Bad NFL coaching: Spot challenges and stupid blitzes

In Week 13, the NFL gave us some truly horrific coaching, but former New York Jets Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams wins the day.

Think of how much wishful thinking and foolhardy self-confidence it takes for a coach to challenge the spot of the football in a short-yardage situation.

Officials spot the ball by pretending to perform complex navigational trigonometry in their heads; triangulating the exact GPS coordinates of a ballcarrier’s knees, hands and torso from about 100 feet away as he disappears into a pile of giant humans.

This before trudging up to said pile at least one second after the play has been whistled dead and everyone has had time to jostle in both directions; placing the ball about one foot forward or back from where it was located when the official arrived so he or she can give the appearance of doing something precise and scientific; then gesturing authoritatively so it looks like the exact location of the football was received from the Almighty himself in a prophetic vision.

The last thing anyone doing something so comically imprecise yet critically important wants is for the demand of a review of their procedure to make sure they did it right. It’s like asking someone to reconsider their favorite ice cream flavor, with the whole world watching and millions of dollars riding on whether they select rum raisin or mint chip.

Mike Vrabel challenged the spot when Derrick Henry was ruled short of a first down on a 4th-and-1 carry early in the wild 41-35 Tennessee Titans loss to the Cleveland Browns in Week 13. To Vrabel’s credit, it sure looked like Henry dove well past the first down marker on the play.

But close examination of the replay revealed that Henry’s body was not fully extended when his knee struck the ground, so his subsequent dive didn’t really matter, and the ball was spotted correctly. More or less. Give or take.

Of course, frame-by-frame analysis of a football play can be used to justify lots of rulings — every NFL game could consist of 98 holding penalties, for example — but that’s the point. Officials might find something that they overlooked when reviewing a disputed catch or touchdown. But when reviewing a spot, they come face-to-face with a reminder that they are forced to make arbitrary decisions that are accurate down to the nanometer.

You’d better believe that they will find “insufficient evidence to overturn;” it’s either that or suffer an existential crisis about their self worth and the very nature or empirical knowledge.

Vrabel’s failed challenge got the snowball rolling on what was a Browns rout until things got weird in the final few minutes. One minor poor decision by no means cost the Titans the game, but minor poor decisions are beginning to pile up for a head coach who is often framed as a lovable tough guy who never makes a mistake.

WildSplat

Take, for example, a dumb call by Vrabel’s offensive coordinator Arthur Smith which had more impact on Sunday’s final score than that failed challenge.

The Titans cut the Browns lead to 38-20 midway through the third quarter and drove deep into Browns territory, converting on 4th-and-12 on a defensive penalty to keep their drive alive. On first down, Ryan Tannehill … split wide? So tiny return man Cameron Batson could take a Wildcat snap in the backfield? What the actual deuce?

C’mon Coach is fine with Henry taking Wildcat snaps near the goal line, because he is Henry and it’s the goal line. There’s no reason in the galaxy to give Batson a direct snap on the fringe of the red zone, especially when it looked like Batson was merely going to hand off to Henry the way Tannehill would, anyway.

But Batson fumbled the snap, resulting in a five-yard loss which threw the Titans offense out of whack. Tannehill threw an interception a few plays later to kill the drive and end the Titans rally.

The Titans are built to win games by keeping things simple. Vrabel and Smith need to remember this as the playoff race heats up.

Mister Gase’s Holiday

Did the New York Jets give up Henry Ruggs’ game-winning last-second touchdown on purpose so that their 31-28 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders kept them in position to secure the top pick in the 2021 draft? C’mon Coach launches a full investigation:.

• First, NFL teams do not lose on purpose or “tank.” Tanking is a theory espoused on Twitter by the sorts of guys who claimed to have a girlfriend in Canada when they were in high school: it’s a lazy excuse for forgiving losses and justifying reduced expectations in the name of some gargantuan-brained long con.
• That said, if any coach was likely to embrace losing on purpose, it would be Adam Gase.
• Furthermore, if Gase were to try to lose on purpose, it stands to reason that the Jets would score 28 points and lead late in the fourth quarter. Gase is such a screwup that if he tried to crash his car into a brick wall he would morph into Dominic Torretto. If Gase tried to live his life as a confirmed bachelor, he’d end up Henry VIII. You get the idea.
• Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams’ favorite strategy is to align his deep safety about 75 yards behind the line of scrimmage on routine plays. Therefore, it’s indeed suspicious that Marcus Maye was not assigned to guard Exit 15X of the New Jersey Turnpike with 13 seconds left and the Raiders stuck at midfield, down by four and out of timeouts.
• On the other hand, Williams’ second-favorite strategy is to call an all-out blitz at the worst possible moment. Rushing seven defenders when the situation calls for a pure prevent defense certainly falls into this category.
• The theory that the Jets allowed the Raiders to score on purpose is predicated on: a) defender Lamar “No, Not That One” Jackson convincingly getting faked out by a double move and beaten (unless he’s PART OF THE CONSPIRACY); b) Derek Carr completing a bomb, which is not his strong suit; and c) the rookie Ruggs coming up big in a critical situation. Furthermore, the Jets could have coughed up a touchdown more easily on the previous series, when the Raiders reached the Jets 19-yard line and no one would have blinked at a fourth down coverage lapse. So there’s a lot of needless complexity to the plan, which is usually a sign that we are talking about a wingnut theory or fever dream, not reality.
• However, it must be noted that everything Gase touches ends up looking more like a wingnut theory or fever dream than reality.

