What’s more fun than second-guessing NFL coaches? Nothing, that’s what. So let’s do it every week, right here. This week: Staring into the teeth of the dragon.
The scenario
Kansas City at Buffalo, the latest installment of the NFL’s current greatest rivalry. Buffalo has the ball, up 23-21, but it’s fourth-and-2 on the Kansas City 26 with a little over two minutes left in the game. A field goal puts the Bills up five points. Going for it and succeeding chews up more clock; going for it and failing gives Kansas City the ball back with two timeouts.
This is why NFL coaches get the big bucks. What do you do?
The case for kicking
A field goal forces Kansas City to drive the length of the field for a go-ahead touchdown. Plus, if you go for the fourth-down conversion and miss, Kansas City needs to go about only 40 or so yards to win the game with a field goal. Kicking is the safe play, putting the burden on your defense to hold Mahomes with about two minutes left in the game.
The case for going for it
Everyone within a million miles of Buffalo knows you don’t give the ball to Patrick Mahomes with two minutes left … since that’s one minute and 47 seconds more than he needs to wreck your world. Mahomes, of course, led Kansas City to victory over Buffalo in early 2022 in one of the great playoff games of all time, forcing overtime with a come-from-behind field goal drive that started with just 13 seconds left on the clock. Do you really want to give him the chance to do it again?
Plus, Bills kicker Tyler Bass made only 31 of 39 from 40-49 yards in his career and 5 of 8 this season, and had already missed an extra point on the day. A missed field goal would give Kansas City the ball and it’d need to go about only 30 yards to get into field-goal range. The risks of going for it were high … the risks of everything involved with a field goal were even higher.
The result
Bills head coach Sean McDermott made the only realistic choice he could have made, although there are plenty of overly cautious coaches in the NFL who likely would have stuck with the half-measure and hoped for the best. (One is currently employed in Chicago, for now.) The Bills opted to keep their offense on the field, and Josh Allen made McDermott look like a wise man indeed:
Effect on the game’s outcome
Allen’s touchdown run effectively salted the game away for Buffalo, which is great news for Bills fans but only ratchets up the playoff pressure even higher. Buffalo now has six straight regular-season wins against Kansas City, but three straight playoff losses in the Mahomes/Allen era. Regular-season wins are nice; playoff wins are essential.
Success makes coaches look very good in retrospect, but was this the wisest play? Given the past history of Mahomes — even the clearly less-than-MVP-level Mahomes of today — McDermott faced a couple of nerve-shredding options, but ultimately made the one that paid off.
Your Call: Is giving Patrick Mahomes the ball ever a good idea?