It was easily the right decision. Fourth and less than 1 QB sneaks in the NFL succeed at a very high rate even when you don’t have a human-moose hybrid as your QB. Let’s say that succeeds 80% of the time, and then let’s say since they were inside the 5 yard line, let’s say that they score 80% of the time that they convert. I would guess these numbers are conservative and would put it closer to 90%, but let’s say .8 * .8 = .64% of the time they win the game right there. Overtime is much closer to 50/50. You can adjust those numbers a little bit if the situation favors you, like you’re the better offense and their defense is gassed, but most of the time teams go to overtime is because they’re very evenly matched that day and who gets the ball next is random so it makes sense that it’s probably near 50%.
People in general but it seems especially football fans are very results oriented. If a decision works out, then obviously it was the right call. If it doesn’t, then the coach is obviously an idiot! But that doesn’t make sense. The outcome is going to be probabilistic due to very slight differences in the situation. If you run that 4th and 1 decision a thousand times with slightly different unpredictable conditions, you’re going to get something like 83% successes and 17% failures. Rolling the dice and getting that 17% doesn’t make it a bad decision any more than betting even money that you’ll roll a die and win if you get any number 2-6 and then rolling a 1. It was still a great bet, you just happened to lose.
There’s also the issue of diffusion of blame, or being unable to declare a clear failure point. If the Bills go for it on 4th and one and fail, you have an easy point where they lost it to point to, a single decision and a single lack of execution. If they kick the field goal, go to overtime, Tennessee wins the coin toss and then over 7 plays goes down and scores the TD, you don’t have an easy single point of blame. Was it the decision to go for overtime that lost you the game? Was it losing the coin toss? Was it the bad tackle on play 3, or the dropped interception on play 5 that cost you the game? Now you don’t have a single decision you can point to and say “the coach is an idiot! he lost us the game!” So even though the coach made the decision (kicking the FG) that gave you a lower chance to win, it diffuses and deflects the criticism away from his playcalling decisions.
That’s why NFL coaches are almost always too passive and usually make the wrong decision in these situations. Because the fans are too results-oriented and can’t understand the decision-making process, and look for that single point of blame. And so NFL coaches try to avoid that single point of blame by diffusing the loss over a bunch of sub-optimal decisions rather than take the single correct decision that leaves a clear point of blame.
To say the Bills made the wrong decision there is not just to say “well they lost, and I can find the decision they made that most directly lead to the loss, so it’s a bad decision”, you have to show that the outcome of the decision was less likely to secure a win than the alternative. And I think you’d have a hard time making the case that the Bills win overtime more often than they convert a 4th and less than 1 and then score from within the 5 yard lane.