/blog-gone

Dr. Z of CNNSI makes his case that overly cautious coaches won't win the big game. On this past week's games:

We saw this coaching mentality at work twice in the last two weeks. It's not often we get to see a coach have the chance to profit from a compatriot's awful mistake, but that's what happened. San Diego's Marty Schottenheimer blew the wild-card game to the Jets because he refused to take a chance and move his field goal kicker closer than a 40-yard attempt. Which sailed wide.

Buoyed up by this memory, Jets coach Herman Edwards found himself in exactly the same position in Pittsburgh, the situation bearing a spooky resemblance to the Schottenheimer affair. Only this time the kick was from 43 yards. And the kicker, Doug Brien, had already missed a 47-yarder, when, as he described it, "the wind seemed to push the ball down." And this was in a stadium so tricky to kick in that the longest field goal ever accomplished within its confines was 46 yards.

Nevertheless Edwards chose to shut the book at the page that read, "field goal, 43 yards." Even worse, he had his quarterback kneel on third down, lengthening the distance by a yard, in some goofy attempt to run off two more seconds. And, of course, we know what happened. The Steelers, not the Jets, are in the AFC title game.

Harsh? Yes. True? I'm not sure. It's too easy to kick a guy/coach while he's down.

UPDATE: See Nathan's blog on the same article!