First, Ohio State v. Michigan in Ann Arbor. This was like a videogame, with huge plays throughout and both teams running up and down the field, with tempers flaring and the pot bubbling over. Ohio State, winners of 23 games in a row, held a 42-35 lead in the final minute when the Wolverines scored a TD to cut the lead to a single point. Michigan coach Brady Hoke had a choice at this point – be conservative and kick the extra point, a rubber stamp move which would send the game to OT, or go for the 2-point conversion and win the game in regulation.
So put yourself in Brady Hoke’s position for a moment and think through the variables at play.
First of all, your defense sucks. Ohio State has rushed for 395 yards. It is obvious that your defense simply cannot stop them. Going for the 2-pt. conversion would be an admission of a lack of belief in your team's ability – the longer the game goes, the more likely Michigan would be to lose. And sometimes, as a coach, you have to accept that your team is flawed. It’s a terrible thing to have to admit, of course, but your #1 job as a coach is to make decisions that give your team the best chance to win.
I’m reminded, after saying that, of an NFL game in 2004 where the Tennessee Titans were playing the Indianapolis Colts and the Titans onside kicked three times in the 1st Quarter. They also tried a fake punt later in the game for good measure. Tennessee’s coach, Jeff Fischer, said after the game that his defense had no chance to stop Peyton Manning and the high voltage Colts offense, and that their best shot to win was to try to prevent the Colts from ever having the ball at all, or give them a short field so they score quickly and give the ball back to the Titans. It was a rare admission from a coach that his team wasn’t good enough. The strategy didn’t work, of course, but playing the game straight up wasn’t going to work. You have to be inventive sometimes and try something different. And no sport has as much room for that as football.
So back to Ann Arbor here: Brady Hoke knows his defense stinks. They’re not going to win the game for him. Furthermore, his team’s kicking game also stinks. In OT, a possession-for-possession duel, the kicking game becomes huge, and the Wolverines are at a decided disadvantage. But on the other hand, it’s not like Ohio St. has exactly been stout on defense. Michigan has gained 600 yards in the game. Their stellar, stylish, #98 wearing QB Devin Gardner has thrown for 451 yards and done so while limping badly. The Buckeyes can’t stop a one-legged QB, for goodness sakes, and their DBs look hopelessly outmatched by the Michigan receivers. Sending the game to OT, therefore, would be a statement of trust in your offense to win the game for you.
But can the offense overcome a bad kicker and a bad defense? And while Ohio St. has won 23 in a row, Michigan has had a bad season. (A 7-4 record constitutes a bad season at the winningest school in the history of the sport.) Here’s the chance to salvage the season in one play. Your team is at home, in front of 113,000 fans, your team has overachieved just to get to this situation, and you have one play in which you can win the game outright.
Oh yeah, and think through all of that in about 30 seconds. What do you do?
Michigan went for two and the win. Unfortunately, the play they called sucked:
Hoke was praised by the pundits for the decision to go for two, although he cheapened it, in my opinion, by saying that he’d asked the seniors on Michigan’s squad what they wanted to do and that they’d wanted to go for two. This is a sly way of shifting blame from yourself, which most high-profile coaches are good at doing. Players always want to go for it, because they believe they can make it. Your job as a coach is to make rational decisions.
That being said, The LOSE applauds the boldness of the move. I would’ve done the same thing, and I wish that more coaches would have the cojones to do the same thing as well. Football is a series of set pieces, 150 or more of them, during which any number of things can go wrong. And better teams can find more ways to win. As I said earlier, the longer the game goes, the more the advantage tilts to the favourite – and Ohio St. was clearly the favourite. So take the risk and go for the win.
So the final score was Ohio State 42:41 Michigan in the best game of the year … or it was the best game of the year for about 3 hours, because then Alabama played Auburn at Jordan-Hare in Auburn.
The Crimson Tide of Alabama were undefeated coming into the game, and looking for a third straight ‘national championship,’ while 2010’s ‘champion’ Auburn has revived themselves after a miserable 3-9 season in 2012 to reach a record of 10-1. The War Eagles have also taken on that ‘team of destiny’ aura, of which I am extremely skeptical, but they’ve found improbable ways to win games, including these late game dramatics and then this miracle two weeks ago against Georgia which has already taken on a nickname, “the prayer at Jordan-Hare.”
So the narrative of the game from the get go was Team of Destiny vs. Team of Dynasty. Adding some spice to the affair is the fact that Alabama-Auburn is probably the single nastiest rivalry in all of American sports. It’s the closest we come in this country to some of the fierce, volatile derbies you see in European soccer. And 'the prayer at Jordan-Hare' looked pretty meek by comparison by the time this one was over. This game was so nuts that the play which put Alabama ahead was an afterthought by the end:
Just your run-of-the-mill 99 yd. TD pass. Whatevs.
