The absolute worst football play call I have EVER seen

The BBQ Pit
1

OK, I don’t care about either of the two teams here, but flipping through the channels today I cam across the Kansas State at Marshall contest late in the 4th quarter. From what was said during the last couple of minutes that I watched, I gathered the following:

This is the biggest “name” opponent that Marshall has ever played (Didn’t they just go Division I-A a few years back?).
The game is at Marshall in front of the biggest crowd in Marshall history.
Marshall has turned the ball over 4 times, a couple of times on the goal line to make what should have been an easy Marshall victory a close game.

So, now that the stage is set, here’s the situation when I turned the game on. There is about a minute left in the game, and KS is up 21-19. They have the ball and are comfortably hitting the line from within the Marshall 10 yard line trying to squeeze as many seconds off the clock before kicking the field goal and putting Marshall in a must score a TD situation. 1st and Goal: Harmless run into the line. Marshall takes their 2nd time out. 2nd and goal: KS runs a sweep and the KS runner foolishly ambles out of bounds, stopping the clock and allowing Marshall to hold on to their last TO. 3rd and Goal: KS tries a screen pass (from the shotgun IIRC), which is I think a dumb call, but no harm no foul…until the receiver fumbles and Marshall recovers the ball on about their own 20 with about 50 seconds left!

The crowd goes NUTS! Cheering, screaming, yelling, I swear I could hear them here in Baltimore if I stuck my head out the window. The Marshall offense trots onto the field with redemption in their sights and jubilation in their hearts.

1st down: Short pass over them middle, gain of 3. Marshall wastes about, no lie, 15 seconds before they can get the next play off, the crowd is apoplectic. 2nd down: Incomplete pass. 3rd down: incomplete pass. 4th down and the hearts of every Marshall fan and alum are in their throats. The QB fades back, cocks his arm, lets the ball go over the middle of the field…and it’s caught for a first down at midfield! Unlike just a few seconds ago, Marshall hustles up to the line of scrimmage and manages to spike the ball with only 2 seconds going off the clock. (The clock stops on a first down in college ball until the ball is set by the Ref. The ref signaled the clock into motion at 16 seconds left, the ball was spiked at 14.)

Next play, 2nd down. 14 seconds left in the game, the ball is at midfield. Marshall is down by 2. The Marshall QB drops back and…hits his receiver on an out pattern as KS brings the blitzs and the defenders drop into man coverage! He’s knocked out of bounds at about the 12 yard line, first and ten for The Thundering Herd in easy field goal range with the clock stopped at 8 seconds!
PAN-DE-MONIUM!!!

Whoa Nellie what a comeback! This is fantastic, exciting, everything that’s great about college football. I don’t even care about either of these teams, and I’m yelling “YES!” and pumping my fist in the air!

So the Marshall field goal unit jogs onto the field, waits patiently while KS tries to “ice” the kicker, then boots the ball through the uprights, giving Marshall a 22-21 lead. KS’s predictable attempt to lateral the ensuing kickoff a la’ Cal fails, and the Marshall fans storm the field at Joan C. Edwards Stadium, tearing down the goalposts in a raucous celebration that lasts far into the West Virginia night. Man! What a comeback! What a game!

Except the events in the last paragraph never happened. Holding a TO in their pocket, Marshall lines up to run a play with 8 seconds left. A little risky, sure, but not unusual. A run towards the center of the field will give the FG unit a better angle on the kick, and run about 5-6 seconds off the clock, ensuring that the FG attempt is the last play of the game, giving Kansas State no chance for a run back on the ensuing kickoff. This make sense, I can understand this.

Until the world goes mad.

Unbelievably, the Marshall QB fades back in the pocket to throw a pass!!! Under pressure, he lets loose a wild toss that is tipped by a KS rusher. The ball wobbles down field and…you guessed it…lands in the hands of a KS defender. Game over. My son can confirm that I, who remember has no rooting interest in either team, actually jumped to my feet and screamed “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING???” at the TV when the Marshall QB went back to pass. I think that is still a relevant question tonight, long after the heat of the game has passed. Marshall coach Mark Snyder,
WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING???

That was, without any shadow of a doubt, the worst play I have ever seen called on a football field.

2

The screen pass was dumb enough, but that final play: complete idiocy. That coach won’t be struttin’ around campus this week, that’s for sure. Although they should make him walk the campus with a dunce hat an hour a day for the entire week.

3

Wow.

I watch two football games a year: the Super Bowl, and whichever Lake City Stars game I happen to be in town for. Even I know better than to throw a fucking pass in that situation. I mean…shit. You can figure that much out from playing one game of Madden. Or Tecmo Bowl. Or hockey.

Normally I’m not too keen on the practice of getting rid of coaches/managers over one bad game. In this case, though, I do believe I’d make an exception.

4

I’m a lions fan, so I guess it’s a case of been there, done that.

Couple of seasons ago and at the tail end of a very close game, the Lions score a touchdown leaving them 1 point behind with a handful of seconds left in the game. They could go for the easy extra point and go into overtime or they could go for the very risky two point conversion and the win.

