Forked Thread: The deep pass was a GREAT call or was it: you make the call

[Ebenezer]

Forked from: The deep pass was a GREAT call (http://www.billszone.com/fanzone/showpost.php?postid=2103332)


the call would have been great and everybody would have cheered had it worked...however, if somebody asked you before the game "14-12, 2:26 to play and 3rd and 5 from your own X...what do you call?" I think "long bomb to Lee Evans against Champ Bailey and the safety" would have been pretty low on EVERYBODY'S list.

if somebody asked you before the game "14-12, 2:26 to play and 3rd and 5 from your own X...what do you call?" Would you really have called a bomb to Evans??

[YardRat]

3rd and nine or 3rd and eleven, in Denver territory on a short field.

Would you really have called for two hand-offs to Lynch?

You know damn well the only difference between the calls is success versus failure...player execution.

Lynch gains a first down = good call.
Lynch scores a TD = good call.
Losman overthrows an open Evans = bad call.

[DraftBoy]

What would I have called? on 3rd and 5 Id have run nothing but crosses and slants to get the 5 yards not a 35 yard bomb

[Philagape]

The difference between calls is the chance of success vs. failure.

If the difficulty of the play makes no difference, then let's call a long bomb on every play.

[Mr. Pink]

What would I have called? on 3rd and 5 Id have run nothing but crosses and slants to get the 5 yards not a 35 yard bomb

Like I said in the original thread...if you want to throw, fine...but go with a QB sprint out throw option.

Run it to the wide side of the field, if the receiver is there, throw it...if no one is open, JP can take off upfield and try to make a play with his legs. Either way, you have a better chance at converting the first down which is all that was needed there. A TD wasn't necessary to win that game on that very play. Risk vs reward dictates that that was indeed a very stupid playcall.

I'm really beginning to think this coaching staff either A. is completely inept or B. has absolutely no trust in JP. We saw another completely dumbed down gameplan from start to finish....remember that fun preseason term? Oh yeah it was only preseason so they weren't showing anything...OOPS.

The gameplan today much like the preseason...VANILLA.

[TigerJ]

No. I might have called it in the third quarter, but not with time running out and needing to retain possession.

There were a few other things I would have done differently. For instance, I would have take the penalty to put more yardage between the Broncos and field goal range when the Denver player batted the ball out of bounds.

[jmb1099]

With the scenario given i run the ball and run the clock. If we pick up four yards I might try to draw off sides on the next play.
Second option is a screen pass to Lynch.

With the benefit of hindsight I can say without hesitation they should have handed Lynch the ball. If we burn one more second of clock we win that game...period.

[superbills]

3rd and nine or 3rd and eleven, in Denver territory on a short field.

Would you really have called for two hand-offs to Lynch?

You know damn well the only difference between the calls is success versus failure...player execution.

Lynch gains a first down = good call.
Lynch scores a TD = good call.
Losman overthrows an open Evans = bad call.

You're taking time out of the equation. The outcome of the play isn't what makes it a bad call. It's the situation in which the play was run and more importantly the time of the game in which it was run. Lynch's two runs served one purpose only: to make a first down or more. That was the only factor in those calls. If Lynch doesn't convert, we turn around and play defense with still a lot of time to play.Turns out, they worked.

However, on that Losman bomb, you've got to pick a play that serves two purposes: Get a first down and Keep the clock running. Given the time left on the clock, the fact that you're already in the lead, and the fact that it's thrid down, you're looking for a play that provides minimal to moderate risk with minimal to moderate reward. That bomb play is the last one that you call. A high risk/high reward play does not serve the purposes of the situation. It's a bad coaching decision and unfortunately for us, we didn't get the high reward that was sought.

[OpIv37]

2nd down should have been a run between the tackles instead of to the outside (and out of bounds, stopping the clock).

3rd down should have been a run between the tackles instead of a Rex Grossman style home run play.

KILL THE DAMN CLOCK. Lynch ran well the entire day then they use him improperly at the most crucial juncture of the game.

Staying inbounds on 2nd down would have gotten us to the 2 min warning. Another running play would have taken about 30+ seconds off the clock- they would have been below a minute and a half when they got the ball back. Stupid.

[The Spaz]

Hindsight is what it is. Evans had his man beat, the throw however was off the mark. I don't say you can so much question the call as you can by the execution of Losman. Short, Medium or Long Losman was really bad today.

[Ebenezer]

Hindsight is what it is.


but you can try to answer the question that was posed without hindsight

[The Spaz]

but you can try to answer the question that was posed without hindsight

Go ahead.

[feldspar]

Are you kidding me?

I'm having Mularkey play-calling flashbacks here.

This is absolutely the worst call I've seen in recent memory.

OK, so Buffalo is ahead by 2 points, it's 3rd and 5, there is 2:43 left in the game, and Denver has 2 timeouts.

One would think that the best thing to do in this situation is to try to run out the clock by getting a first down. If we get a first down, we pretty much have the Broncos by their horse balls...and that first down is only 5 yards away.

What do we do, instead?

We attempt a 50 bomb to Evans.

This has to be up there with one of the worst decisions I've ever seen.

Not only that, but the passing game had been pathetic all day...not even 100 yards in the air. The odds of completing that bomb are small. This isn't practice anymore; those long passes are difficult, especially against the excellent Denver secondary.

I really don't get that call. I hope none of you actually agree with that call.

So we throw the bomb, and they get the ball back and win with 0000 on the clock

We acted like we needed some quick points instead of trying to win the game, regardless of how we looked. In other words, it almost seemed like we didn't want to win "ugly"...we wanted to show 'em what we can do.

