Going for Two

Submitted by Brother Mouzone on

Of course the second guessing will begin on a great effort. But with the momentum and the Spartans D reeling I am surprised that Coach didn't go for two.

Discuss

jmblue

October 3rd, 2009 at 4:28 PM ^

You have to kick the PAT. Consider the situation. In a driving rainstorm, do you really want to try to punch it in from the 3 (when you haven't run well all day) in a single try with the game in the balance, or do you want to just attempt a near-automatic kick to prolong the game?

Passing from the 3 is iffy in any case, much less when it's pouring rain. And running might not be the best proposition when your OL has been getting outplayed at the line all day. I would not have felt that confident going for it.

jmblue

October 3rd, 2009 at 5:28 PM ^

And you'd have to be prepared to defend the call if/when it fails. A majority of 2-point attempts fail, and most aren't called in terrible weather.

A PAT is such a short kick that kickers usually make it even when the hold is shaky. It's a near-given even in bad weather.

I would not have wanted to see a two-point play. MSU would have dialed up the pressure and I question whether our sieve-like OL could have given a tired Forcier time to find someone open in a crowded endzone.

befuggled

October 3rd, 2009 at 6:19 PM ^

At that point I couldn't see the game, but it seems to me it took at least two tries from inside the ten to get the ball in the end zone. A two point conversion is just one play (obviously). Considering the rain and recurring problems with the snap, I'd rather go into overtime.

Magnus

October 4th, 2009 at 10:45 AM ^

Nothing you have said is untrue.

At the same time, you can't legitimately argue that I'm wrong because we still lost the game. On the other hand, I can argue that you're wrong because of the result.

I know people say hindsight is 20/20 or that I would be arguing the opposite if they had gone for two and failed. But this is the internet and I have no way of proving what I thought yesterday, so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

jmblue

October 4th, 2009 at 10:39 AM ^

Common sense dictates that if the odds were significantly greater than that, you'd see coaches with athletic QBs going for it more often than they do. It's just not that easy of a place from which to score. Running it in against a goal line defense from the 3 is difficult, so teams usually pass. But that means throwing into a very crowded endzone, since there's not a lot of room for receivers to run.

sedieso

October 3rd, 2009 at 4:35 PM ^

Hindsight is 20/20. We don't turn the ball over in the redzone when Stonum fumbled and who knows what the outcome would have been. There are a lot of things that could have been done differently, should have been differently, but were not. The fact that we were still in a position to win at the end despite all the costly errors says a lot about our team, IMO.

Bando Calrissian

October 3rd, 2009 at 11:08 PM ^

I look at it this way:

-Your offense has been struggling all day. Finally it strings together two drives, you've got all the momentum in the world, why take the chance on your offense having to drive the ball from the 25 when they've been largely successful all day?

-Your defense has shown a chronic inability to tackle or cover receivers. Why put them in a position to have to stop somebody?

-The rain had just stopped

Really, there's a 50/50 chance you make the 2 point conversion. There's a 50/50 chance you lose in overtime. Why not just go for it? The entire final drive I was standing there weighing the entire scenario in my head. Going for 2, especially in that situation based on what had already happened the rest of the game, made infinitely more sense. I'd rather lose going for the win than lose after playing for overtime.

chitownblue2

October 4th, 2009 at 10:47 AM ^

You clearly don't understand probability. "50/50" isn't how it works - if it was, then the success rate would be....50%. It's not. It's 40%.

The possibility of two options does not make something 50/50. We are either going to all die today at 9:30 PM in a nuclear holocaust or we're not - that is not a 50/50 prospect.

MichTits

October 4th, 2009 at 1:03 AM ^

I don't think its a valid reason to say that they should not have gone for it under the justification that if we wouldn't have gotten it, people would have second guessed the call. Why doesn't anyone ever look at it from the other side and say "What if we would have got it?" Had we gone for it and gotten it, RR would look like a genious, and I for one would have respected the call whether we got it or not. 4 minutes before we scored, we were down by 14, and it took almost all we had to even tie the game. Tate was exhausted after the 91 yard drive, but I think he had the heart to get the ball into the end zone on one more play. We should have put the dagger into sparty while we were at the peak of our momentum, rather than waiting for everyone to realize the great comeback they had just made.

ChalmersE

October 4th, 2009 at 10:39 AM ^

A couple of folks earlier in this thread indicated that one reason NOT to have gone for two is that Forcier was tired. That's a bad argument: 1) right then, the MSU defense also had to be very tired. They'd basically been on the field for the last five minutes; and 2) if he was tired, wouldn't we have been better off, asking him to go one more play than play in the OT????

jmblue

October 4th, 2009 at 11:26 AM ^

But before the OT, Tate had a few minutes to stop and catch his breath. And in OT, you get a new set of downs with which to work, so if first down fails, you have more tries. (Again, note that it took three plays for us to score that final TD after we picked up first and goal.) In a two-point attempt, it's one chance to win or lose, and we had no timeouts to call if Tate didn't like what the defense had set up. I do not think it was the percentage move.

Blue_n_Aww

October 4th, 2009 at 11:01 AM ^

Guys, just think about this statistically *puts in pocket protector. Estimate the chances that we make the two point conversion (and despite what the B10 announcers said, the driving rain is not an advantage). I'd say somewhere south of 50% and north of 40%.

Now, given how our coaches have adjusted to MSU's attack and how our offense was rolling, don't you think we have an edge in overtime? My guess is that we do.