What’s the story on Haskins? Maybe getting bounced out of Washington will help him to mature.
Haskins was a whiff too.
I never thought Haskins was pro material. OTOH, I actually do believe that Justin Fields is a capable pro-QB, but all young QBs need to be on a team that can provide guidance. The idea that young QBs can just figure it out in this league is nonsense.
Look at Sam Darnold. He’s clearly a talented QB but you wouldn’t have known that if he’d had another 3-year stint with the Jets. Now that he’s with Joe Brady’s Carolina Panthers, he’s finally becoming what he was capable of.
Justin Fields can win games but he’s only going to be as good as the Bears coaching and organization allow him to be.
Well, that first half went better than I had thought. The O line has been OK. I’m not seeing anything super-impressive despite the announcers’ fascination, but they’re getting the job done. The defensive has been amazingly better than the first two games, making some good stops in the run game and getting at least a modicum of a pass rush. And Rodgers and Adam’s are doing Rodgers and Adam’s things.
Way too many penalties by both teams, and, as usual, way too many DPI calls. Huge missed intentional grounding gave the Niners a TD. Both teams and the refs need to clean things up. Onto the second half.
Well the refs certainly haven’t cleaned up their act. They’re awful.
ETA: really, really awful.
Well that was … something.
Refs really swallowed the whistle on that last drive. The 49ers really should have run that clock down before they scored, you know exactly what’s gonna happen when you give the golden boy the ball in Primetime. Teams are too terrified to risk not scoring to take a knee on the goal line when that’s absolutely the better odds to win the game. This I think will be the next evolution to coaching strategy after going for it on 4th down more.
Stole this fun stat from reddit:
David Montgomery had more yards than the entire Bears Offense - including himself.
They netted 47 yards on 42 plays, which is… not good. One net passing yard.
I did get to see the game, and it was a fun one! Stafford and the Rams beat the Bucs pretty convincingly. They look like the real deal. Nice to see Stafford having some success after 12 seasons of purgatory with the Lions. I think the Rams will be the team I adopt once the Lions drop out of any hope of playoff contention, which after only 3 games already looks like the case. I’m goin Hollywood!
You can’t run the clock out when you need a touchdown.
Yes you can, that’s sort of the point.
They were sorta trying to run down the clock in the last to minutes, by not rushing up to the line. But they still scored with 37 seconds left, and that was enough for Rodgers. I don’t think there is any coach that would have his team NOT score a TD given the chance, just to eat up more clock, even if that might be the best strategy.
I agree, very rarely do you see it. Every once in a blue moon you’ll see a runner take a knee at the 1 foot line if there’s a long pass or something and then they run it in on the next series. Conversely you’ll sometimes see a defense let a team score when a TD is inevitable to give themselves the max time to come back and retake the lead.
The game has changed and with passing offenses being so good (on some teams sigh) and with officiating being such a detriment to the defense, especially on late-game action, it’s probably a way safer bet that your offense can give away a sure TD on 1st or 2nd down and pick it up later on a 3rd or 4th down. Between Mahomes, Rodgers, Brady and others and the legs of Justin Tucker and Mason Crosby, your defense preventing the offence from gaining 45 yards in 60 seconds seems like a losing situation for almost everyone.
What would be the optimal strategy, I wonder. Suppose you’re down by 4 points, it’s first-and-goal at the 1, and 1:30 left on the clock. If you score a touchdown on the next play, you give the other team more than a minute to score a touchdown of their own. You could run two kneel-downs and burn time off the clock, but that makes it third down and you’ve only got two chances to score now.
Which do you want, ahead by 3 and kicking off with 1:30 left; or down by 4, third-and-goal, 20 seconds left?
There’s no guarantee that you can score a touchdown on the next play or set of downs. Say Juszczyk goes down at the one instead of into the end zone. Can you really assume a TD before the next 37 seconds are up?
It’s one thing to move down the field to use up clock on your way instead of throwing a bomb. But once you get down there, stopping sort of scoring when you’re down by more than 3 points is a bad bad bad idea.
The Packers had 42 yards of offense in the last 37 seconds to get into field goal range. Chicago had 47 net yards for the whole game.
Who’s under center for the other team? Rodgers, Brady, Mahomes, or Wilson? I’m giving them as little time as possible, even if it means risking I don’t score at all.
Right. In the Chiefs-Chargers game yesterday, LA had 1st and goal at the 1 after a pass interference call. A penalty pushed them back 5 yards, and suddenly it’s not such a gimme. A couple failed attempts later, they had to settle for a tying field goal instead of going up by 4 with two minutes to play.
That’s true. But if you do score, there’s no guarantee that the other team won’t get a touchdown of their own in the time remaining. Neither strategy is a sure thing; the question is, which gives you the best chance of winning.
And, there may be an element of “which strategy has a more disastrous downside if it goes wrong?”
The 49ers left too much time on the clock (though, to be fair, with only 34 seconds left, and with no timeouts remaining for the Packers, they did a pretty good job of running it down), and they’re getting second-guessed for that today.
But, if they had tried to stay out of the end zone until the final play, and then failed at scoring a touchdown on that play, that’s the sort of thing which probably would have led to an even bigger uproar among the fans, and is the kind of decision that can cost a coach his job.
I’m reminded of how Ahmad Bradshaw scored the go-ahead touchdown against the Patriots in Super Bowl 46 even though you could tell he was second-guessing himself for a split second. He sort of flopped willy-nilly into the end zone.
Giants were trailing 17-15 up to that point and the talk of the moment was that they should kneel the clock all the way down then kick a game-winning field goal (would have only been a 21-yard attempt or so.)
The Giants did win eventually, 21-17. But had they lost, Bradshaw would have gotten severe criticism.
Apropos of this discussion, the wonks over at NFL.com had this to say:
"FOURTH QUARTER: With 0:36 remaining and the Chargers (tied 24-24) facing a first-and-goal from the Chiefs’ 4-yard line, Los Angeles’ Justin Herbert finds Mike Williams in the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.
Scoring a touchdown is rarely suboptimal, but this was one of those moments. Let’s break down the numbers:
Assuming the Chargers would have been able to run the clock down to the final seconds to set up a 22-yard game-winning field goal, the odds of Los Angeles winning were the odds of making the field goal: 98 percent. When the Chargers scored a touchdown, the team’s chance of winning was only 96 percent. As mentioned above, it is not wise to give Mahomes the ball with the opportunity to win the game with a score, let alone when he has one timeout still to work with. While these numbers are at the margins, and the Chargers ended up winning, the outcome could have played out differently, such that taking a few kneeldowns and setting up a high-probability field-goal try was the better choice."
Sure it’s all based on their “win probability stats”, which are nice and all, but cannot possibly incorporate all the factors that should go into the decision. And a 2% drop in win probability should be well within the margin for error to make said analysis suspect. But it is interesting.