Totally and completely stupid thing to do.

[feldspar]

For those of you rationalizing that Evans "had his man beat," consider this: completeing a pass thrown 50 yards in the air is much harder than completeing a 5 yard pass. Gaining 5 yards on the ground is also much more likely that completeing that pass...you have to play the odds, no try to show off when you've been getting burned all day. Play to win, not to look good.

And a 5 yard pass would have been the equilavent of a home run.

It was a completely stupid call to make. Completely stupid, and there are no redeeming qualities about it.

[Meathead]

dumb dumb dumb

right now this looks like a flat out dumb team top to bottom. i cant believe one team would make so many dumb plays across the board in one game

[jamze132]

Even if the bomb worked and we scored, I would still sit here and pray how lucky we are and how stupid that call was. I am still in disbelief at the coaching on this team. I don't know if Fairchild or Jauron called that play, but someone is seriously an idiot. This is EXACTLY why we can't win games in the NFL. Every other team would have probably ran time off the clock or attmepted a short pass. :help!:

[GarnOFreak]

I agree with the call. We defintely should have taken a shot down the field. Any other drive than that one would have been nice! All friggin game long my Dad and I kept saying that they must be setting them up for a long one with all these screens and dump-offs(that rearely worked). The only REALLY successful plays, were the gimmick ones(and you can't build an offense off those kinda plays every game). Marshawn had some nice runs...when he hit the hole hard. I saw some Willis-like dancing behind blockers on about half a dozen attempts. A-Train was horrible, I really would rather have seen us plug Fred Jackson in there just to see if he could run FORWARD, geez. I can't believe that we talked about how they were trying not to show anything during the preseason, and yet they went deep in those games more than we did in our home opener. You could tell JP was getting mad at the end of drives too.

here's three things that we could have done:

Stay in-bounds on the 2nd down run by Lynch.
Pound it up the middle on 3rd and 5.

Poz (or anybody) call a timeout on 4th and 2 when our defense is not set and has no play called with about 20 seconds left to go.

Oh, and somebody tell Scobey to clean out his locker. Special Teams skills got him on the roster? Did he think the Bronco waving at him was saying, "Howdy partner! Come on in for a landing!" No, It was a fair catch you dolt! It added 15 yards of field position which would have made the last second FG a 57 yarder.

Also I agree with the above post, I would have taken the penalty for extra yards on the illegal touch. 90% of the time after penalties, coaches call a run up the gut. A 10 yard penalty would be worth the extra time to run the play even if we gave up yards on a run. It would have made the down 2nd and 33 instead of 3rd and 23. BTW, Denver gained 21 yards on the next play and then made their first 4th down conversion with a run of 7 yards. If they had taken the penalty, they wouldn't have made it.

So, there were plenty of bad decisions to hand out. To coaches and to players. But, there were some bright spots as well. I think we outplayed last years team in every facet of the game at this point. We had just about every break go against us this week, from injuries to a ball taking a lucky bounce off the goalpost and going in. The team just needs to learn from it and get better. Please throw deep next week, take a chance. Just do it before you are trying to run out the clock and end the game safely.

[Michael82]

Are you kidding me?

I'm having Mularkey play-calling flashbacks here.

This is absolutely the worst call I've seen in recent memory.

OK, so Buffalo is ahead by 2 points, it's 3rd and 5, there is 2:43 left in the game, and Denver has 2 timeouts.

One would think that the best thing to do in this situation is to try to run out the clock by getting a first down. If we get a first down, we pretty much have the Broncos by their horse balls...and that first down is only 5 yards away.

What do we do, instead?

We attempt a 50 bomb to Evans.

This has to be up there with one of the worst decisions I've ever seen.

Not only that, but the passing game had been pathetic all day...not even 100 yards in the air. The odds of completing that bomb are small. This isn't practice anymore; those long passes are difficult, especially against the excellent Denver secondary.

I really don't get that call. I hope none of you actually agree with that call.

So we throw the bomb, and they get the ball back and win with 0000 on the clock

We acted like we needed some quick points instead of trying to win the game, regardless of how we looked. In other words, it almost seemed like we didn't want to win "ugly"...we wanted to show 'em what we can do.

Totally and completely stupid thing to do.
Excellent post! i hated that play. Even if it worked, I still would have been thinking :wtf: was that?!! You don't call that kind of a play when Lynch is tearing it up. You give him the rock on 3rd and 5 and hope he can get the yards, if not...you keep running the ****ing clock down! Get down to the 2 minute warning or else force Denver to use another timeout.

[njsue]

They should have went deep many times!!!!

[justasportsfan]

Forked from: The deep pass was a GREAT call (http://www.billszone.com/fanzone/showpost.php?postid=2103332)



if somebody asked you before the game "14-12, 2:26 to play and 3rd and 5 from your own X...what do you call?" Would you really have called a bomb to Evans??

I don't have a problem going with our bread and butter, JP to Evans. If we went to a checkdown and it didn't work, we'd be saying "what a crappy conservative call, our coaches have no guts" .

[The last buffalo fan]

I don't have a problem going with our bread and butter, JP to Evans. If we went to a checkdown and it didn't work, we'd be saying "what a crappy conservative call, our coaches have no guts" .

:hi5:............... **** them all, :gobills:

[fasteddie]

Would the penalty for the batted ball would have been enforced at the original line of scrimmage? That's probably why they refused the penalty.

The bomb should have been thrown on second down if they wanted to gamble. It was stupid to stop the clock! Marv was probably pulling his hair out.

Ed