In keeping with their tenacious and rescourceful nature, Auburn ties the score at 28 with this nifty bit of improv from their QB in the final minute. Three more plays by the Crimson Tide then bring the ball up to Auburn's 39 yd. line as time expires – except, upon review, there is :01 put back on the clock. And at this point, the onus is on Alabama coach Nick Saban to make a decision of what to do: he can run the clock out and go to OT; he can let his QB A.J. McCarron throw a 'Hail Mary' pass into the end zone; or he can try a very long 57-yd FG.
So let's pretend we're coaching Alabama at this point, shall we?
The defense has been pretty bad – Auburn has racked up 300 yds. on the ground, and Bama's defense offered almost no resistance as Auburn sliced them up during the tying TD drive. The running game takes a lot out of a defense due to the physicality, and Alabama's D seems out of gas.
Alabama's trademark, steely efficiency has been lacking in this game, as they've made all sorts of mistakes during the course of the action. The kicking game, meanwhile, has been an absolute disaster: Alabama's kicker missing three FGs, one of which was blocked. Alabama seems to be in the same boat as Michigan, at this point, where in two of the three phases of the game, they seem to be at a disadvantage. And as nonsensical as the whole 'team of destiny' idea is, success spawns belief. Momentum and Belief seemed to be dressed in blue and orange at the end of this game.
There are really no good options here. The best bad option seems to be to throw a Hail Mary and hope for the best. McCarron is your best player, and he's already produced a 99-yard TD pass, so why not give him a chance? At worst, you'll be going to OT, and maybe your defense will get it together. Hell, this group of players has won two 'national championships' in a row. They know a thing or two about winning close games by now. So the last-gasp, Hail Mary, unlikely as it is to work, seems like the best bet.
Which is precisely what Alabama didn't do.
Insetad, they went for the 57-yard FG, using their other kicker, the guy who didn't miss 3 FGs already in the game. The long FG is extremely low percentage, and carries some risks: it's more likely to be blocked, as it is a low kick that has to be driven hard. There is also the scenario that, if the kick is short of the backline of the endzone, it can be returned by the defense, but that's unlikely to amount to much. Extremely unlikely. You wouldn't really think of that as a possibility, would you?
Yes, that happened.
Improbable, yes, but not impossible. There have only been four such occurrences in the history of college football. In the NFL, however, this has happened three times in the last 15 years or so. And remember Pasteur's adage, "chance favors the prepared mind." Auburn took a timeout before the FG attempt and placed Chris Davis, their punt return specialist, at the back of the end zone. On kickoffs and punt returns, teams usually have equal athletes on the field – linebackers, tight ends, and so-called "hands team" guys like DBs who are used to handling the football. On a FG, however, the kicking team forms a wall consisting mostly of offensive linemen to block, and if the play breaks down, the defense has the advantage. Once this became a transition play, the hands team – Auburn – had all the advantages. The Georgia win was all about luck. In this game, however, luck had nothing much to do with it.
Of course it's easy to second-guess, in light of what happened, but the FG attempt just didn't make a whole lot of sense. And had that happened to some team other than Alabama, people would be less inclined to revel in the schadenfreude of the moment. As it is, there are few figures as unsympathetic in sports as Nick Saban, who has the reputation of being the ultimate opportunist as he has jumped from one job to the next. That being said, he's won 3 'national championships' in his tenures at Alabama and LSU before that, so you have to begrudgingly acknowledge his genius as a coach. Even the best coaches make some bad decisions from time to time. It's tough to see an unbeaten season go up in smoke.
Alabama and Michigan both lost, but the game itself ultimately won. It's stuff like this that makes us play games, makes us watch, and keeps people coming back. Games are improvisational theatre at its best, unscripted and unpredictable. You never what you're going to see. Most of the time, they follow fairly predictable storylines: Team A is better than Team B and they win by a score of blah blah blah. But we don't care about those games, in the end. We care about it when it all goes mad.
And losing in those moments, of course, hurts far more is the norm. Raising the stakes simply raises the disappointment. Sometimes it's what you come to be known for as a player or a coach – that one spectacular afternoon which people remember for a lifetime. Tough ways to lose. The 'next game' can't come soon enough, but the next game won't really matter much, in the end. In the random world of college football, beating your rival is usually far more important than winning any other game. The 2013 senior class at Alabama will be reminded forever about Chris Davis' 109-yd return, likely far more than the two championship games in which they prevailed. (And Auburn folk will certainly do the crowing, of that you can be sure.) And no Michigan alum will care, 20 years from now, about how Michigan did/didn't beat some other team in some irrelevant bowl game in late December. They will ask, however, "why didn't Hoke kick the extra point against the Buckeyes?" Hindsight is always 20/20, and it's always as clear as mud.
