'Tis The Season For NFL Coaching Malpractice

Forget the holiday season just past, we are now in the heart of the football malpractice season. Across the frozen tundras NFL coaches are being overwhelmed by the pressure of making key calls during the postseason. 

On Saturday, Texans coach Bill O’Brien was like a punch-drunk fighter from the very first quarter. Quickly down 7-0 after Buffalo drove on their first possession, the panicky Texans coach wasted a timeout and a challenge on his team’s first possession over an unwinnable pass interference call.

But he was just warming up. After his defence had stifled the Bills late in the fourth quarter, O’Brien’s offence was left with a fourth-and-one while leading by three. His choice was 1) punt 2) 47-yard field goal 3) get stuffed on fourth down. Instead of pinning Buffalo deep in its zone with just 1:06 left or going up by six, O’Brien chose getting stuffed. Buffalo immediately rolled into FG position on an 11-play drive, tying the game with seconds left.

Buffalo’s Sean McDermott was no better. In a road game he settled for three field goals inside the 40 yard line rather than hammer home the clear advantage his team held in the first half. And  Brian Daboll (Offensive Coordinator for Buffalo) called 46 passes despite holding a 16-0 lead and not giving his running back more than 13 carries even though he was averaging 4.5 yards a rush— and averaged 5.1 yards a rush during the regular season. 

On Sunday it was the turn of multiple offender Sean Payton of New Orleans, who somehow mismanaged his timeouts in both halfs. Very late in the second half his failure to call a TO cost his team 40 seconds waiting for Minnesota to punt. That left them only time for a long field goal to send the game to OT. Where his team never saw the ball as the Vikings eliminated the Saints,.

Leading Bill Simmons to ask, “So…. why didn’t the Saints call timeout there? They lost 40 seconds plus the 2-minute warning. That was inexplicable even before it happened.”

There was hope for coaching in the New England/ Tennessee game. Titans coach Mike Vrabel schooled his mentor Bill Belicheck late in the fourth, using a loophole in the rules to bleed 1:30 off the clock, denying the Patriots the ball. And Baltimore coach John Harbaugh is now employing a strategy analyst on the field to advise him about game strategy and odds.

But, as I wrote in February last year many NFL teams are guilty of in-game coaching malpractice.

 “While everyone (rightly) bemoaned the botched pass-interference non-call in the NFC Championship game between the Saints and Rams, it had been preceded by a dereliction of coaching duty by New Orleans head coach Sean Payton. 

Recall: Saints had the ball deep in Rams territory with just 1:58 left in a 20-20 tie. The Rams had just two timeouts left. If Payton ran on three consecutive plays, he could have kicked the go-ahead field goal with about 40 seconds left on the clock. 

What did Payton do? He passed unsuccessfully on first down, allowing the Rams to keep a TO. After a run on second down he then passed again! When the Saints were cheated on the PI call on third down (again stopping the clock), they kicked the field goal to go ahead, now leaving the Rams 1:41 to respond. 

Which they did, forcing overtime in which L.A. won a trip to the Super Bowl. 

If coaching had a capital offence, Payton committed it by ignoring the obvious probabilities. In any reasonable game strategy he failed miserably. This gaffe has been obscured by the PI mess and forgiven by a platoon of NFL mastodons who think coaches should “go with your gut” in these situations. 

But, I’m sorry, if you have a tool to help you win games— especially championship games— it’s gross negligence to “wing it”.

Let’s not pick on Payton alone, because the NFL and its college equivalent are over-populated by legendary coaches who refuse to adopt the algorithms and data that tell them what is the logical play in the het of the the moment. Fans of NFL teams can recall a nightmarish Andy Reid, Ron Rivera or Mike McCarthy moment when instinct or panic cost their team a win.

In SB LIII, Rams coach Sean McVay added to the canon of confusion, getting so lost in his own play calling late in the game that the referees had to convince him his initial acceptance of a Patriots penalty in the fourth quarter was… a bad idea. While Patriots coach Bill Belichik fumed, McVay took their advice.

Fourth-down percentage, goal-line strategy, time-out odds— there are statistics that show the way as clearly as the Dann rangefinder guided its bomb aimers. Because these probabilities are not generated by some pal with whom they played high school football, the top coaches in the NFL (and let’s face it, all sports) refuse to bow to reason. Like Payton, they believe there’s mystery in the play calls that they can summon when time gets tight.

Remarkably, almost all owners who profess to doing everything they can to win put up with this nonsense. They buy in to the bromides of the old-boys lodge about trusting coaches. But why not have a game strategist at the right hand of the coach to guide him stressful moments? 

Between the offensive and defensive strategies, the personnel decisions and the noise, it’s easy for a coach to short-change probability factors. Having someone to instantly tell a Payton or Reid to make the easy choice, not the testosterone-choked mistake, can perhaps win a game or two a year— more than enough in the NFL to guarantee a playoff spot or home-field advantage. 

So you can get with the future— or let coaches bomb out.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of his website Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also a best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand: How Salary Caps Are Killing Pro Sports And Why The Free Market Could Save Them is now available.