Monday Morning Quarterback: Mike Smith and Two Curious Calls

[jhay610]

Allow me to first preface this by saying I think that Mike Smith is an excellent coach and I am happy for him and the whole organization for getting the proverbial 500 lb gorilla off their back and earning a playoff win. I have, however, been a bit critical of his in-game decision making (1 pt vs 2pt, 4th down decisions, playing his starters for the entire meaningless Tampa Bay game [see here]) and clock management.

There were two calls that struck me as odd in this game. The first was after the Falcons scored with 2:11 left in the 3rd qtr to go up 26-7. I know the old adage about not chasing points until the 4th quarter, but if you allowed yourself to think ahead, you could figure Seattle to only get the ball 3-4 more times, barring turnovers, freak plays or a clock eating drive by your offense (which would obviously be welcomed and would further underscore the point). Field goals were off the table for Seattle, no questions about it.

Given those circumstances, why would you not go for the two point conversion in that spot? The difference between five and six points is virtually zero, but the difference between six and seven was massive. When asked this question after the game, Mike Smith was dismissive and curtly requested the next question. It was clearly not even a part of his thought process. He has previously (I believe after the loss at N.O., when he was criticized for failing to go for two after an early 4th qtr score) stated that you don't even entertain the thought until under 7 minutes in the 4th qtr. The fact that he has a hard and fast rule about this causes me to shudder.

Second scenario: why call a timeout with :13 to play, only to bring your kicker onto the field on the next play? Why not run the clock all the way down? You surely will not get the ball back on a miss, and you haven't enough time to clock it if there is a botched snap or hold. Here was his response to this question:

“With 13 seconds and you don’t get out of bounds with the ball or the ball is sacked you have no opportunity to run another play. It takes 16 seconds to run a play after you’ve been tackled. That’s the norm in the League so when you’re under 16 and we saw what happened in the first half with regards to Seattle and not being able to run another play on a sack. Once we had the yardage we felt comfortable with it. We were going to go ahead and kick it. If we weren’t in range in the range that we had then we would’ve had to work the sidelines and initially we thought with the play that we had called that was probably going to be the case. Tony broke the tackle and got us inside the yardage to kick the field goal.”

It sort of seems like he either misunderstood or skirted the question.

Is it too much to ask of a coach to be able to dynamically assess an evolving situation and in short order ascertain the best course of action? Maybe it is given everything else he is responsible for. I can give him a little bit of a pass here because a 49 yard field goal is certainly not a lock, and he may have needed time to weigh the benefits of perhaps a short pass to the sidelines versus the risk of losing the opportunity to kick said field goal due to an adverse outcome.

However, if he already had this 16 second rule in his mind (and it seems he did) and knew he was not going to risk another play, then why not say, "hey, you know what, we have a reasonable shot at this field goal where the play was blown dead. I see that the game clock is under :16, so I am going to let this run this down to about :02 before I ask for my timeout."

I know that Mike Smith has a heck of a lot on his mind and that he is in a pressure cooker in those last few moments. I am just not so sure that we shouldn't expect somebody, whether it's Mike Smith (such decisions ultimately fall under the remit of the Head Coach) or someone on staff specifically charged with such decisions (if a head coach's ego could withstand it) to be able to quickly determine the best course of action in that spot.

Certainly Pete Carroll was no better and ultimately cost his team more with his role in the Seahawks' failure to score on two red zone drives in the first half. It is always mind-boggling to me just how few head coaches actually even approach optimal play from a probability standpoint. Of course, the job of an NFL coach covers a lot more ground than these decisions, and many of these guys are exceedingly adept at those areas.

Food for thought.

[macdaddy]

In the New Orleans game i was totally baffled why they didn't go for two. That situation was so obvious because its fourth quarter and you just went up by 5. So there is absolutely no reason to kick a PAT. I was screaming for 2 in that one. In the seattle game though it never crossed my mind. In the third and there is a difference between 19 and 20 points. But I see your point. With that commanding of a lead i think the norm is definitely to go for the PAT

The timeout situation makes total sense but maybe (and this is a stretch), if you leave time on the clock and there is a bad snap the holder could pick it up and throw and incomplete pass for another chance at the field goal. It was only first down so it leaves you some time.

Hopefully these kind of things won't bite us this week.