Counterintuitive moves

The Avengers had driven to the Predators’ fifteen yard line. There were twenty two seconds left in the game. The Preds led by two. The Avengers wanted to set up for the winning field goal but there was too much time left. So, logically, the Avengers’ coach needed to call a running play in order to run the clock down. He could then kick the field goal, go up by one, and not allow the Preds to get the ball back. If everything went as he planned, the Avengers would win by that one point. After all, the Avengers had the best kicker in the league. He had made over eighty percent of his field goal attempts this year. It seemed like a lock.

But, Preds coach Jay Gruden was on the other sideline thinking about the Avengers’ options. He couldn’t allow the fullback to run without allowing him to score. He had to let the Avengers score a touchdown before time expired so that the Preds would have a chance to score again.

So, as Gruden envisioned, the Avengers ran the fullback up the middle. As Gruden instructed, the Preds’ defense allowed the fullback to score. The Avengers’ coach lamented that the fullback should have fallen down at the two in order to keep the ball in the Avengers’ hands. But when you get two hundred sixty pounds of fullback rumbling toward the goal line against a defense that provides only token resistance, the inevitable happens. The fullback rumbled into the end zone to give the Avengers a four point lead. The Avengers elected to go for two, made it and went up by six with fifteen seconds left.

The Preds received the kickoff and got back to their own five yard line. The Preds’ quarterback, Joe Hamilton, completed three passes in a row and wide out Cory Fleming scored with one second to go.

The Preds were now tied and only had to make the extra point to win. Inexplicably, the snap was high and the point was missed. Overtime.

Pat Haden was the game analyst and tried to keep up with Gruden’s thinking at the end of the game. The only thing Haden could come up with was that one needed to be counterintuitive to make the right decisions at the end of these AFL games.

So, one captain from each team went out for the coin flip. Haden opined that the team which won the flip would take the ball since, by AFL rules, each team gets one possession in OT, then the game goes into sudden death. Haden reasoned correctly that it would not make sense to defer in OT since the team which deferred would need to go for two if the other team scored a touchdown and an extra point.

All of these counterintuitive decisions are based on the fact that most AFL teams score a touchdown on every possession. If a team doesn’t score, it is a major turning point in the game. Usually, the teams score a touchdown over seventy percent of the time. It’s like men’s tennis. Most professional men hold their serve. If they don’t, they usually lose the match.

Gruden sent out The Glove, Kenny McIntyre, to manage the flip. The Preds won the toss but elected to defer. Haden was beside himself because of the decision. He didn’t second guess Gruden but expressed some displeasure with the call.

So, the Avengers gladly accepted the Preds’ gift and went on offense after a mediocre kick off. The Avengers easily drove downfield and scored to take a six point lead. However, inexplicably, the best kicker in the AFL missed the point after.

The Preds took the kickoff back to the sixteen and then Hamilton lofted an easy pass to a
wide open receiver who scored easily. The Pred’s kicker make the extra point to end the game. Easy victory for the Preds.

But, what about Pat Haden? He remained in brain lock from what he had just seen. He had logically laid out the obvious decisions which needed to be made but neither coach followed his logic.

The Preds won the game because they had a coach who had been around arena football for over a decade. He was an arena football savant. Pat Haden is NFL smart but not arena football smart.

A lesson was learned from the viewing of this game. And they say you can’t learn anything from watching sports. Hah.