With 4:27 left in the game Monday Night, the Raiders scored a touchdown to pull the game within one point of the Chiefs. Easy decision, right? Kick the extra point to make it a 30-30 game, right? Not so fast.
Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels decided going for the chance at a one-point lead was the better choice. So, he called for the Raiders to go for two.
Derek Carr handed it off to Josh Jacobs and he was stopped just shy of the goal line. Thus keeping the Raiders down by one. That 30-29 score would be how the game ended too.
Naturally Josh McDaniels was asked about his decision after the game. This is what he said:
“I felt like in that situation, they had a lot of momentum offensively in the second half and we had a play that we felt really good about,” said McDaniel. “I thought they would give us a look that gave a shot at it for sure. We had a chance. We had a fair fight at it. But they played it a little bit better than we did and we gave ourselves an opportunity to take the lead there and then maybe put a little extra pressure on them when they had the ball. Nothing more, nothing less. Just trying to be aggressive, trying to win the game. I know it was four and a half or whatever the time was, but our team felt good about it and just felt like that was the right call at the right time.”
Derek Carr was asked about it and said plainly “I love it.” That he loved the aggressiveness. Which, in theory is a good thing. The Raiders had been aggressive to get to that point. But you have to wonder if the potential downside outweighed the upside.
Had it been in the final minute or so of the game, I could see how they might do this to try and win it in regulation instead of allowing the Chiefs to take it to OT. But not with so much time left.
Tying the game up on the PAT would have still meant stopping the Chiefs on their ensuing drive. And then the Raiders could still opt to be aggressive on their final drive, just as they did end up doing. The difference is they would be doing so knowing that if they fail, they would have another shot in overtime.
As it stood, they seemed to be working on the assumption that the right play was to risk letting the Chiefs run the clock out or drive for a game-winning score for the potential benefit of forcing them to go into four-down territory to drive for a score?
The closest thing I’ve seen to anyone making sense out of that approach was to point to the fill-in kicker who had missed a field goal in the game, but who had also nailed a 59-yarder before halftime. Maybe the Raiders were banking on either their defense making the stop or the kicker missing the potential game-winner?
As it happens, the Raiders defense did hold up, forcing the Chiefs to punt. That gave the Raiders the ball at their own seven-yard-line, which meant they had a ways to go to get into scoring range.
Though if the Raiders had scored on the two-point conversion and gone up by one, the Chiefs would have played to score as opposed to running clock and would have had one more down as well, which is no small variable for a dangerous Chiefs offense.
Obviously there are a lot of variables. But with so much time left on the clock, the risk of staying down by one seemed greater than the potential gain of going up by one. Certainly not when easily tying the game was an option.
In the end, it was the Raiders who were put in desperation mode. And instead of taking over on offense with a tie game and playing for the win on their final drive, they were playing not to lose.
So, while McDaniels talks about trying to put “extra pressure” on the Chiefs, he ended up putting extra pressure on his own team. On third-and-one or fourth-and-one, they could’ve handed it to Josh Jacobs. Or if they still went for it through the air as they did, the game would have been tied with a shot in overtime.
Instead when the last two passes fell incomplete, that was the ball game. And all the actual aggressive plays the offense had made to reach that point were rendered moot.
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