I haven’t read any critical analysts who agree with these decisions.
You shouldn’t need that. The approach is painfully obvious. I’m not suggesting that it was the reason we won the game. That of course would be foolish. But understanding why it makes more sense to go for the two early rather than later is crystal clear.
If you knew you were going to need three scores, would you want to know that after the first or second TD? Obviously, and without question, you would want to know after the first TD. When that happened, your path to victory was 1000% clear. Get a stop (which you would need either way), score as quickly as humanly possible to give yourself as much time as possible, get the onside kick, and get a TD or FG.
If you wait, you still need a stop and a score, but you don’t know whether you need the onside kick. So are you scoring as fast as possible or in the back of your mind are you also trying to run clock in case you make the two to leave less time for atl? If you run clock, you have less time to get the third score and you possibly sabatoge the odds of scoring the second TD.
Okay, so let’s say you score the second TD with probably less time on the clock. Now you miss the conversion. That’s fair right, your scenario can’t have a made 2-point conversion? Otherwise, you aren’t arguing about when to go for two. You’re arguing that making the two is better, which of course we all know.
So tell me again how waiting for the conversion on the second TD is better? You still need the onside kick but this time you might have less time. I certainly don’t see any logical reason for why you would have more time.