Mike Tomlin’s Onside kick
Uber genius Gregg Easterbrook (writer of the column Tuesday Morning Quarterback) is one of the few sports commentators I respect, because he says things, not to sound like he knows about football, but to actually sound like he knows about winning football games. Here was his reaction to Sunday’s “crazy online kick call” by Mike Tomlin:
“Tomlin Wins Points with TMQ: After scoring to take a 30-28 lead with four minutes remaining, Pittsburgh attempted an onside kick. On NBC’s “Football Night in the Known Universe,” Tony Dungy said he was “shocked” by the call. That’s the point! The Packers were shocked too — completely unprepared — and the gamble might have won the game then and there had Ike Taylor of the Steelers not recovered the ball 1 yard too soon. Football pundits fell all over themselves assailing Tomlin’s decision, which TMQ thought was a great call. This is another example of the phenomenon that sports-yak types don’t want coaches to make innovative or risky calls (Bill Belichick on fourth-and-2 at Indianapolis and so on). Instead, they want game action to be ultra-predictable — because the commentators don’t want to be taken by surprise. Plus, here were the Green Bay possession results in the fourth quarter: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. Tomlin knew his defense, especially his secondary, wasn’t performing. The onside attempt made eminent sense.”
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Just like the “fourth and two”, if it works you’re a genius. In Tomlin’s cenario there was the ‘right’ amount of time on the clock to risk a short field for your opponent; the two minute warning and timeouts.
i recall thinking to myself when GB scored the go-ahead TD that the receiver should have run OB or kneeled at the foot line, but i talked myself out of it because of the potential for things to go bad. It’s akin to taking points off the board by intentionally not putting them on.
The risk was that they don’t score a TD which puts Pitts in position to need only a field goal to win.
FB is all about making plays when the opportunities arise. The team that does that wins. Tomlin’s decision was neither genius nor dumb; his players made plays when they had to in spite of his decision.