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"There is no reason why someone should defend Reid's call here, unless that reason is "just to be an asshole"

I HOPE some of you with your solid opinions caught DNL or Monday Night Live this evening. Not such an open and shut case as to whether to punt or not.

Just sayin'.

The defense looked just like it did in Indianapolis.

So much for the 6 week run - really, just 4. The Skins ran all over them and the Giants could throw it to Plaxico whenever they wanted.

Dean, what did they say on DNL?

"Listen, I’ve read enough around here and heard enough of jaded Philly fans over the years to know that HAD the Eagles gone for it on 4th and 15 and not converted Eagle fans would have second guessed that as well and would have argued TO PUNT and give the defense a chance to get the ball back for the offense for one last drive. (Based on the facts that I mentioned above.)

Whatever, … enjoy throwing your head coach under the bus. They’re usually the first the lynch mob goes for anyway. Pretty predictable really."



dean-o


said the exact same thing today. unless it worked, reid's decision would be 2nd guessed by some, maybe even the same ones 2nd guessing now. instead of us just not being good enough, ( and if someone here wants to pick on me for saying us, take your best shot ) someone's got to be the blame.

Even my 11 yr old son knew it was a chicken shit call in a game of "iffy" (choking) play calling. The run pass ratio, the 2nd and 1 near the goal line (every other team either pounds it up the middle or QB sneaks it), the punt, musical punt returners (just leave Westbrook back there). No, I am not calling for Fat Boys head. It would be nice if he would learn from his mistakes and correct them though.

The Eagles had there chances, but the Saints outplayed them. Congrats to the Saints.

How many times can you say you are thankful for the way this team has played after a heartbreaking loss. It was one of the most exciting runs to end a season. Oddly enough, I am not all that upset.

the hell with the eagles. we will sit here next year and bitch and moan...for what? bottom line is we have a cheap owner who didn't want to part with the extra 13 million dollars to pick up a playmaker or two. fucking cheap assholes. take our money and put in their pockets and make us think they are giving us a great team. give lurie his low payroll trophy again.

I HOPE some of you with your solid opinions caught DNL or Monday Night Live this evening. Not such an open and shut case as to whether to punt or not.

If they said on DNL or Monday Night Live that punting was the right move, THEN THEY ARE RETARDED TOO. THERE WAS NO UPSIDE TO PUNTING. NONE. ZILCH. Punting reduced the guaranteed number of offensive snaps by one. Go for it and miss, defense needs to make a stop. Punt, defense needs to make a stop. Go for it and MAKE IT, first down past misfield, almost in FG range.

And EEB, only a complete and utter fucking retard would have second guessed Reid had he gone for it instead of punting. Just because some media people are so far up the NFL's ass that they refuse to call out a coach for a stupid, loser move, doesn't make it right.

Dino we are in so much agreement it is unprecedented.

I know, I almost feel dirty.

Eskin is leading this charge, by the way.

If I could line him and Cataldi up, it would save me a bullet.

According to Eskin, we are all "dopes" for failing to understand that punting was absolutely the right decision.

There were 19 "4 and 15" (or greater) attempts this year and only one was successful. Therefore, the odds were better that they would get a stop and Reid was right (According to Eskin).

Also, if you're interested, the decison to pass to Tapeh in the flat was also the right call. According to Eskin, that play didn't even matter because they should have converted on 2nd and 1, but Tra Thomas missed a block. There never should have been a 3rd and 1, so any call made on 3rd and 1 was Tra Thomas's fault.

That greasy werewolf is the bizarro Cataldi, but they are equally retarded.

I bet you F. Mitch is saying, "If Freddie was on this team, he would have gotten a down of the first variety. Remember 4 and 26?".

Whatever, … enjoy throwing your head coach under the bus. They’re usually the first the lynch mob goes for anyway. Pretty predictable really.

He deserves to go under a bus, Dean. Not because of that play, but for a multitude of other reasons.

How big is this bus again?

TMQ checking in...

