Hey, what a SUPER Wild Card Weekend, am I proper? We won’t have seen nice NFL soccer, or nice officiating, and even nice decision-making from gamers and coaches alike, however we did see loads of chaos. And, as everyone knows, chaos is the place the actual enjoyable begins — except your workforce is the one fumbling round at nighttime regardless of the cruel glare of the nationwide highlight. But with apologies to Vikings, Dolphins, and Ravens followers, let’s check out a few of yesterday’s truly-terrible-but-als0-kinda-hysterical game-ending selections.
Gotta get the play in, Mike
We’ll begin with the primary recreation of the day, Dolphins – Bills. Could Miami survive and advance with out Tua? Is Josh Allen the following Patrick Mahomes? Is this lastly the 12 months the Bills Mafia will get their final reward? Well, perhaps. And this one was quite a bit nearer than it in all probability ought to have been, thanks to a few turnovers from Allen. Nevertheless, America waited, breathless, on the sting of its seat… as Miami head coach Mike McDaniel inexplicably let a minute expire with out getting a play in. Look:
So what did McDaniel need to say for himself afterwards? Reader, he mentioned this:
“There was some crowd noise that had to do with mishearing some reading of digits of the wristband. There was some issues within the huddles of communication and getting to the line of scrimmage.
“And there’s the excuse that you don’t use, that is a real compounding variable, that there is a multiple amount of different people in the huddle, where communicating — when you’re in a nice routine, or maybe there’s a group of offensive linemen that are being communicated to by the same person. When you have flux like that, it happens, it shouldn’t happen as much as it did.
We were deploying a group of players for the first-and-10 call. It was articulated that, no, it was fourth down. That miscommunication — that’s all the stuff that you do in this business. You never stop finding the things that you can improve on. And it was a piece of the reason why were unable to come out with a victory. But it definitely wasn’t the only reason.”
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That’s really more of a description of what happened than an explanation, but okay. The worst part was that McDaniel said all of this while still wearing a truly terrible Dolphins’ hat, which I get was supposed to look distressed and edgy, but just wound up looking like several people had sweated in it multiple times. Yarg.
Kirk Cousins: Never not conservative
Up next, we have the Vikings and Giants, and kudos to our Jon Hoefling for calling this one accurately. The Vikings by no means regarded nice (although Kirk Cousins truly performed fairly properly), however at no level did they give the impression of being worse than on the ultimate play:
So, there’s no means this was the precise play name, proper? This needed to be a test down. And in the event you’re going to test down on a play that has the complete season using on it, what do you even have Justin Jefferson for? Seems just like the time to let one fly and hope Jefferson grabs it was within the ultimate seconds of a recreation with the postseason on the road, no? Alas. It doesn’t even matter how properly Cousins performed on Sunday — that is the one play anybody goes to recollect.
Here’s what Cousins needed to say:
“Yeah, it was just a shell read there. I saw single-high (coverage) and tried to work Justin (Jefferson) and didn’t feel good about putting it up to Justin. And when I went to progress, I just felt like I was about to get sacked. I felt I had to put the ball in play. I couldn’t go down with a sack.
So I just kicked it out to T.J., and I had thrown short of the sticks on a few occasions in the game and going back a few weeks. I just felt like throwing short of the sticks isn’t the end of the world, and it was obviously tight coverage. But I felt like I was going to go down and take a sack and put it out.”
Understandable, I suppose, however you may’t dance round post-win shirtless in big chains after which take the protected possibility when it issues. Cousins has all the time had a fame for being too conservative by half (on and off the sector), and Sunday’s choice isn’t going to vary anybody’s thoughts.
Finally, we carry ourselves to the ultimate Sunday recreation, Ravens – Bengals. We all knew Lamar Jackson was on the bench for this one, which was the supply of some disappointingly low-key beef amongst former gamers. Still, even with out Jackson on the sector, Baltimore had an opportunity.
What the hell was John Harbaugh doing?
Head coach John Harbaugh was off to tough begin in Ravens – Bengals, having been a whole jackaass to sideline reporter Melissa Stark earlier than halftime:
Harbaugh’s unhealthy day continued, along with his workforce going into the huddle TWICE through the ultimate minute of the sport, trailing 24-17. Not solely that, Harbaugh left TWO time outs on the board till there have been solely 8 seconds remaining within the recreation. And then Harbaugh took a day trip with the clock already stopped. What within the title of all that’s holy…
Guess what occurred? THEY RAN OUT OF TIME. QB Tyler Huntley heaved one in direction of the heavens that Baltimore nearly got here down with. Imagine what they may have achieved in the event that they’d truly, oh, I don’t know, used a day trip to reset and name in a play? Have we not reached the purpose in American soccer the place youngsters spend years studying clock administration through Madden? Isn’t there anybody on Harbaugh’s workers below 40?
Anyway, right here’s what Harbaugh needed to say:
“We wanted to save the timeouts for the red zone. The thing that killed us was the holding penalty. That knocked us back. The idea was, we wanted to keep those timeouts to throw the ball. So, we tried to pop a run there, we were gonna call a timeout after that, and we would still have a run/pass option. We wanted to score without giving the ball back. We think we’re going to get in the red zone, we think it’s going to be a certain number of plays, and we’re going to work right down to the end of the game. Rather than score with 30, 35 seconds left, you give them a chance to go kick a field goal at the end.
“So, I think we played it right. Didn’t work out in the sense that after that, we had incomplete passes. If you complete the passes, you get the ball in the red zone, you call the timeouts. So, I think that at an elementary level, you can say, ‘Ah (expletive), they should have used the timeouts.’ But we had the timeouts worked right.”
In the long-lasting phrases of J. Peterman, that definitely is quite a lot of phrases. I don’t actually know what to say besides that nothing about that ultimate minute “worked right,” there’s no means Harbaugh goes to persuade anybody it did, and saving your timeouts for the crimson zone solely works in the event you can truly get to the crimson zone.
I can’t wait to see what tonight brings.