Re: Dabo going for it in the first quarter instead

MrHammerTime · 2024-12-02T14:01:47.970Z

Of taking the FG… kind of hurt us in the end as well.

mrmatt

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Yes it was a terrible decision, but so very Dabo . . .

Dec 2, 2024, 10:01 AM

he likes to be aggressive at junctures at which it isn't necessary, and then go conservative when aggressiveness is called for.

Some will talk about the FG problems, but

(a) it's not like it's inevitable or near-inevitable that a kick will fail. The problem is that it's way too common for basic competency, NOT that it is actually likely (>50% %) to happen. Since the block-fests started against FSU, we've still successfully kicked I think about TEN field goals and countless more extra points.

(B) our tendencies in must-have short yardage situations isn't so great either. We get stuffed on "easy" 3rd or 4th and ones/inches more than most teams.

(C) Our OL isn't in the best shape.

(D) The offense isn't good generally, putting yourself in a situation in which you you have to count on making it up later if you don't score points when you can is a strategically dumb move. If it's late in the game and you know you need the 7 instead of just 3, then fine. But early in the game it's just wild-azz guess gamble for no particular well-thought out reason.

So, neither choice is ideal. But when you add all this up, objectively, the FG is the better choice. Might it have been blocked? Yeah, but might we have been stuffed on the run? Well, we were! We also kicked two PAT's and neither were blocked. That's no guarantee, but it's evidence that each kick is not doomed to fail - so obsessively fretting about it such that we have to forego what might be a critical 3 points in favor of getting stuffed for zero, is both over- and under-thinking things.

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and that result, especially with a bad OL, is not exactly a rarity.

Besides, even w/ all our FG woes, we've kicked like 9 or 10 successful FG's from the FSU game (when we had two blocked) - not to mention all the successful PATs. I think the fact that blocked kicks are far more common than they ought to be is being conflated w/ the idea that they are more likely than not to happen in any given case - which isn't so.

Given our problems w/ kicks, it's not ideal to have to kick. But given our OL woes and our relatively frequent general lack of productivity in critical situations, that choice wasn't idea either. As bad as the offense is, we can't assume we'll have a chance to make it up later if don't have the chance to get the points. And it turns out we did need it.

Dabo going for it in the first quarter instead