Vancanhawksfan":4jxs2pzg said:But I believe I understand what Pete's thinking was in choosing to run a passing play. He was attempting to preserve the possibility he might need all three plays to score.
Remember...it was 2nd and goal at the 2 yard line with only 1 timeout remaining. That means the Hawks could possibly have THREE shots at the end zone...but it would be extremely difficult, even with the one timeout, to execute three running plays in 26 seconds. No matter how you slice it, if the Seahawks do not run one passing play out of those three possible attempts then they run a big risk of only being able to take two shots at the end zone with a high likelihood of time running out before the guys can line up and get off the final play.
In this thread, I think you're forgetting a very key point. Yes, we call a pass play in case we do need all three downs we have left to score.
But it was BY CHOICE that we snapped the ball with 26 seconds left. Marshawn was fully up off the ground, and coming back to our huddle with 56 seconds left. We did not need to run off so much time before our second down play, we did so BY CHOICE.
By making that choice, yes, we probably did have to pass on second down. But the way to exorcise the demons from Atlanta was not to put ourselves into a situation where the clock could possibly become our own enemy. Look, if Marshawn scores with 35-40 seconds left, and Tom and Gronk get us at the end like Matt and Tony did, that sucks. But that's life. Sometimes top notch players will get you.
But we improved in so many ways after the Atlanta game (Marshawn not fumbling at bad times, not having bad end of half game management, younger players getting older and not having so many coverage screwups leading to big Falcon plays), that we are really taking the wrong lesson from that loss if our main goal is to play keep away from Tom, and not just do what it takes to score.
By burning the clock, and then likely having to pass, we are BY CHOICE, going into HORRIBLE personnel matchups. There's three corners that you do not want to face when you have to throw at the one yard line. We fortunately have one of the three in Richard. The other two play for New England. BB has plenty of flaws as a corner, but don't we all remember how laughable it was on MNF last year when the Rams tried to win at the goal line by throwing a fade on BB? It had no chance.
If we have to throw down there, we are extremely unlikely to beat BB or Revis with the receivers we have. So that really limits the pass plays we can call. Forget fade routes. The Patriots knew this, and can set their defense to stop the other passes we might try. So those aren't likely to work either, as we saw.
Willingly putting ourselves into a situation where BB can be at his most dominant (his jam of Kearse at the LOS being part of the reason for the game ending pick), along with Revis....just a terribly thought out idea of how to use our personnel vs. New England's. And if Darrell Bevell thought taking time away from Brady made it worth it to go into these matchups which drastically favored New England, he was dead wrong.