After the Rams lost to the Bengals on Monday night, coach Sean McVay was not questioned about an important choice to punt the ball with 6:09 remaining. McVay was questioned about this situation during his press conference on Wednesday in the middle of the week.
Here’s a review. It was the fourth down, and the Rams needed to increase five yards to keep the ball. If the Rams had converted, they would have kept possession and would have had an opportunity to score a touchdown or a field goal. Then, they’d have had enough time to prevent the Bengals, get the ball back, and score again.
However, when they chose to punt instead, it meant that the Rams had to quickly push the Bengals to have only three aggressive plays, then mount a successful drive to score points, and carry out a successful onside kick to regain possession of the ball.
Depending on the hope of recovering an onside kick isn’t a well-thought-out strategy; it’s more like a hopeless move, similar to seeing a Hail Mary pass in football.
The Rams had the ball with 6 minutes and 9 seconds remaining in the game, facing a fourth down and needing just five yards, not a more challenging fourth and 15. They should have chosen a different strategy that didn’t require them to successfully recover an onside kick just to have a chance to take the game to overtime.
However, here’s what McVay reported when asked by reporters whether he considered going for it on fourth and five with 6:09 to play.
“I did,” he said. “Thought about it, just didn’t feel like it was the right thing. There were some struggles that we had on third down and so had confidence in our defense at that point, and so that was kind of the thought process there.”
Furthermore, he should have believed in their capability to successfully regain possession through an onside kick, even though the Rams hadn’t achieved this feat in the past 11 years.
McVay also stated that the thought process in that situation is “a combination of some of the analytics, and sometimes I think a big part of it is the feel for the flow of the game.”
“A lot of it is, OK, what’s the inventory that you would have?” he said. “Where are you at in regards to who’s available? What’s your injury situation? So, there are certain models and metrics that I believe in, but I also think there’s a feel for the flow of the game, and then there are 22 moving parts. That’s a huge factor to me.”
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These explanations are sensible when, for instance, only one stop and one score are required to either equalize the game or secure a victory.
In this particular situation, McVay had to rely on an offense he did not have much confidence in to gain just five yards and move the ball beneficially enough to score twice. Also, the special teams had to successfully regain an onside kick for the plan to work.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford was asked a different question about whether he has any say or input in those important instances and if he wishes he had more say in them.
“Yeah, at the moment, with a 40-second play clock, it’s tough,” Stafford said. “I wish the mic was two-way, but it’s only one way. Sometimes I wish I could say something back. . . . But no, in the heat of the moment, I leave it up to those guys. I trust those guys. Sean does a great job a lot of times on some of those third and longs or whatever it is in certain parts of the field, in certain situations in the game where he’s like, ‘Hey, we might have two downs here.’
And so that kind of helps train my process as far as, OK, if the underneath guy is open and we can get this thing to fourth and whatever we think is manageable at that point, I’m aggressive to that. So I leave it up to those guys, and then I just try to play accordingly.”
For the Rams, the necessary element needed for the plan to punt the ball successfully was the recovery of an onside kick. This justifies that notwithstanding what the analytics or McVay’s instinct suggested, the best decision was to aim to obtain those five yards on fourth down – even if it resulted in a final score of 22-9 or 26-9, which might not have looked as respectable as 19-16.
And to be honest, it’s difficult not to believe that part of his inspiration was influenced by the simple fact that a score of 19-16 appeared much better than 22-9 or 26-9.
