After Monday night’s loss to the Bengals, Rams coach Sean McVay wasn’t asked about a critical decision to punt the ball while trailing by 10 with 6:09 to play. McVay was asked about the situation on Wednesday, during his midweek press conference.
Here’s a refresher. It was fourth and five. If the Rams had converted, they would have retained possession, potentially scoring a touchdown or a field goal. Then, they would have (in theory) had enough time to stop the Bengals, get the ball back, and score again.
Instead, the punt required a three and out (check), a scoring drive (check), and a successful onside kick (no check).
Any strategy premised on recovering an onside kick, as we explained on Tuesday, isn’t a strategy. It’s an act of desperation akin to throwing a Hail Mary. The Rams had the ball with 6:09 to play. It was fourth and five, not fourth and 15. They should have chosen the approach that didn’t entail recovering an onside kick to force overtime.
Anyway, here’s what McVay said when asked by reporters whether he considered going for it on fourth and five with 6:09 to play.
“I did,” he said. “Thought about it, just didn’t feel like it was the right thing. There were some struggles that we had on third down and so had confidence in our defense at that point and so that was kind of the thought process there.”
Fine. But he also needed to have confidence in their ability to recover an onside kick, something the Rams haven’t done in 11 years.
McVay added that the thought process in that situation is “a combination of some of the analytics and sometimes I think a big part of it is the feel for the flow of the game.”
“A lot of it is, OK, what’s the inventory that you would have?” he said. “Where are you at in regards to who’s available? What’s your injury situation? So certain models and metrics that I definitely believe in, but I also think there’s a feel for the flow of the game and then there’s 22 moving parts. That’s a huge factor to me.”
Those explanations make plenty of sense where, for example, one stop and one score would be needed to tie or to win. Here, McVay still needed an offense he didn’t trust to gain five yards to move the ball well enough to score twice, with the special-teams recovering an onside kick.
Quarterback Matthew Stafford was asked a different question, regarding whether and to what extent he has any say in those moments — and if he wishes he did.
“Yeah, in the moment with a 40-second play clock, it’s tough,” Stafford said. “I wish the mic was two-way but it’s only one way. Sometimes I wish I could say something back. . . . But no, in the heat of the moment, I leave it up to those guys. I trust those guys. Sean does a great job a lot of times on some of those third and longs or whatever it is in certain parts of the field, in certain situations in the game where he’s like, ‘Hey, we might have two downs here.’ And so that kind of helps train my process as far as, OK, if the underneath guy is open and we can get this thing to fourth and whatever we think is manageable at that point, I’m aggressive to that. So I leave it up to those guys and then I just try to play accordingly.”
But should Stafford always defer to McVay? Or should Stafford be willing to wave the punt team off, insisting that the offense go for it. Yes, there isn’t much time to process everything. Still, he wouldn’t have been the first quarterback to take command of the situation.
Remember when Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson did it four years ago in Seattle? Sometimes, the head coach likes to see that fire and determination. Sometimes, it can provide a spark that carries over to future games.
For the Rams, the biggest spark the plan to punt the ball needed was the recovery of an onside kick. Which means that, whatever the analytics say or McVay’s gut was telling him, the right move was to go for it on fourth and five — even if it meant that the final score would have been 22-9 or 26-9 and not a far more respectable 19-16.
And, frankly, it’s hard not to think that he was motivated at least in part by the basic reality that 19-16 looked a lot better than 22-9 or 26-9.