Philadelphia at New Orleans Analysis: Oh no -- the Saints almost lose on the trendy flip! The "flip" play has gone from rare to standard this season, and leading 27-24 with three minutes remaining, ball on the Eagles' 32, New Orleans called the flip and fumbled it, Philadelphia recovering. Then the Saints forced the visiting team into fourth-and-15 from its 39-yard line, 1:56 remaining, Philadelphia holding two timeouts. You cannot under any circumstances even consider punting! Boom went the punt, and needless to say Philadelphia never touched the ball again. Sure, fourth-and-15 is a long down, but I seem to remember the Eagles' converting a fourth-and-26 in the playoffs. Anyway, it's do-or-die, you must go for it! With Philadelphia having only two timeouts, the best outcome for the punt was that New Orleans would be stopped on its possession and kick the ball back, giving Philadelphia roughly the same field position with one minute and no timeouts. This outcome assumes Philadelphia can stop New Orleans from gaining a clock-zeroing 10 yards in three tries, and to that point New Orleans had rushed for 5.7 yards per attempt. Of course, Philadelphia was not able to prevent those 10 yards. A fourth-and-15 try was more promising than a passive punt -- and then if you fail, you go down swinging.

Eskin is leading this charge, by the way.

Why should anyone be surprised? Asskiss will say anything to defend Reid. To me, he's inconsequential to the whole thing.

Now, Jody Mac, OTOH, defending Reid's decision, saying he would've kicked it on 4th and 10.....I mean, there's a noticable lack of nads in the media these days.

Also, he defends Reid, saying "Players win and lose a game. The players lost that game on Saturday".

Of course, he doesn't say that it was Reid who put those players out there in the first place. If you're going to have say over everything, you're gonna have blame over everything.

I know...when they were losing, Eskin said "the players just aren't good enough". When they started winning, he said Reid "should have been copach of the year...this is his best coaching job". When they get bumped from the playoffs "the players lost the game".

May have been touched on, but what bothered me just as much as punting, was the play call on 3rd and goal on 6" line.

Why doesn't this team run the QB sneak? IMO you're in 4 down territory at that point. You run the QB sneak and if you don't get it, you run it again. 6" in 2 plays. Instead, they ran outside, lost 3-4 yds, and settled for 3. Kills me, just kills me.

That's an interesting point, GoBirds. There were times in the game, and many games, where I was hoping they'd at least run a bootleg rollout with Garcia. Usually that happens on its own when a play collapses and a QB sees space.

I really can't remember the last time I've seen the Eagles run a QB sneak. Can anyone else?

(I'll save my Reid comments for later, as I don't want to muddy the thought)

This is what I'm assuming was discussed on DNL:

Rich Hofmann: Don't give Reid the boot just yet


WHEN IT WAS happening on Saturday night, the reaction here was the same as the reaction everywhere. How can Andy Reid punt, even if it is fourth-and-15? Trailing by three, with 1 minute, 56 seconds left, on the Eagles' 39-yard line, how can Reid be sending out the punt team?

At the time, here was the take: that this was a mistake but not an enormous mistake, not a high crime but a misdemeanor. Standing there at fourth-and-15, the Eagles were in the realm of the longshot and everybody who watches the NFL knew it. At that point in the game, in the frenzy of the Superdome, when every reaction to everything was raw and visceral, it seemed that Reid was guilty of mismanaging something that probably wasn't going to happen anyway. He did not shoot Secretariat.

But then you look at the numbers.

Darn those numbers.

The conclusion you come to is that Reid was faced with a statistical coin flip. The unavoidable conclusion is that he was not wrong to punt, that it was just as valid a strategy as going for it on fourth-and-15. Surprise. There are a lot of days when you might think that Reid is a better coach on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday than he is on game day, but this was not necessarily one of them.

When you analyze this, you have to look at the numbers when Jeff Garcia has been the Eagles' quarterback. We have celebrated Garcia's work here for good reason, because he brought fire and hope and skill to a season thought to be over when Donovan McNabb tore up a knee against Tennessee in the Eagles' 10th game of the season. He deserves every bit of the praise he has received, and he deserves to be back here next season.

But he is a technician, not a magician. Garcia is about accuracy, about competency. Give him a running game and protection and he will give you winning quarterback play. But he will not make chicken salad for you out of fourth-and-15.

I went through the play-by-plays yesterday for about an hour-and-a-half and couldn't find a play where Garcia converted a third- or fourth-and-15. I couldn't find a play where he converted anything more than a third-and-11.

As best as I can tell, he was 3-for-13 trying to convert on third-and-10 this season, 4-for-8 on third-and-11, and 0-for-12 trying to convert distances longer than that on third and fourth downs.

That's oh-fer.

