Pete Carroll’s time management and late game decisions

[Seahawks8880]

No one has really mention about Pete’s late game debacle of series of bad decisions or was it just me that saw them.

Time was going against us and he threw a red flag to contest the call that was nowhere close to overturning and we then lost a timeout. Onside kick with 2:01 left where if we were to kick it in the endzone with that one second would net us another timeout prior to the 2 minute warning. Giving them possession on our side of the field after the onside kick put no pressure on them and all that they needed was 8 yards to kick a makable field goal. WTH….Granted that there was a strong possibility that they would have gain a first down anyway but Pete gave us no chance.

 

[nanomoz]

That challenge was horrific. He burned a timeout to maybe force a 3rd and inches agianst a team that'd steamrolled the Hawks all day.

 

[rjdriver]

No one has really mention about Pete’s late game debacle of series of bad decisions or was it just me that saw them.

Time was going against us and he threw a red flag to contest the call that was nowhere close to overturning and we then lost a timeout. Onside kick with 2:01 left where if we were to kick it in the endzone with that one second would net us another timeout prior to the 2 minute warning. Giving them possession on our side of the field after the onside kick put no pressure on them and all that they needed was 8 yards to kick a makable field goal. WTH….Granted that there was a strong possibility that they would have gain a first down anyway but Pete gave us no chance.

Good catch...

The clock doesn't start until the receiving team touches the ball. He essentially gave away his free time out. He was being extra generous since he had just given away one of his organic timeouts on a call that was confirmed in microseconds.

My 17 year old was perplexed when we lined up for the onside kick knowing we had three opportunities to stop the clock. I had to explain to him how the mind deteriorates with age and someday I'll make similar decisions. That's when he'll know it's time to put me in a home.

 

[cymatica]

My 17 year old was perplexed when we lined up for the onside kick knowing we had three opportunities to stop the clock. I had to explain to him how the mind deteriorates with age and someday I'll make similar decisions. That's when he'll know it's time to put me in a home.

That's both funny and sad

 

[Seahawks8880]

We had a better chance stopping them with a 3 and out versus an onside kick. I’m baffled with the thinking behind it.

 

[WmHBonney]

Nothing new here. Pete is consistently one of the worst in the league when it comes to these things. It is a rarity when it doesn't happen in one of our games.

 

[pittpnthrs]

Its so common place with Pete that nobody even questions it anymore.

 

[Seahawks8880]

The older Pete gets the more he show his severe regression in smart thinking. Let Pete go….

 

[Maelstrom787]

The onside kick was a fine decision. Hear me out before screaming at me.

The human mind wants to try to "keep hope alive" by default, and this leads to some irrationality when it comes to how we think about football decisions.

The initial instinct would be to kick deep for most, because it is further away from the mental line of "we now have no possible way to come back." The human mind wants to DELAY that point for as long as we can in a chronological sense. We are wired to avoid the feeling of loss or hopelessness, and we're wired to ignore stacked odds when we have no control over the situation.

When considering the full picture, the actual win probability that we lost by failing to convert onside kick attempt was less than 1%. Pittsburgh, mathematically, was already in the high 90th percentiles in terms of win probability at that point.

The chance to steal a possesion by converting an onside kick attempt is about 5.6% leaguewide this year. That 5.6% chance is absolutely worth gambling a fraction of your infinitesimal chance of winning the game for the upside of suddenly having a REAL shot at winning the game.

Refusing to take a chance on the onside there would've been the type of cowardice that people bemoan when discussing fourth down punt/go decisions. It would've been objectively wrong to kick it deep just to prolong the inevitable as we stared down that barrel of what was, at that point, about a 96% probable loss.

 

[Maelstrom787]

Let's frame it without the specifics of a kick or whatever.

Let's say I'm just a guy offering you a deal. Your team is on the brink of losing, and through magic powers, it is revealed to you that you are bound to lose this game 96/100 times based on the current situation.

The deal is this, I will give you a chance to boost those odds. The chance is a 5.6% chance, meaning you'll get lucky 5.6/100 times (which is even better than your odds of winning right now!)

The catch is simply that you'll lose the game a very small bit sooner if you come up empty.

Most people? They take that deal. That's what actually happened here. The offered deal is the onside kick in that situation.

 

[Ozzy]

Well if we had an extra time out and you get the two minute warning as well if you kick it deep. Time management wasn’t good.

 

[getnasty]

I'm with Maelstorm on the onside kick. It probably gives you two chance to get the ball instead of one. I also don't think Meyers can kick it out of the endzone. I originally thought kick it out of bounds to save the clock and they get the ball at the 40 but I think onside especially with the way the defense was playing was the right call.

The challenge was bad not sure it cost us anytime since they were gonna run the clock down anyways but i guess you never know.

 

[-Pete-]

As someone who thinks Pete can coach until he decides to hang it up, the last half of the 4th was some of the worst coaching decisions I've ever seen. It'd be comical if the consequences weren't so severe.

