I like what he said here about Mike Shanahan (which is something I said Monday):
"From the moment Shanahan made his decision, sports nuts called it "gutsy" or "bold" or "a huge risk." As TMQ has pointed out before, going for it is actually playing the percentages! Suppose Denver had kicked the PAT and advanced to overtime. That's about a 50/50 prospect, and in overtime you may never even touch the ball -- on Sunday, San Francisco won the overtime coin toss, took the ball and beat Seattle, which never had a snap. Go for two in the waning seconds, and all you need is 2 yards to win the game. Up to that point, Denver had rolled up 484 yards of offense. The offense was hot, so why not try for 2 yards more? The invaluable Pro Football Prospectus reports that since 2003, deuce attempts have succeeded about 55 percent of the time, which sounds better than trotting on to overtime. True, in the past 15 years, teams that have gone for two to win in the final minute won three times and lost three times. That's still no worse than proceeding to overtime -- and tells you how rare going for two in this situation is. TMQ suspects that if coaches went for the win in this situation more often, they'd do better than 50/50.
Shanahan's decision was "bold" mainly in the sense that if the gamble failed, sports pundits would now be bashing, bashing, bashing him. Whereas if he ordered a kick and the Broncos lost in overtime, the players would be blamed. Coaches act like cowards mainly to avoid criticism -- how wonderful to see Shanahan not caring about that."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080916
Wonderful decision indeed. I just wonder how many coaches make a decision based on FEAR OF CRITICISM rather than on good football knowledge. Take in these examples:
1. Brian Billick on 3rd and 1 last year elected to have turnover prone Steve McNair pass the ball instead of calling run against the Bungles, who had one of the worst run defenses in the league.
2. Jim Tressel elected to have his pocket QB Todd Boeckman run an option on 2nd and 22 (almost in the red zone) in one of the biggest regular season games of this decade.
I just wonder how many decisions Marv has not made because he's scared of the criticism of his owner/president/GM/HandPuppet Master.
"So he got fired? Big deal. It's happened to the best of us. So he got kicked out of his house by his 400 lb'ed wife?!?!? That's probably better for him anyways."-OldSchooler on ChrisMBHater's absence