They went for the conversion…and blew it. :eek: :smack: :mad:

5

I’m not defending the call, but they were not in “easy field goal range.” IIRC, it was the 22, not the 12, making it a 39 yard FG. My immediate thought was that their kicker must suck.

6

If it was late in the season and the Lions were out of the playoffs, I support that decision. Fuck overtime. Try to win it in regulation.

7

Now about the OP. I saw the tail end of that game, and agree completely. It will go down in infamy as a completely stupid call. You have the game won. You kick the mofo fieldgoal and it’s over. Even if the pass was completed, it would have just given the FG kicker a horrible angle from the hatch marks so there was no benefit to passing even if it worked. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The announcer said the coach would be “second guessing” himself. That’s not accurate. There’s no guessing involved. He knows, flat out, that he made an extremely stupid decision. He’ll be lucky to survive the week.

8

How long would the fieldgoal have been?

9

It was from the 21 yard line. I always forget how much you add for the length of the kick, but it would have been a high percentage kick, and, like I said, moving up a few yards without centering the ball wouldn’t have really made it easier on the kicker.

10

I didn’t see the game but could it be that their place kicker is really crappy and had been missing all day? It sure does sound like a bonehead call. For some reason stuff like that makes me nuts too.

11

sob

I hate football, but Marshall’s my alma mater, and I bleed green (I was there when they won the MAC championship, it’s one of the few schools I know of where the band and the football team get along - we band members loved our team, and they complimented us on our performances constantly. I think we were also one of the few bands who got the other teams’ cheerleaders so pissed off at us that they were permanently moved to the other side of the field - maybe that’s why the team liked us so much. But really, what kind of idiot plans for the opposing cheerleaders to be put right in front of the home team’s band? That’s just stupid.).

This makes me miss Pruett. Big-time. I’m guessing the Marshall fans will begin calling for Snyder’s head after this screw-up. I may not know much about football, but I know how my fellow Herd will react.

E.

12

I remember years ago I had a bit of an obsession with reading books about Indiana basketball. I recall one story of the NCAA tournament and a coach who, while trailing by one point at the last time out, forget to tell his players to foul as soon as the clock started again. He was sacked the next day.

13

Rule of thumb for yardage on a field goal is spot of the ball + 17 yards. 10 yards to account for the distance from the goal line to the field goal uprights, and the holder generally lines up 7 yards behind the ball.

So the ball on the 21-yard line works out to a 38-yard field goal. Not an automatic, but it should be within range of any decent D-I kicker.

14

IIRC, it wasn’t. Early to midseason. As for the Lions being out of the playoffs, that right there is a constant.

15

I don’t think it was a dumb call. There’s a difference between a dumb call and a reasonable call that just didn’t wind up producing the desired results. A dumb call would be, say, a running play on third-and-30.

To (partially) answer your question, hajario, Marshall’s kicker had made 2 of 3 attempts in the game, including a 44-yarder. And he’s a junior, so it’s not like he just fell off the turnip truck.

16

I’m confused. Doesn’t the QB call the play? Or does he ask the coach what to do? Doesn’t the QB have say-so in what play to run? Can he not argue with the coach?

17

The QB sometimes calls the play, but usually in a no-huddle, “hurry up” style offense. This was definitely the coach. A QB calling that play would be even dumber than a coach calling the play. Any college QB would definitely check with the coach before literally throwing the game up in the air.

18

One of the dumbest plays I’ve ever seen was Tennessee v. Notre Dame last year. I love my Vols, but our O-coordinator frustrates the hell out of me sometimes. Like, for instance, right before halftime against Notre Dame.
I don’t remember the score, but we were up on ND going into the half. All we had to do was take a knee or a short run up the middle and jog to the locker room with the lead.

For those of you unacquainted with Vol-ball, running it up the middle is about all we do. With the exception of the occasional screen pass, it’s all we do. Except for when there’s a couple of seconds on the clock at the end of the first half with a freshman quarterback who for once in his miserable life was having a decent game. But no.

Good ol’ Randy Sanders, offensive coordinator extraordinaire, decides to THROW the ball. We were not across midfield, there were only a few seconds left, we had the damn lead. Thus, our sparkling freshman quarterback gets sacked and separates his shoulder and we bring in Rick Clausen. I like Rick, he’s a good guy and a decent quarterback. But he threw the INT that cost us that game.

Sigh. Dumb play. Dumb call. Coaches just suck sometimes.

19

Strangest call, in 1998 my alum Nebraska played Cal in Berkeley. We were favored by 20 points before the game.

We were winning in the 4th quarter 21-3, so the game is pretty well in hand. Then with 19 seconds left, we’re on the Cal 24, and do we run out the clock or run our 4th-string I-back try a draw play?

WE KICK A FIELD GOAL to make it 24-3; which made the margin from 18 to 21 points with 19 seconds left!!! Beats the spread.

Now, I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist (point shaving, fixing, etc), but that decision really made me think about it.