kneel down sequence?

[Joey007]

No kidding. Dikembe almost lost his bucket of KFC...

Man that is pushing it...

but I laughed hard

 

[supafly]

I have a hard time seeing it as anything but a mistake. Three running plays would have run off enough time to have denied the hail Mary. We may still have had to punt but it would have been the last play of the game.

We've seen plenty of teams fumble the ball on "safe" running plays.

Hell, we just saw the ARZ Cards do it against us a couple of yrs ago.

The victory formation kneel down was the safest and most efficient play, and I'm assuming that we'll hear Belichick explain that during his presser. I highly doubt that it was a mistake...Belichick is prepared for situational football better than anyone else.

 

[Uncle Rico]

Kudos to Harbaugh foe being very clever in managing that time out.

 

[Fencer]

Who in their right mind is going to try something like that when you're trying to run the clock down in a safe and effective manner?

A freaking reverse? TOSS sweep?

Why not just bust out the old Fumble-rooski?

A reverse is pretty safe. If somebody comes bursting through the line, never do handoff.

 

[unoriginal]

I think a further factor may have been the Pats interpreted Harbaugh sitting on his timeout (until 3rd down) as his conceeding the game.

Harbaugh calls it on first down like most coaches do I think the Pats do the math and run two five second plays followed by a punt out of bounds.

 

[supafly]

A reverse is pretty safe. If somebody comes bursting through the line, never do handoff.

Tons of respect for your football opinions, Fencer--but we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

I don't understand how a reverse (multiple parties touching the ball????) would be considered a "safe" and efficient method of killing the clock as far down as you can.

You want ONE person touching the ball, and immediately kneeling down...which is why it's the "victory formation" to begin with.

 

[Halifax_Pats_Fan]

I think we played the situation properly...

 

[supafly]

I think a further factor may have been the Pats interpreted Harbaugh sitting on his timeout (until 3rd down) as his conceeding the game.

Harbaugh calls it on first down like most coaches do I think the Pats do the math and run two five second plays followed by a punt out of bounds.

You may be correct, unoriginal.

I'll be interested to hear what Belichick says about it, but I'd bet it's either:

1) your theory

2) they felt that kneeling down in the V formation gave them the highest odds of winning the game, while only leaving one play for them to run (very low percentage).

 

[bigballas]

Guys remember ... On a fair catch on a safety free kick , the receiving kick can choose to take a free kick FG and the wind was behind the ravens I believe . So a safety making it a 2 pt game and a kick from the 20 may have given ravens a chance at a place kick field goal :

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_catch_kick

I'm sure BB considered this and took lowest variance situation (kneel )

 

[condon84]

That was a brain fart on our coaching staff. They obviously thought Bmore had already given up.

 

[zipster9]

IMO - Seems like the right calls at the end.
Patriots made sure no fumbles possible, if they decide to have a run play to burn the time.

 

[RxJock1120]

I thought they were going to have Allen run around in the end zone and take a safety. Then get the free kick with 5 or so seconds left, pinning them too deep for a Hail Mary.

I initially thought along the same lines, but after thinking about it more I came to the conclusion it would have been a bad play. Because then we would only be up by 2 points and a free kick can be fair caught, leaving the room for a pass interference call (which THE Ravens are notorious for)to set up a game winning field goal.

 

[SVN]

BB screwed up.

 

[Patsfanin Philly]

BB screwed up.

I don't think so. One of the players was quoted on twitter as saying that they were told they would be going back on the field when they came off at 1:39 with the int....

 

[cmasspatsfan]

BB always plays the percentages, cant fumble on a kneel down so the only chance Baltimore has is to run back a punt or a long hail mary and Id guess BB felt good about defending it.

 

[Gronkandez]

Guys remember ... On a fair catch on a safety free kick , the receiving kick can choose to take a free kick FG and the wind was behind the ravens I believe . So a safety making it a 2 pt game and a kick from the 20 may have given ravens a chance at a place kick field goal :

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_catch_kick

I'm sure BB considered this and took lowest variance situation (kneel )

Place kick field goal from their own twenty? Tricky! (I'm assuming a 60 yard punt which is reasonable when you consider they normally kick from ten yards behind the Los)

 

[obgod3]

A simple running play on first down would have been enough to ether make them use the timeout or allow the pats to run the clock out, either way they run the clock out.

 

[bigballas]

Place kick field goal from their own twenty? Tricky! (I'm assuming a 60 yard punt which is reasonable when you consider they normally kick from ten yards behind the Los)

yes, from 20 near impossible. but like i said, pats i beleive would kick into wind and weren't averaging great kicks from what I saw.

again, just presenting another angle to explain what happened..not saying im right

 

[supafly]

A simple running play on first down would have been enough to ether make them use the timeout or allow the pats to run the clock out, either way they run the clock out.

What's the difference between Baltimore calling a timeout (or saving it for 3rd down, like they did in this instance) in terms of whether or not Brady kneels down, falls down, or hands off? No matter what, the clock continues to run...

I'm not sure why you'd feel that they'd have called it had we chose to hand the ball off, instead of kneeling down? What's the difference? Either way, the clock would have continued to run, and the Ravens chose to keep their TO until 3rd down.

Allowing only one party to touch the ball like they did in the victory formation was obviously the right thing to do, particularly in a postseason game. Handing the ball off means that you have a situation where more things can go wrong, and more people need to handle the ball. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

 

[Rob0729]

My guess is that the fact the Pats only ran a RB 7 times this game, they didn't want to risk a fumble or a big negative play. I think they would have rather gone the safe route and kneel three times and only give Flacco a chance at a hail mary.