Marty made decisions based on "safe" probabilities. Those decisions almost ALWAYS led to playoff disappointment.

Prevent defenses, going away from the pass to protect a lead, etc.

I know it sounds odd to think about "karma" but we lived it as fans for a good 15 years until Peterson was gone.

Right now there are at least 6 AFC teams that have a 6-3 record, including the Browns division rival, BAL. And at some point, "Points Scored For" becomes important in determining playoffs seeding.

And the idea that HOU was going to score a TD and a FG in 70 seconds is laughable. In their first seven possessions of that game they scored zero points, and averaged a little over 20 yards per possession. Even in their eighth and last possession they took nearly 3 minutes to score, even knowing they needed to score as quickly as possible, because they still needed to get another score.

HOU wasn't going to suddenly score twice in 70 seconds.

And CLE needed those points.

So when you said under no circumstances do you avoid a score, what if Cleveland was up by 1? In which case a TD likely gives the other team the ball with a one score deficit. Seems a no brainer you take the knee there.

For a larger deficit.... We're kind of arguing two highly improbably outcomes. However I'd bet over history the likelihood of a victory formation fumble is so tiny its to the point of nearly impossible. It's at the very least hard to argue that it's wrong.

I mean, I agreenif we are talking about any possibility at all of the other team getting the ball back. But victory formation isn't just safe. It is as close to a guarantee as you're going to get.

Yeah, it's the difference between taking the 99.99% chance of winning when all you have to do is not screw up a kneel down (and if they did screw it up, they'd most likely have to drive 50+ yards to get into FG range with less than a minute left), or a 99% chance of winning by scoring the touchdown.

It's effectively arguing over that +/-0.99%.

Again, though, everyone's ignoring the chance of injury. Even if you don't think it makes any difference whether you score or go down, there's no question that there's a far greater chance of injury if you're forced to play out the final minute with a bunch of aggressive, downfield throws than there is during two kneel downs.

I guess. I'm just overly averse to playing the game that way. PTSD.

Same. I want to be up by 2 scores. I'm all for playing smart when that's not going to be the case. (Like when Gurley tried to get down a couple of weeks ago.)

Uhhh. That kid does NOT get it.

Agreed. Statistics was many moon ago but either case has enough of a sample size to have a statistically significant sample size to compare against. So if you’re going on just numbers I’d push back. I get it, but we’re out here to score Touchdowns and get stops. Anything other than that is asking for trouble IMO.

Fair point about injuries.

You’re goddamned right PTSD. I guarantee half this board would just assume we’d fumble the snap Pre-Mahomes. DaFace doesn’t believe in Karma or football gods or whatever, but there is no doubt the Chiefs have an abnormally high rate of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. And Cleveland does too.

:grouphug:

This is what it boils down to for me. Both situations give the Browns like a 99.9999% probability of winning the game, but I cannot recall a single team, who was leading at the time, losing the game on a botched victory formation.

If anything he should have just slid down at the 1. Again, probably not changing much overall but it's the difference between running the clock down another 40 seconds if they have no timeouts or burning a timeout if they've got any left.

DaFace is 100% right.

When the Chiefs beat the Colts in 2004, Green completed a 14 yard TD pass to Gonzalez on 3rd and 5 with 2:17 left to go up by ten points. The Colts had already used their third timeout. When interviewed after the game, Manning said he was surprised the Chiefs scored, because after picking up the first down, the only way the Colts had a chance to win was by what the Chiefs did (as the clock would have gone down to 2:00 after the play, then three kneel downs would have clinched it). Greg Wesley ended up picking off Manning in the end-zone with a little less than 2:00 left in the game, but the Chiefs opened up the door for a potential loss in that scenario.

Earlier this year the Falcons would have beaten the Lions had Todd Gurley simply gone down at the 1 instead of falling into the end zone.

In Super Bowl 46, Belichick let the Giants score late, which afforded the Patriots an opportunity to tie the game. Had Welker not dropped a dime from Brady or had Gronkowski hauled in the last pass off his fingertips, New England would have won the Super Bowl by letting Ahmad Bradshaw score.

It's been a while so i don't remember the exact particulars but I believe the "doink" game in Denver back in 2016 was sorta like that. Gaines ended up allowing a long TD pretty late but the Broncos player scoring there actually gave us a better opportunity to win the game.

Yup. I originally thought Philip rivers vs the Chiefs but realized he fumbled a snap to set up a game winning FG. They were not in victory formation.

No more running out of bounds for this guy :(