Aside from what was stated above, I might argue that the right call would've been to just let PIT score after Geno's fumble. It was going to be a 2 possession game anyway, FG or TD, and they'd control the clock instead of letting PIT burn it down.

Couldn't disagree more about the onside. Boot that away. You'll need 3-out anyway, and you might get a fumble/strip. Or a short field should you get it back. The onside all but guaranteed another 2 possessions with not nearly enough time.

 

[onepicknick1]

No one has really mention about Pete’s late game debacle of series of bad decisions or was it just me that saw them.

Time was going against us and he threw a red flag to contest the call that was nowhere close to overturning and we then lost a timeout. Onside kick with 2:01 left where if we were to kick it in the endzone with that one second would net us another timeout prior to the 2 minute warning. Giving them possession on our side of the field after the onside kick put no pressure on them and all that they needed was 8 yards to kick a makable field goal. WTH….Granted that there was a strong possibility that they would have gain a first down anyway but Pete gave us no chance.

I think he made the right decision on the onside kick. If there was a chance would you give it to the defense even though it would've been at their 25 thinking the D would stop them or a last ditch effort for the offense.

 

[TheLegendOfBoom]

Carroll has always been terrible at clock management. This is nothing new.

 

[CalgaryFan05]

My 17 year old was perplexed when we lined up for the onside kick knowing we had three opportunities to stop the clock. I had to explain to him how the mind deteriorates with age and someday I'll make similar decisions. That's when he'll know it's time to put me in a home.

Too funny - I was so pissed at the onside kick - I'm like WTF?!

Why the hell run a play with a 5% success rate just to give them a shorter field?!

At least he didn't throw his phone instead of a challenge flag again..... Although in this case, that woulda worked out better!

 

[RiverDog]

The challenge was stupid, but Pete wasn't the only one who mismanaged the last few minutes. The Steelers were snapping the ball with 10-12 seconds left on the play clock instead of milking it for every second they could.

I also think that we did a pretty poor job working the sidelines in those waning minutes, that we completed a lot of short passes across the middle with the receiver tackled in bounds, particularly those to Charbonnet.

I also didn't like kicking the FG at the 5 yard line.

 

[CalgaryFan05]

The onside kick was a fine decision. Hear me out before screaming at me.

The human mind wants to try to "keep hope alive" by default, and this leads to some irrationality when it comes to how we think about football decisions.

The initial instinct would be to kick deep for most, because it is further away from the mental line of "we now have no possible way to come back." The human mind wants to DELAY that point for as long as we can in a chronological sense. We are wired to avoid the feeling of loss or hopelessness, and we're wired to ignore stacked odds when we have no control over the situation.

When considering the full picture, the actual win probability that we lost by failing to convert onside kick attempt was less than 1%. Pittsburgh, mathematically, was already in the high 90th percentiles in terms of win probability at that point.

The chance to steal a possesion by converting an onside kick attempt is about 5.6% leaguewide this year. That 5.6% chance is absolutely worth gambling a fraction of your infinitesimal chance of winning the game for the upside of suddenly having a REAL shot at winning the game.

Refusing to take a chance on the onside there would've been the type of cowardice that people bemoan when discussing fourth down punt/go decisions. It would've been objectively wrong to kick it deep just to prolong the inevitable as we stared down that barrel of what was, at that point, about a 96% probable loss.

I see your point - but I am split:

Got no timeouts? Onside Kick.

But, that wasn't the case here - IMO -

 

[Maelstrom787]

I see your point - but I am split:

Got no timeouts? Onside Kick.

But, that wasn't the case here - IMO -

Hardly matters to me. We were almost fully boned at that point, just went out with a bigger swing this way. Even with 3 timeouts, we would've needed to stop them in a single set of downs. I dunno. I'd rather take that 6% chance of making it an actual game instead of preserving like an additional 0.7% of the 3% chance we had to win anyway. The only reason I think we all have such aversion to the idea of it is just human nature to avoid confronting the precipice before we are forced to.

Same principle applied to the whole "take the 2 pt conversion attempt as soon as you need to" debate. The facts are clear, but it's so incredibly unintuitive.

 

[Hollandhawk]

Hardly matters to me. We were almost fully boned at that point, just went out with a bigger swing this way. Even with 3 timeouts, we would've needed to stop them in a single set of downs. I dunno. I'd rather take that 6% chance of making it an actual game instead of preserving like an additional 0.7% of the 3% chance we had to win anyway. The only reason I think we all have such aversion to the idea of it is just human nature to avoid confronting the precipice before we are forced to.

Same principle applied to the whole "take the 2 pt conversion attempt as soon as you need to" debate. The facts are clear, but it's so incredibly unintuitive.

The onside kick makes sense. You needed a 3 and out regardless like you said if Pittsburgh had the ball after kick off. So you get the chance to recover the onside kick, if that doesn’t work you need to get that 3 and out. Maybe you have a slightly shorter field if you do a normal kick off and get that three and out but not much and then you don’t have the chance to recover the kickoff .