After sleeping on it, Broncos head coach Nathaniel Hackett realizes he screwed up at the end of Monday night’s loss to the Seahawks.
Hackett acknowledged today that his decision to attempt a 64-yard field goal instead of going for it on fourth-and-5 was wrong, but he said at the time he was thinking that if the Broncos’ offense got to the 46-yard line they would be in field goal range, and that is where the Broncos’ offense ended up.
“Looking back at it, we definitely should have gone for it. Just one of those things, you look back at it and you say, ‘Of course we should go for it. We missed the field goal.’ But in that situation we had a plan. We knew the 46 was the mark,” Hackett said.
But even that admission seems to miss the mark, as Hackett seems to be suggesting that it was the wrong decision only in hindsight. The reality is that virtually everyone watching the game and commenting in real time on social media was saying that Hackett was wrong to send kicker Brandon McManus on the field -- even before McManus missed.
Hackett is working for new owners who didn’t hire him, and he may not have as long a leash as new coaches typically do. The Broncos entered this season with lofty expectations, and Hackett can’t afford to keep making the kinds of decisions that he has to second-guess the next day.
