NFL games open thread

Submitted by DISCUSS Man on

Lions at 4pm

Washington at Miami at 1 on CBS.

 

Mr. Owl

September 13th, 2015 at 7:05 PM ^

Ok, I turned away from the Lions game in disgust (a common practice throughout my life) at the pick.  Then I come back and it's a TD to Ruddock?

What'd I miss?

Knight

September 13th, 2015 at 7:18 PM ^

went prevent defense, no blitzes so Stafford actually had time to throw without a defender in his grill.

EDIT: oh that pick- went to review and the ball hit the ground before Weddle secured it so it was an incomplete pass and Lions kept possesion.

Hotel Putingrad

September 13th, 2015 at 8:20 PM ^

are as historically unimpressive as the Tigers on the west coast. I refuse to panic. But if they lose next week, things do not bode well for a return trip to the playoffs. However, I am confused by our lack of productivity. I only caught snippets via RedZone, but why such little output from Tate and Megatron? I thought familiarity with the offense was supposed to breed efficiency?

Yeoman

September 13th, 2015 at 11:47 PM ^

They're going to talk about the decision to throw on third down and not run clock, but as far as I'm concerned the decision to kick the field goal was just as bad.

Even in the worst case scenario where you were absolutely certain you weren't going to score, it would be a choice between forcing them to:

-drive 99 yards for a game-tying field goal or game-winning TD, or

-drive 72 yards for a game-winning TD.

I don't think that's any worse than a wash, and that's not even considering the fact that (1) if you're thinking of it this way you definitely run clock on third down, so they would have had 30 fewer seconds for the drive, and (2) in the real world you have a chance of scoring on fourth down.

Yeoman

September 14th, 2015 at 12:14 AM ^

It doesn't matter whether you run on 4th--the clock stops for the change of possession either way.

But you have to run on 3rd, and you have to go for it on 4th. Some of these game-theory discussions are situation dependent, but not this one. You could take a knee twice and come out better than what they did (not that I'm suggesting that's a good idea, it just shows how bad the decision they made was).