Today we’ll be looking at what it takes, or more accurately, what it doesn’t take, to be a head football coach in the NFL.
In case you missed this past weekend’s conference championship games, you failed to witness coaching genius on display at the highest level. Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott led his team to a 13-3 record and two additional victories in the playoffs.
Of course, McDermott never played a down or took a snap on the field, but his genius has been on display for all to see since September. The Bills were taking on the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, led by veteran coach Andy Reid, who is also a genius.
The third genius on display Sunday was Green Bay head coach Matt LeFleur, who gets that label because he had the smarts to take a job with a team on which plays what many so called experts consider the best quarterback in the Solar System, if not the universe.
Of course, because of Covid-19 there is no intergalactic play, so we’ll have to let you be the judge on whether Aaron Rodgers and his single Super Bowl win qualifies for the lofty title. Lastly, the fourth genius, and probable the only genuine one of the bunch, was Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Bruce Arians.
He convinced his general manager to sign the best quarterback in whatever is bigger than the universe is called. His name is Tom Brady, a 21 year veteran, winner of six Super Bowls and four Super Bowl MVP’s. Arians basically said in an interview last week that he just lets Brady do whatever he wants, that the 43 year old is a coach on the field.
Now let’s rewind to the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader that produced the NFC’s representative to Super Bowl fifty-five. It was a terrific contest, with the Bucs jumping out to an 18 point lead early in the third quarter, partially due to LeFleur’s inability to manage the clock at the end of the first half, which enabled the Bucs to score on a 39 yard touchdown pass with one second left.
The Bucs took a 21-10 lead into the locker room, then came out in the third quarter and scored again in just over a minute. The Packers scored a touchdown to make it 28-17, then got into the end zone again to cut the lead to 28-23 with 24 seconds left in the third quarter. This is where LeFleur’s genius really began to shine, and why he’s the coach and we’re not.
His team has all of the momentum and if they make the extra point, the Packers would be back within four. A stop and a touchdown puts them up by three, or even a Bucs field goal leaves Green Bay within a touchdown and a made extra point from a tie.
But LeFleur is smarter than the rest of us, so he goes for two, thinking rightfully so that it would leave him within a field goal of tying the game. But he didn’t think of the ramifications of missing such a conversion. Well, the greatest quarterback in the universe didn’t get it done, the Bucs get a field goal and the Packers find themselves down by eight, not seven.
Rodgers, because he’s, well, you know, drives the Packers down to the Bucs eight yard line with two minutes and twenty seconds left on the clock. It’s third down and Rodgers gets chased from the pocket with nothing but green Lambeau Field turf in front of him. Instead of taking off for the end zone, he throws an errant pass for an incompletion, bringing up fourth down.
The Packers still had all three timeouts remaining, and I’m sure that Rodgers threw the ball thinking they would go for it on fourth down. A field goal would still leave the Pack needing a touchdown, even if they could get the ball back from Brady, the greatest quarterback in, well, you know, that really big thing beyond the universe. A touchdown and a two point conversion is all they needed to tie the game. It would be a great, dramatic fourth down play, right?
Well, instead, out trots Mason Crosby, Green Bay’s field goal kicker, and hits the kick and cuts the lead to five. And guess what? Rodgers never gets his hands back on the football and the Bucs advanced to the Super Bowl, Brady’s tenth.
Just when we thought we’d witnessed the ultimate in coaching genius from LaFleur, McDermott showed us that we really are just neophytes when it comes to football acumen and higher algebra. The Chiefs let their opponent jump out to the obligatory nine or ten or seventeen point lead, it doesn’t really matter to them. Anyway, the Bills led 9-0 early before the Chiefs showed them who was boss, and that’s clearly Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, injured toe or not.
By midway in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs were clearly in control, 38-15. Buffalo had missed the extra point following their fourth touchdown, which didn’t seem to matter until it did. But with just over four minutes left in the game, Buffalo scored a touchdown to cut the lead to 38-21.
No brainer for the Bills, kick the extra point, cut the lead to 16 points, recover an onside kick and maybe get the thing to one score with a couple of minutes left. But somewhere on his big sheet of paper coaches carry around for just such occasions, McDermott saw something to this effect: seventeen points behind, four minutes left, need to recover an onside kick no matter what, maybe two. 15 points down, great, 17 points down okay, even though it would essentially negate the touchdown we just scored and still leave us three possessions behind, and 16 points down apparently unacceptable.
So with the 16 points option apparently off the table, McDermott goes for two, doesn’t make it and essentially the game is over. But he continues to defy logic by trying an onside kick. If that was the strategy all along, then why not get the extra point? Was it because the guy had missed one already? Really? How many NFL kicker miss two extra points in the same game?
And here’s the real “kicker”, pun totally intended. They attempted the onside kick and miraculously, the Bills recovered. But instead of being down two scores with four minutes left and possession of the ball in great field position, they were down three. Essentially, the game was over.
A quick
score, which the Bills are totally capable of, would have made it interesting,
if not downright compelling. Instead, the genius of Sean McDermott, something
we will never comprehend, didn’t let that happen. But hey, these guys are savants,
worth millions of dollars a year. What do we know?
The latest novel in the PK Frazier series is now available. "Unplayable Lie", as well as the first three installments, can be found at PK Frazier novels
