Despite trailing by 16 with under six minutes to play, the Las Vegas Raiders made it a close game in the final run of last night’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. They came up short, and many point to one specific decision with 2:25 to play.
At Pittsburgh’s eight-yard line facing fourth and 4, Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels decided to attempt the field goal to make it a 23-18 game. They could have tied with a touchdown and a successful two-point conversion, but he passed up that chance.
“You’re gonna need another possession anyway”, he said after the game in explaining his reasoning, noting that anything they did on that particular drive couldn’t have ended the game in their favor with a win. “It’s not a lack of confidence. We went for it multiple times”.
Las Vegas was set to go for it on fourth and 1 earlier in the drive before a false start penalty pushed them back five yards. They settled for a field goal then, but a penalty on the attempt by Steelers defensive lineman DeMarvin Leal gave them the new set of downs. The first field goal attempt occurred with 3:15 to play.
“You have two choices there. You try to make it a five-point game where you have the opportunity to win it with a touchdown if you get the ball back”, McDaniels said, “or you try to go for it there and if you happen to convert then you’ve got to make the two-point conversion and all the rest of it”.
It is worth emphasizing the need to convert the two-pointer after getting the score. A two-point game still puts you down with minutes to spare or less if you don’t get it. They did successfully convert just minutes earlier.
“It doesn’t matter what the decision is if we don’t execute well. If you choose to kick it there and you’ve got to play defense, I have confidence in our defense”, McDaniels continued. “They’d been playing well, and I thought we had an opportunity to get the ball back there with maybe a couple minutes to go and have a shot to go there and win it with a touchdown”.
Although the Raiders gave up a field goal and a touchdown on their first two defensive drives of the second half, they then forced three consecutive punts. That includes the drive that followed their field goal, but the Steelers managed one first down that left them with 12 seconds on the clock when they finally did get the ball back.
“You can go either way with those”, McDaniels admitted. While he will be criticized for taking the arguably conservative approach and passing up an opportunity to tie the game when he had possession of the ball, one can reasonably debate the likely outcomes.
Of course, we live in the age of analytics, with everyone thinking they can put together all the variables and churn out a numerical fact. If those sorts of things interest you, ESPN’s “model” favored going for it on fourth and 4, according to Seth Walder. “A big error by McDaniels”.
