It is unavoidable.
It is a law of nature.
It is a reality as old as time.
Whenever an all-time blunder with game- and season-changing significance occurs in a major sport, you can count on human beings to criticize the coach or (in a solo-athlete sport) the thought process of the athlete. Naturally, football is a team sport, so the focus here belongs on Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh.
Did Harbaugh make the wrong decision at the end of Saturday’s game against Michigan State?
Some people thought — and still think — that throwing a Hail Mary pass to the opposite end zone is what the Wolverines should have done. The idea is equivalent to a basketball player, with four or five seconds left, throwing the ball high in the air to the other end of the court, especially if no player on the opposing team is particularly close to the baseline near his own basket. That’s a way to drain time without giving the opponent a realistic chance of scoring.
Was this the path Harbaugh should have taken?
In a slightly different circumstance, yes… but we didn’t have a slightly different circumstance on Saturday evening in Ann Arbor, which is precisely the point.
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Let’s say one more thing about the basketball example mentioned above, in order to develop the point of this piece: A player would not use the “throw the ball in the air to the other (vacant) end of the court” tactic with seven or more seconds left. The opposing team could gather the ball with three or four seconds left, fire the ball downcourt, and very realistically get off a decent 35-foot look before the buzzer. It’s definitely better — if you’re leading by two points — to get fouled and add a point to the lead, such that a 35-footer can’t beat you. If you make both foul shots, you’re going to win, with a four-point cushion. Only with four or fewer seconds left on the clock (maybe five, but probably not) would this tactic be reasonable.
From that explanation, we can see that punting was CLEARLY, without ANY doubt whatsoever, the proper move for Harbaugh to make in the situation presented to him on Saturday.
First, the ball was near the 50. Let’s say Michigan did what some fans (not a majority, but enough to notice on Twitter in the aftermath of it all) recommended. Maybe a Hail Mary would have taken 10 seconds. I’m sure that at least a portion of this subgroup of observers had the idea that the quarterback (Jake Rudock) would have bought time in the pocket, dancing around for several seconds before flinging his pass. Yes, in that circumstance, a Hail Mary would have drained all 10 seconds from the game clock — the botched punt originated with 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
However, this is the problem one encounters: If Michigan State gets a pass rush, Rudock would not have had the ability to waste time dancing around. Moreover, a Hail Mary involves a deep dropback on the part of the quarterback. This is not a three- or five-step dropback situation. If Michigan State generated a pass rush, Rudock might have taken a 12-yard sack to the 38, which would put a 55-yard field goal into the realm of possibility for Michigan State.
Let’s not allow a calamitous result of a play to retroactively influence our judgment of Harbaugh’s decision. It was by far the best decision when you account for the line of scrimmage from which the play originated.
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Let’s use a hypothetical here, involving the Hail Mary tactic:
With the ball near the 50, Michigan State — in the event of a fourth-down stop on a Hail Mary which didn’t use all 10 seconds — would have had a shot at a Hail Mary of its own. If Michigan and Blake O’Neill managed a pedestrian 20-yard punt (actually, that’s not even pedestrian for a punt; it’s below-average), that alone would have taken Michigan State out of Hail Mary range. The Spartans would have had no more than six seconds, probably only five, on the clock. They would have had time for only one play, in all likelihood. MAYBE they would have tried to throw a nine-yard pass in four seconds and then see if Connor Cook, from his own 39, could have gunned the ball near the goal line. Still, the Spartans’ odds would have been incredibly remote.
The key point to emphasize is that from the 50, Michigan did not need big yardage on the punt; it just needed to get the punt off and gain at least 15 or so yards from it. The lack of a need to attain considerable distance on the punt is precisely what made the move that much more unassailable.
Yes, had there been only five seconds left on the clock, the Hail Mary would have been a better move. Actually, Rudock would have just been able to run 15 yards backwards, easily out of the range of any MSU pass rusher, and then take a knee with no time left before anyone could get to him. With five or fewer seconds left, that would have been the play for Harbaugh.
However, that’s not the world he lived in — there were 10 seconds left, and so the punt was the right decision.
Process. Results. As we see with Ned Yost and Terry Collins in the baseball playoffs (and with Ron Washington in previous years with the Texas Rangers), the right process and the right result are often unrelated to each other. The same goes for the wrong process and the wrong results.
Jim Harbaugh made the right move, but then SPORTS happened.
It happens. It’s part of an imperfect world populated by fundamentally good but flawed human beings.
That’s just the way it is, and fans have to be able to accept it, as much as it might pain them to do so.