Williams was fired on Monday, not so much because of that game-losing play call but because that game-losing play call gave Gase the opportunity to extend his own career a few weeks by getting rid of the one qualified interim replacement on his staff.

And as Michael Silver reported on Monday, Williams’ Cover-0 play call was so unexpectedly terrible that it surprised Gase, though the Raiders themselves were ready for it (which really says something about Gase’s self scouting and quality control).

Williams may not be all that unhappy with the dismissal, as it allows him to detach himself from the Gase mess a few weeks early and try to attach himself to the next offense-oriented head coaching candidate who wants to bundle up with a well-known (if not exactly successful) defensive lieutenant.

So was Williams just trying to get fired? Now, that’s a conspiracy theory which might have some legs.

Fake Field Goal Fail

One of the most delightfully drippy trick plays of Week 13 backfired when Matt Haack’s playground-formation touchdown run on a fake field goal was nullified because two Miami Dolphins linemen failed to report as eligible receivers on the play.

The Dolphins succeeded on a similar play against the Philadelphia Eagles last year, in part because everyone lined up legally, and also because the Eagles (like the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday) refused to call a timeout in a situation which clearly warranted one.

Seriously, the opposing field goal unit is lined up like they are about to execute one of those rugby plays where one dude climbs on another dude’s shoulders: isn’t it worth a timeout to go over everyone’s assignments (and probably convince the opponent to bail on the play)? No no no, timeouts are too precious to be wasted upon, um, unanticipated goal line plays with a high degree of risk.

Anyway, yes, it’s the players’ job to report as eligible, not the job of Brian Flores or special teams coach Danny Crossman. But it’s Flores’ and Crossman’s jobs to make sure a trick play like that is installed beyond any margin for error. That includes making sure that every inexperienced backup chonkster who lines up as an eligible receiver is reminded to report to the officials.

Details like that are what separate good coaches from great ones. Flores looks like the former. He still has a lot to prove if he wants to join the ranks of the latter.

Surrender Triplets

C’mon Coach wraps Week 13 with three coaches, three teams and four misadventures in punting.

Pete Carroll ordered two ill-advised punts in Sunday’s 17-12 loss to the New York Giants. The first came early in the second quarter when the Seahawks faced 4th-and-6 at the Giants 37-yard line. Kicker Jason Myers is 16-of-16 on field goals this year and has hit a pair of 50-plus yarders, but Carroll opted for a delay-of-game penalty, followed by a punt.

Early in the fourth quarter, Carroll ordered a punt on 4th-and-2 from the Seahawks 40-yard line. That may not be unquestioned “go for it” territory, but think of the situation. The Seahawks were winning 5-0 (yes, 5-0). Russell Wilson is Russell Wilson. They were facing a terrible opponent with Colt McCoy at quarterback. Carroll should have been dictating terms to the Giants all afternoon.

Instead, he played it safe. Sure enough, one mistake on the next Giants possession — a 60-yard Wayne Gallman scamper against a defense that looked like it was running through quicksand — changed the complexion of the game and turned what looked like an easy win into a stunning upset.

Doug Pederson replaced Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz with Jalen Hurts in the third quarter of Sunday’s 30-16 loss to the Green Bay Packers, a move which was somehow both premature and long overdue and deserves it’s own 25,000-word oral history. The short version: Hurts threw a touchdown pass, Jalen Reagor returned a punt for a touchdown, and the Eagles pulled to within a touchdown late in the fourth quarter,

Pederson, however, did not seem to notice. He ordered a punt from the Eagles 38-yard line with 3:03 to play and hoped that his defense would stop one of the best offenses in the league, led by a Hall of Fame quarterback. One 77-yard Aaron Jones touchdown run later, Hurts’ debut was spoiled.

C’mon, Coach: once you pull the veteran for the rookie, it’s YOLO time, not “let’s punt and hope for the best” time.

Finally, we come to Vic Fangio and the Denver Broncos, trailing the Kansas City Chiefs by just three points on Sunday night, facing 4th-and-3 just shy of midfield with 6:13 to play, and punting the ball back to PATRICK FREAKIN’ MAHOMES and asking his defense to deliver yet another stop.

In a way, Fangio’s defense came through, holding the Chiefs to a field goal and getting the ball back with 1:04 to play. But any strategy with a peak outcome of “maybe Drew Lock can lead a 75-yard touchdown drive in 64 seconds with zero timeouts” is an inherently ridiculous strategy.