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Message: [QUOTE="OttoinGrotto, post: 731743, member: 297"] So in other words, Shafer's call to turtle up was smart because we could be reasonably confident BOB was also going to turtle up. Aye yi yi The rationalization for punting is blowing my mind. The choice was NOT between having one down to get 7 yards vs having the the ball later at midfield with a short clock but 4 downs. The choice was between taking your chance to get 7 yards once and an unknown scenario where a large percentage of the possibilities are that you never see that football again. That was the choice. That we did force a three and out did not change those initial percentages. It was a bad call, and the outcome doesn't change that. Also, what exactly do people mean when they say they want to give the defense a chance to make a play? Really, what does that mean? Do we really think in that situation the defense is going to cause a turnover, an unlikely event, and then score a touchdown off the turnover, an EXTREMELY unlikely event? And we have a better chance of that than getting 7+ yards once? OK, if that's not how we're defining it, guess what - the result of "the defense making a play" under any other circumstance means that they've gotten the ball back for that same offense we don't trust to get 7 yards. Why on earth do we think it's more likely that they can put together an entire scoring drive if we don't think they can nut up one time and get 7 yards? But the part that really bothers me is that at least for this one part of this game, hardnosed was little more than a hashtag to get fans excited. It wasn't a true philosophy. It wasn't true confidence. It was just bluster that was abandoned when push came to shove. The one thing I hope people understand is that when you're talking about playing the percentages the argument stands on its own. What happens after is just one of the possibilities and can't change the percentages you started with when you made your choice. In this case we got the ball back, bit that doesn't make it a better call. Other side of the same coin, if we didn't get the ball back it doesn't make it a worse call. The initial percentages matter, and the outcome afterwards doesn't affect the odds of that initial choice. Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2 [/QUOTE]

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