irrelevant. You can make bad decisions and have them work out, and you can make good decisions and have them not work out. In the long run playing the percentages pays off. If JB called for Baye to take a three on the last play with us down two, it could work, but that doesn't make it the right decision does it?
Our offense not marching up and down the field is exactly why you go for it - it gives you two chances.
Your original question was whether the decision was "totally illogical"? Several on here have provided reasons why it wasn't. Also, the "long run" isn't one decision. Shafer's call put us in a position to win -- but we didn't capitalize. Of all the things he could take back today, I'd bet that decision isn't one of them.
Say SU goes for it, but doesn't convert. And we then hold PSU to a three-and-out -- but instead of getting the ball at our 44 (which we did), they punt it inside our 10. We now have to go 90 yards for a touchdown with no timeouts. Is that a better position to be in than we ended up having?
How about the fact that it worked just as Shafer wanted it to. I think he was thinking we had a better chance of stopping them and getting the ball back in decent position. We had a better chance of moving the ball with a new set of downs than a 4th and 7. Had PTG not whiffed on the 1st down screen, who knows what happens.
arrrgh...no of course it isn't. but that is ignoring the other two possibilities: 1. we make the 4th down 2. we punt and then they get the first down. anyway...whatever. it wasn't a good percentage play. it worked. great. i hope he doesn't make a habit of making decisions like that.
I was addressing your "you get two shots" argument -- it doesn't take genius to see the other two possibilities -- the second shot (which my scenario is entirely plausible) isn't much of one at all.
Why would they have to convert five 1st and 10s? Are there no 2nd downs under two minutes? And no one was "hoping" for anything -- they were making decisions based on how their players were playing.
You get one chance to get seven yards -- or four chances to get ten. Sign me up for the latter. (Say they got the seven yards -- you still have to go another 50 to score.) If coaching were a simple exercise in math, they wouldn't receive millions to do it. Now that's logic.
Or they could punt it out of the end zone and eliminate an opportunity for us to make up a chunk of yards on the punt return. I'm not saying our PR unit is a feared weapon, but it's another variable. Especially if our punt from midfield pinned them deep or they had a penalty, etc. Suddenly they could be punting from their end zone, (maybe with a shortened distance for the snap) which adds additional pressure/chances for a break.
Does that always happen? The logic for punting assumes they are not going to pick up a first down. If you punt and they pick up a first down on this down, you're cooked too. People think your defense all of sudden gets worse if you go for it and fail rather than punt.
Point of the discussion isn't that punting can never work. Hitting on nineteen can work too but it's still not smart. I was hoping Shafer would be an upgrade in these situations. I'm more interested in learning about Shafer and McDonald than what happened at the end of a game they weren't going to win either way
