john h said:
I wonder what the stats are for the team scoring first being the winner? My guess would be the team scoring first has a statistical advantage of winning the game. That being the case you would take the wind at your back and let the other team receive on the coin flip. In college this happens on a regular basis in bad weather.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic here, but I would venture to say that from a purely statistical standpoint the team scoring first in ANY game, wind or no wind, etc, would show at least some statistical advantage.
However, in reference to what you are talking about here, I think you are exactly right.
I said earlier that I would think the general rule would be.....control the ball with your offense, on the ground, as much as possible when against the wind. You're goal is not so much to necessaryily score, as to eat up the clock and keep the other teams offense off the field when the conditions generally favor them...such as here (wind at their back). The problem is..if you can't move the chains then you've allowed the very thing you were trying to avoid. And from there on out, you tend to be behind the 8-ball field postion-wise.
So that suggests a couple of things to me. It seems fairly obvious to me, that from Buffalo's standpoint, they were relatively satisfied that either/or/and their defense could protect the 10 point lead. But not only that, that by choosing to receive, they either felt (A) that their offense could move the ball on the Cards or (B) that if the Cards did do any scoring they would still have the 4th quarter to make up for it. (I think this is probably the most common decision).
The other thing is, the conditions really were bad enough that ANY score was crucial and ANY lead a big advantage. I thought it was a pretty high scoring game, actually, given those conditions.
It still all goes back to the start though, as everything else was a derivative of the first decision. As I ponder it more, I can see some reasoning why the Cards might not have wanted to put their defense out on the field with the wind with the other team, to begin the game. If they score early, it can be an uphill battle the rest of the day. By making the choice of taking the wind in the 2nd quarter, that would pretty much assure that they would be doing the above.
But here again, that hints of lack of confidence in your team. Playing not to lose rather than to win. Afraid that your defense ISN'T going to hold early, or not having confidence in your offense to be able to be able to come from behind in the 2nd Quarter.
To me, it was a weak call, in that respect.
And now that I've thought it about it more, I'm not so sure that hasn't touched on possibly one of the
real underlying problems we've been seeing, especially with the play calling, and use of personnel.
This coaching staff, in general, (Pendergast excepted), seems to be coaching "scared". Overly afraid to take chance, overly afraid of problems that MIGHT develope, not really confident in their own coaching enough to instill any in the whole team, simply by the general flow of events resulting from that conservatism.
Granted I'm not advocating a wide open, high risk, game plan every game. Some conservatism is to be expected, but I think we're seeing the equally inappropriate counter extreme "playing scared" too often displayed from the coaching eschelons.
