9/14/2008
Going for Two
Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan has already been widely praised in the postgame writeups for his “gutsy decision” to go for the two-point conversion after the Broncos scored a touchdown to pull to 37-38 with only 24 seconds left in Sunday’s game against the Chargers.
This was not a gutsy decision. This was an obvious decision, especially for a coach of Shanahan’s tenure who has plenty of job security and doesn’t need to worry about everyone in the world second-guessing him to the team’s owner the Monday after the move doesn’t work.
You might argue that, especially on their home turf, the Broncos ought to play for overtime, but that argument falls flat when looking at the current state of the game. Just like last week, the Chargers started off with a very limp effort, but this time they turned it on at halftime instead of waiting until midway through the second half–they had scored 21 straight points, capped with a nifty two-point conversion of their own, and the defense had pitched a shutout until the Denver TD. If this game had gone to OT, it wouldn’t have been the 50-50 or close to it affair that most overtime action tends to be.
Sure, you lose the game if you miss the conversion, but according to the stats I can find on the subject with a couple minutes of googling, the two-point try is trending towards a 50% success rate in the NFL. I’ll totally take that over playing for a tie and having to run my team out against a superior team in overtime, and Shanahan made the right call.
Not that it should have gotten to this point… I’ll also take awful work from the broadcast booth over awful work from the referees anyday. Denver was gifted a turnover when an “equipment failure” kept NFL Ref Strongest Man Ed Hochuli from seeing that Chris Chambers was down before being stripped, which everyone with a TV tuned to CBS saw multiple times while he was trying to work that out. In the fourth quarter, the Broncos got another present when Jay Cutler’s fumble was improperly whistled dead by Hochuli before the Chargers recovered. Not a good day at the office for the zebras, unless you’re a Bronco fan.
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and, once again, the Chargers let Shottenheimer go because . . . . . .?
Comment by Uncle Jack — 9/16/2008 @ 8:44 am
because he couldn’t win a playoff game, because it was a.j. smith or marty and a.j. was providing the talent is would be way harder to replace than marty. I mean, we put in norv and he took us to the AFC championship game. Marty went for it on 4th and 11 against the pats. That being said, I was so pissed when marty was fired but whatever. For your convenience below is cross-posted from the chargers blog boltsfromtheblue
Comment by Patrick — 9/16/2008 @ 11:48 am
Rationalization is a peculiar beast. It is one of about a dozen or so immature defense mechanisms used by psychologists to decribe what humans do to avoid confronting the emotional pain that lies within. In this case, we essentially we state Fact A that only has a tangential relationship to what we are really talking about, and feel placated that Fact A was beyond our control. Case in point. We lost the game. Fact A = we lost because we played poor defense. While true, it is also proper to stand up and say we got robbed. It’s ok to be angry. And I will happily project(another immature defense mechanism) the anger I have to the Broncos.
Now, is it just me or does anyone else not want to hear a donkey’s fan talk about how our defense didn’t play well anyway? If you wanna gloat and rub it in our faces then gloat and rub it in our faces. But spare me the “it’s ok” rationalization because, guess what, it’s not ok. My Hoculi Hatred(TM) has now turned toward the broncos.
It’s gonna hurt. It’s gotta hurt. And it will be talked about.
Why is it in football it’s considered uncooth to talk about how the game was robbed from us or to talk about how they played dirty? I’ll get over it by sunday, but the game was robbed if not by anything else then by sheer incompetence, ours and the officials’. And the broncos always play dirty. I was just surprised the chop block was flagged this time.
Next time I will rationalize the summersalts I do over the grave that is the donkey’s 2008 season by saying I am just getting my daily workout in. See how rationalization works? Isn’t this fun?
Comment by Patrick — 9/16/2008 @ 11:50 am
Let’s not get too worked up yet. I’d take the Chargers’ play in their first two games of 2008 over their play in the first two games of 2007 despite one less win to show for it, and 2007 ended up working out OK.
However, I think we can all agree that the Broncos O-line has, in recent history, been a pack of bitches. Right, Igor?
Comment by Dave — 9/16/2008 @ 4:52 pm
if you weren’t pissed about last week you weren’t paying attention. I’m sure dave thinks we would have won those games if only we had tim dwight back.
Comment by Patrick — 9/18/2008 @ 11:12 am