Quote:
Originally Posted by fan4ever
I know this is anecdotal but personally I don't remember hearing about Reid's inability to manage the clock when he came here. While I follow the Chiefs, I really don't have the time to follow the rest of the NFL much. My opinion of Reid isn't some narrative I've adopted; it's my own personal observations. I'm sure a number of CP folks here have had the same experience. When Reid came here I wanted to believe he was going to be the football messiah...last thing I wanted was to see something about him worth criticizing, but there it is.
I'll leave it at this; I hope you're right and I'm wrong...it would be stupid to want it otherwise...so we'll see what this season holds for us.
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Well it's been there and the Patriots SB was when it really started. Dunno what to tell you if you didn't hear about it before here because the rest of us sure did (and Philly fans were all too happy to tell us about it and how Kelly was the hero they deserved).
And it's just so silly because it just ignores basic math. When a guy needs two scores, you can't just say 'focus on saving time for the 2nd one' nor can you put all your attention on the 1st one. It's a combined probability thing.
If you're the head coach in that situation you have to do everything you can to increase that final number in the equation. You don't do everything you can to get the 1st score if it puts the odds of the 2nd score down to 0%. Nor can you focus entirely on getting the 2nd if it puts the odds on the first unreasonably low.
It's all about balancing those 2 probabilities because in the end, you gotta combine them. And when you're looking at a situation where best case scenario you have about a 60% chance of getting the 1st score and a maybe 20% chance of getting the 2nd score, you're looking at a likely best possible odds situation of about 10-15% that you manage to get them
both; basic combined probability.
So when that's the set of numbers you're looking at, how can just about any approach be seen as categorically
wrong? You may have done it differently, but that doesn't make you right. It doesn't make you wrong. When you're looking at long odds either direction, at best you're talking about 2 approaches that are equally arguable. Which is where I get to my "just about every coach is equally adept at it" argument - because it's largely a crapshoot in most instance anyway and it's virtually always an outcome controlled by execution.
That's why I say so much of this is rearview mirror rationalizing. The folks that do it wait until after it's decided and then say 'well he failed so clearly he screwed up...'. No, he failed because his odds of success were staggeringly long anyway. And
maybe a different approach yields a couple percentage points in either direction, but maybe not. That's why it's so damn ridiculous to just take it as faith that "Andy screwed up the clock again..."
In both situations, Reid scored a TD and had 3 timeouts left with a chance to get the ball back in one of two ways. When the mountain you had to climb was a 2 score deficit with 5-6 minutes left against a team that's trying to milk the clock and keep balls in front of them, what the hell else can you ask for? What set of miracle decisions could've been made that would've been obviously accurate and obviously better than the ones he made? Those are the questions you have to ask and the answer are almost always "uhhh......"
That's the kind of crap that creates the narrative. Then people just move the goalposts anytime he loses. He loses the Colts game "Andy's too aggressive!!!!" He loses the Titans game "Andy's too passive!!!!"
And the monster continues to feed itself regardless of what happens. When a Reid team loses a game that they had a lead in the 2nd half - It's Andy's fault because he was either too aggressive or not aggressive enough. When Reid's team loses a game that he didn't have a lead in the 2nd half, who cares about the fact that his team had been outplayed to that point? It's still because Reid just didn't manage the clock right; couldn't just be that the other team was better that day (and the Patriots were undeniably better in both of those Pats post-season losses).
It's just bitching for the sake of bitching.