That McNabb is a much better player at rescuing these kinds of situations goes without saying. It is obvious, but it needs to be said here again just for emphasis. McNabb was the quarterback for the fourth-and-26 miracle a few years ago against Green Bay, not Garcia. That McNabb is so much better than the average guy at these salvage operations has always been Reid's security blanket. But he wasn't there on Saturday night in New Orleans.

So, punt or go? Let's be very generous here and give Garcia an 8 percent chance of converting on fourth-and-15 - about a 12-1 longshot. Now, let's give Garcia the same production rate as he had all season when he had a first down in that part of the field (between about midfield and the plus-35). In that part of the field, Garcia engineered at least a field goal 59 percent of the time.

Do the math. Going for it on fourth-and-15 left the Eagles with less than a 5 percent chance of tying the game or going ahead - and, again, that's being very generous because Garcia never converted from that distance all year. You could argue that it was approaching a zero percent chance, if you wanted.

How about the punt? The Eagles had held the Saints to 1-2-3-punt only once in the previous 10 possessions - a 10 percent chance of stopping them. (They were much better than that during the second half of the season, but we'll ignore that here.) Still, seeing as how the Eagles could stack the defense for the run because everyone knew the Saints would run, a reasonable expectation was probably higher than that 10 percent, at least a little.

If successful, the Eagles would have gotten the ball back with about 1 minute left and the ball on approximately their 35-yard line. This is going to have to be a guesstimate because of the time factor in the game, but when you multiply it out, you come out in the exact same spot - about a 4-5-6 percent chance, give or take, of holding the Saints, getting the ball back and scoring.

Punt or go, then? Both approaches were longshots, obviously. Sorry for all of the math, but if you are going to kill Reid here, you need to be armed with more than the emotions of the moment, more than the helplessness you felt with a season about to end in the frenzy of the Superdome.

Punt or go? It really was a coin flip. It wasn't even a misdemeanor.

*

Excuse me, Rich, but do you mind if I talk directly to you because we both know you're here reading?

Since you have a thing for numbers, I'll gladly skip the "emotions" and play the numbers game with you. In all of your brilliant statistical research did you unearth any stats about McNabb's sterling success rate on 4th and 26? How about merely 3rd and 26? Did you happen to notice that the successful 4th and 10 play that was nullified by Young's penalty went for more than 15 yards? Did you realize that Reid put his faith in a defense that was yielding 5.6 per rush? Were you aware that New Orleans only needed to go 10 yards for a game-clinching first down? Do you understand that if New Orleans rushed on consecutive first, second, and third downs, playing by the numbers you so cherish, three carries averaging 5.6 yards each would total 16.8 yards. Do you comprehend that 16.8 yards is more than 10 yards?

The players lost this game, but once again Reid did not "put them in position" to win.

Let's forget the fact that this idiot again somehow equates going for it instead of punting to somehow giving the Eagles less chance at getting the ball back. It's like if they go for it and fail, their "10% chance to 1-2-3" and out them disappears. Let's put that aside for the moment. This is my favorite part - you see, this is what happens when you look ONLY AT STATISTICS and forget to use your brain:

The Eagles had held the Saints to 1-2-3-punt only once in the previous 10 possessions - a 10 percent chance of stopping them.

So, it doesn't matter then that this 1 time, or 10% chance as he figures it, occurred when the Saints ran PASSING PLAYS on the 1-2-3 in question.

It amazes me how retarded some people are being about this.

I like Rich, but the article is ridiculous.

1. Garcia just gained over 15 yards on 4th and 10 1 second earlier. While that doesn't guarantee success on 4th and 15, at at least shows you that it's possible.

2. The Eagles defense had given up some sort of playoff record in yardage and had been pounded into oblivion. Why would they suddenly get better? The Saints has 11 possessions in the game and the Eagles forced one 3 and out. That one 3 and out was on a series where the Saints took a sack on first down. To follow up the negative play, they threw 2 more passes (both incomplete) and punted.

What are the chances the Saints were going to throw on first down with just over a minute left and McAllister averaging 7 yards per carry for the game?

Uh huh.

I was a little late to the party there, but thinking the same thing.

Between the two shows, ... DNL & MNL three players were asked the question. (Trotter, Runyan and Hood.) All had the same response; Punt, ... put the game in the hands of the defense.

(I know, ... they're all toeing the company line and are retards.)

Sorry to digress, but has anyone been able to review the 4th & 10 play and confirm the penalty? I couldn't see it, frankly.

I saw it on the NFL Network replay, and he definitely flinched.

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