Bledsoe Admits We Played For The FG To Make It 13-0...

[CaptainAmerica]

...didn't see this posted but the text below is from Mick's column today. Pretty disgusting to know for a fact that we played for a FG that only made the score 13-0!! I said at the time, I hate a 13 point lead. It is almost a sign that your team is going to fool around and lose by one point. Parcells' conservative, fail to go for the jugglar, style of coaching cost us a chance to put the Skins away last night.

Here is the text...
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How about first-and-10 at the Washington 17 early in the fourth quarter? But Larry Allen gets called for holding, and while leading 10-0 and the Commanders showing not one iota of offensive life, the Cowboys decide to run some clock and play for a field goal. So they run Tyson Thompson on three consecutive draws, taking the clock from 8:35 left to play down to 6:39 when Cortez kicked his second field goal, this one 41 yards for a 13-0 lead.
But there is a saying in the NFL, that the more field goals you kick the closer you are to getting beat.
"We were in a good rhythm offensively, and then get that hold, and the way our defense was playing to that point, it was let's not take a chance, run it, kick the field goal and go up two touchdowns," Bledsoe said.
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Duh..."two touchdowns"!! Maybe they forgot that a team scoring a TD gets to kick an extra point!

 

[btcutter]

...didn't see this posted but the text below is from Mick's column today. Pretty disgusting to know for a fact that we played for a FG that only made the score 13-0!! I said at the time, I hate a 13 point lead. It is almost a sign that your team is going to fool around and lose by one point. Parcells' conservative, fail to go for the jugglar, style of coaching cost us a chance to put the Skins away last night.

Here is the text...
**********************************************************

How about first-and-10 at the Washington 17 early in the fourth quarter? But Larry Allen gets called for holding, and while leading 10-0 and the Commanders showing not one iota of offensive life, the Cowboys decide to run some clock and play for a field goal. So they run Tyson Thompson on three consecutive draws, taking the clock from 8:35 left to play down to 6:39 when Cortez kicked his second field goal, this one 41 yards for a 13-0 lead.
But there is a saying in the NFL, that the more field goals you kick the closer you are to getting beat.
"We were in a good rhythm offensively, and then get that hold, and the way our defense was playing to that point, it was let's not take a chance, run it, kick the field goal and go up two touchdowns," Bledsoe said.
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Duh..."two touchdowns"!! Maybe they forgot that a team scoring a TD gets to kick an extra point!

Look at it from a HC perspective. Your D is playing lights out and allowed 0 points for 55 min. Opposing O is sucking air, can't put a single drive together for 55 min to even attempt a FG. Hey, 13 points lead with less then 5 min to go is sitting pretty (esp with Parcells OLD record of 77-0 when leading by 13+ in 4th quarter).
Sure, we could have taken a chance to TD and possible INT. But, there isn't a HC that would take the % play like BP. It's common sense. I bet most fans thought the game was over then too. Of course, **** happens!

 

[RCowboyFan]

Look at it from a HC perspective. Your D is playing lights out and allowed 0 points for 55 min. Opposing O is sucking air, can't put a single drive together for 55 min to even attempt a FG. Hey, 13 points lead with less then 5 min to go is sitting pretty (esp with Parcells OLD record of 77-0 when leading by 13+ in 4th quarter).
Sure, we could have taken a chance to TD and possible INT. But, there isn't a HC that would take the % play like BP. It's common sense. I bet most fans thought the game was over then too. Of course, **** happens!

Well thats true in a way. But I was commenting to me buddy, look, Offense will just dink and dunk and play it safe.

And I did leave expected Cowboys win obviously, but then all hell breaks loose. You have to say, those were just freak plays and partly due to offense playing it safe and partly due to Defense also playing it safe last few minutes.

As usual, like the saying goes most of the time, Prevent Defense only gets you to prevent a win. It happens so many times, but you see most teams still doing that anyway.

 

[Portland Fanatic]

You ALWAYS go for the touchdown...if you fail, THEN you put up 3. We were playing to only put up 3...that's BS!

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Look at it from a HC perspective. Your D is playing lights out and allowed 0 points for 55 min. Opposing O is sucking air, can't put a single drive together for 55 min to even attempt a FG. Hey, 13 points lead with less then 5 min to go is sitting pretty (esp with Parcells OLD record of 77-0 when leading by 13+ in 4th quarter).
Sure, we could have taken a chance to TD and possible INT. But, there isn't a HC that would take the % play like BP. It's common sense. I bet most fans thought the game was over then too. Of course, **** happens!

Oh, I know the other side. It's just I would have felt better if it would have put us up by 10 points as crazy as that sounds. There is something about a 6 or 13 point lead in the 4th quarter of a game that sends the message..."We will lose this game!"

I actually believe it's a sub-conscious message that only appears on those two point differentials!

