plays on your play sheet.  Some are ones you feel really really good about. Others less so.  I am willing to bet Hackett already used the plays he was super confident about on the goal line and in other critical spots and in those cases those plays came up short.  Now he was stuck with either rerunning a failed play or using something he was less confident in than the already failed plays.   

McManus had earned the chance to win the game, the offense had not. 

[Spider-Dan]

Pat McAfee explained on his show what might have happened:

Ahead of time, the kicker would have told the coach what his target yard marker is (the distance at which he feels he can make the kick).  That yard marker was the 47(?).  So when DEN unexpectedly got to the 46 on the 3rd down play, the initial thought of "We're going to have to go for it on 4th and think about kicking on the next set of downs" was derailed, because they had reached the distance the kicker said he could hit from.  Essentially, Hackett hadn't accounted for getting within kicking range on this set of downs.

But once you decide to kick, you don't want to leave time on the clock if you make it!  So DEN (and SEA!) were trapped in a sort of weird game of chicken with the clock.  DEN wants the clock to run, but doesn't mind if SEA burns their last timeout.  SEA wants to have some time left if the kick is good, but doesn't want to use their last timeout just to give DEN a chance to draw up a big 4th down play.

And it's not like the kicker was crazy to think he could make it from that distance!  He had the leg and was just a bit left.  If he makes the (second) kick, everyone is roasting Pete Carroll for wasting his last timeout to ice McManus on the first kick that he missed very wide left.

[dolphins4life]

Even with an average quarterback, I think the odds of converting a fourth and five are greater than those of hitting a sixty four yard field goal.

If the game was in Denver, that slightly affects things, as the odds of hitting such a long kick are greater in those circumstances.

When I play armchair coach, I try to think, "What would my opponent want me to do?"  Then, I say that I would do the opposite.  Obviously the Seahawks wanted the Broncos to attempt that field goal, so I would have gone for it.

Question for all of you:

If you had Justin Tucker on your team, how would that affect your decision?

Edit:  I would have tried to move closer.  That's why Manning was urging the timeout to be called.  The idea he had was to go for it and then try to get farther downfield

[Dave Gray]

If you had Justin Tucker on your team, how would that affect your decision?

It doesn't.

I don't know how the math works out, but Denver is likely to lose the game either way.

Converting the FG is below 50%.  But getting the first down is also probably below 50% AND you'd still have to make a far kick anyway.  And they'd proven their inability to move the ball all game to that point anyway.

If I had to guess, I'd have gone for it.  But the kicker had the leg from the distance, so distance wasn't really the issue.  It's just a hard kick.  But it's also hard to get a first down and then kick a long kick again anyway.

[fyo]

^ For what it's worth, NFL Next Gen Stats had the probabilities at something like 12% to make the field goal and 40-some% to convert, followed by 60-some% to get at least 3 points. That's about 25-30% of winning if you go for it and 12% if you kick. They did have the chance of making the kick quite a bit higher if it had been in Denver (low 20s%, IIRC).

Those numbers are all supposed to take kicker, offense, opponent etc. into account.

If I had to second guess their numbers, I'd say they probably have the least data on > 60 yard kicks by a kicker like McManus (you don't train a model on a single player, obviously). As far as him, specifically, he's career 50% at > 50 yards, with a career longest of 61 yards (last season), but you have to figure a good portion of his kicks are from Mile High - and a 64 yard kick isn't just 50+, so it's hard to argue that he had anything like a 50% chance of hitting that kick.

At best, I would say that the two strategies were close, but it's likely that going for it had a much higher chance of working.

[Dave Gray]

Also, I think it's possible that the coach was letting Wilson off the hook.  Maybe that's wishful thinking.  But if they go for it and can't convert, their star QB is just lambasted relentlessly and it could compromise the entire team.  That could be bullshit.

As it, the media/public is giving no blame to Wilson for the loss.  They're blaming the coach.  For a game you're likely to lose either way, the coach may rather take the heat.

[Dave Gray]

I did the math yesterday, based on NFL averages and funny enough, both options were exact, according to my estimates.

Both kicking the FG and going for it to then kick a shorter FG were 38%.

It's fun to shit on the guy, but statistically, one choice wasn't significantly different than the other.

[EDGECRUSHER]

I did the math yesterday, based on NFL averages and funny enough, both options were exact, according to my estimates.

Both kicking the FG and going for it to then kick a shorter FG were 38%.

It's fun to shit on the guy, but statistically, one choice wasn't significantly different than the other.

There was a 38% chance that the kicker would've hit a 64 yard FG?

[Dave Gray]

There was a 38% chance that the kicker would've hit a 64 yard FG?

The average kick at the 60+ range over the last 10 years is 28%, sorry ----not 38.  

I mean...this kicker had the leg for it.

I still would've gone for it, but I can't really fault the coach.  He was probably gonna lose either way and his QB was gonna get dragged as a bum.

To clarify, odds of kicking from 64 are 28%.
Odds of successfully converting the 4th down and then kicking are also about 28%.