 

[btcutter]

Oh, I know the other side. It's just I would have felt better if it would have put us up by 10 points as crazy as that sounds. There is something about a 6 or 13 point lead in the 4th quarter of a game that sends the message..."We will lose this game!"

I actually believe it's a sub-conscious message that only appears on those two point differentials!

Ok, imagin if Bledsoe threw an INT. Guess what this board is going to say? Should have played it safe, go for the FG, make it a two score game and let the Incredible D stop them..........when you lose, there's always hindsight.

 

[Hiero]

Bill made the right move playing it conservative, their offense had done absolutely zero all night, who would expect them to score 14 points in 3 minutes. the real tragedy is that Glenn got stuck guarding the fastest guy on their team, which is a huge mismatch. All bill/zimmer had to do was make a small adjustment which would have saved us the game. If Newman was on moss he definitely wouldnt have gotten burned twice, probably not even once.

 

[Doomsday101]

Ok, imagin if Bledsoe threw an INT. Guess what this board is going to say? Should have played it safe, go for the FG, make it a two score game and let the Incredible D stop them..........when you lose, there's always hindsight.

Exactly and to top it off the TV does not show everything so while people are saying one thing they don't have a clue as to what Bledsoe was seeing. We talked around here last week he has to throw it away when it is not there but now when he does he gets ripped? Bledsoe holds on to the ball to long? He didn't last night yet still completed a high percentage of his passes. I don't think Drew played a perfect game by any means but he played well enough for this team to win but mistakes down the stretch was our down fall

 

[NorTex]

I fully supported the approach to make sure we came away with 3 points. At 13-0, the way our defense was playing, I would have bet my house that we had that game in the bag.

There was no way in heck they were going to score TWO tds on our defense...sometimes its better to be lucky than good...the skins were lucky!

 

[Jimz31]

Once again.....

The "play not to lose" philosophy has reared it's ugly head again.

Anybody still want to doubt that we are NOT playing a "Play to win" philosophy?

 

[btcutter]

Vegas would have given you 20-1 odds that we win at that point. Who wouldn't have taken that bet at that point in time. You got to play the %.

 

[btcutter]

Once again.....

The "play not to lose" philosophy has reared it's ugly head again.

Anybody still want to doubt that we are NOT playing a "Play to win" philosophy?

that doesn't quite fly. We were winning and we were going to widen the winning margin. what's wrong with that? if the score was 0-0 then yeah, we played not to lose but the fact was we were winning and beating the Sh#! out of their offense for 55+ min.

 

[Juke99]

the problem with going for a FG is that it's still a two score game...

A TD in that situation ends the game.

 

[Portland Fanatic]

Once again.....

The "play not to lose" philosophy has reared it's ugly head again.

Anybody still want to doubt that we are NOT playing a "Play to win" philosophy?

Maybe the hiring of Weis as OC would fix that!!!!!!! Better yet...next year as HC, once BP is done.

 

[Portland Fanatic]

the problem with going for a FG is that it's still a two score game...

A TD in that situation ends the game.[/QUOTE]

BINGO...........message to Payton!

 

[CaptainAmerica]

What we did in that situation was the WRONG thing to do. Want proof? Look at the scoreboard. That's not hind-sight, a lot of us felt it when we played for the FG and saw the score at 13-0.

You telling me you don't feel uneasy in the early to mid 4th quarter and your team is up by 6 or 13 points? I do anytime it happens.

I'm not the coach, but I would have been playing to get the TD in that situation, not a lame FG where 2 possessions by the other team can beat you...as it did!

 

[ddh33]

I wasn't crazy about it, but I also completely understood it. 13 means they have to get two touchdowns. Until then, they hadn't even got one. And they had a limited amount of time. It's just that afterwards, things fell apart. I was much more annoyed by the playcalling after that last fieldgoal.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

I agree, CaptainAmerica... I'm glad Jimmy Johnson didn't have this philosophy on a muddy field in San Francisco in 1993 when we had a slim lead late in a slightly important game.

 

[wileedog]

the problem with going for a FG is that it's still a two score game...

A TD in that situation ends the game.

And an INT returned for a TD puts them right back in it.

Again, the Commanders had not only been held without a TD in this game, they hadn't gotten one last game either. THey were 0 for the season in 7.75 quarters. Risking losing points to make it a 2 TD game with 4 mins left is silliy when playing an offense that except for 2 plays and a scramble has looked utterly inept for 2 straight games.

If that's the Colts over there, by all means throw one into the end zone.

But that ain't the Colts over there.

 

[CanadianCowboysFan]

I fully supported the approach to make sure we came away with 3 points. At 13-0, the way our defense was playing, I would have bet my house that we had that game in the bag.

There was no way in heck they were going to score TWO tds on our defense...sometimes its better to be lucky than good...the skins were lucky!

I thought the same thing. We took the ball over at 12:25 to go and kicked the FG at about 5:50. I remember thinking, woohoo, knocked off almost seven minutes and got the points. I thought the game was in the bag.