Play selection is easy to criticize in football. If you run and get stuffed, the masses will say you should have passed. If a pass is blanketed by the defense, the critics will shout about the need to have run the ball.
Those are generalizations, but they’re part of how reactions to — and assessments of — play calls have worked for a long time. Knee-jerk responses and second guesses will always accompany coaching decisions in a big-stage sport played once per week.
What matters more in the analysis of coaching decisions is the realm of the specific. It’s not so much whether a team ran or passed (it sometimes matters a lot and it often matters a little, but it hardly ever means everything); the more important discussion concerns the KIND of run or pass play the coordinator or head coach selected.
With Notre Dame’s final 2-point conversion attempt against Clemson on Saturday night, the idea of a running play wasn’t the worst part of Kelly’s call; the appearance of no genuine pass option is what made the call an inferior one. The details made the call deficient, not the fundamental fact that it was a run instead of a pass.
It is with this focus in mind that we will look at the most controversial game-management decision of the night, one which helped shape the endgame and the ultimate outcome of Irish-Tigers in Death Valley.
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Two plays into the fourth quarter, Notre Dame scored to trim Clemson’s lead to 12 points, at 21-9. You don’t need any elaborate explanation here on the significance of 12 or any other spread; very simply, at 12, a team needs two touchdowns to take the lead. At 11, a touchdown, 2-point try, and a field goal would tie.
Friday morning, after Thursday night’s Miami-Cincinnati game, we discussed Al Golden’s decision — when down by 11 with 4:41 in the fourth quarter — to go for a touchdown instead of a field goal which would have brought the Hurricanes within eight points (34-26). As you’ll see in that piece if you haven’t already examined it, a lot of different factors need to be brought into these decisions. If all or some of those factors were appreciably different, a different decision might have been warranted.
The link between that Miami situation and this situation with Kelly at the start of the fourth quarter is that a 2-point conversion — which makes eight-point deficits very different from seven-point deficits — figured into the mix at some point. This was slightly more immediate a concern for Golden, given that he was down 11. For Kelly, being down 12, he could have kicked the PAT to trail by 11, but he knew that he might have needed a 2-point try a little later under that scenario, so he went for it earlier instead.
That’s not a terrifically unreasonable move on his part, much as Golden was trying to get the touchdown and 2-point try before getting the field goal for Miami on Thursday. Lots of analysts encourage going for two earlier in a game rather than later, so that you can map out possessions and timeout usage accordingly.
Kelly’s decision had some logic behind it. Why, then, does it still feel like a subpar move?
It’s not an open and shut case, but there is some weight behind the argument against Kelly’s decision at 21-9 early in the fourth.
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If an ample number of people think — with considerable and legitimate justification, I should reiterate — that going for two earlier rather than later is the right path, one must ask, “How early (or late) in a game should one begin to entertain these notions?”
For instance, if you’re down by eight midway through the second quarter, should you feel you have to go for two in order to forge a tie, when two and a half quarters of game play still lie in front of you? The expression “chasing points” is meant to be applied in these situations, when coaches try to attain a tied score or some other ideal spread well before the endgame phase (and/or the lead-up to the endgame phase) has begun. With so many twists and turns likely to emerge before the endgame phase, wanting to be tied — or up by three, or up by seven, or whatever ideal threshold you want — seems premature. The failure to get what you want in those instances can become exposed over the next two quarters. The costs of failure outweigh the benefits of success.
We go back to the question raised two paragraphs above: How early (or late) in a game should coaches think about getting a 2-point try out of the way?
In Kelly’s defense, Clemson’s offense had begun to stagnate, so if the Irish’s head coach felt his defense would keep the Tigers locked at 21 the rest of the night, one can accept his decision a little more. That said, with roughly a whole quarter left to play, carrying that very expectation — and not allowing for the possibility that Clemson would at least score a field goal — became a bigger risk on Kelly’s part.
With only half a quarter left instead of (roughly) a full one, the idea that his defense could shut out Clemson the rest of the way would have been much more realistic. Accordingly, making this same move — in a 21-9 game — would have been a lot harder to knock if Notre Dame didn’t have as much time to work with.
Nearly a full quarter, though? That’s a lot of time in my mind — maybe not to you (in which case you should be comfortable with Kelly’s move), but certainly to me.
In the decades I’ve followed college football, I generally have come to adhere to the last eight to 10 minutes as the window in which to get serious about plotting out “endgame” moves such as getting the 2-point conversion out of the way. Before that window, points should generally not be chased.
Let’s show some flexibility and an appreciation for different situations, however.
In a high-scoring game — let’s say 41-29 instead of 21-9 — it would have been much easier for Kelly to kick the one-point PAT. Clemson, with 41 under this hypothetical, would have been a lot more likely to tack on at least another field goal, so being down 11 would have given Notre Dame a comfort zone.
If, on the other hand, the score was 18-6 for Clemson, and the Tigers had kicked six field goals, maybe a 2-point try two plays into the fourth quarter might have made more sense. “Clemson can’t dent the end zone against our defense. I think we can trust our players to keep us in the game even if the 2-point try fails and we have to get two touchdowns (down by 12) to win.”
I want to underscore the point that this is not a fixed situation. When down 12, there’s no universally right answer to this 2-point conversion puzzle. Generally, though, it’s better for coaches to wait until a game’s stretch run to get additional points through a 2-point try. Where and how coaches define the start of the “stretch run” is something only they can do.
However, being more elastic and open to negative developments can be a real friend to coaches.
I’ll give you an example not of a 2-point conversion, but of the inverse: one team intentionally giving another team a safety. (P.S. — I am going to write about the safety Jim Mora, Jr. of UCLA intentionally took against Arizona State on Saturday. Look for that story on Monday, here at The Student Section.)
When taking a late safety, the one easy point spread in which to do such a thing is six points. Up six, you can lose on a touchdown and PAT, but the opponent cannot tie you with a field goal. At four points, the situation is exactly the same. Taking the safety to gain around 25 yards on the ensuing free kick — while not changing the fundamental reality of what the opponent has to do to beat you — is a no-brainer.
When the intentional safety becomes more difficult is when the two-point surrender reduces leverage to a more considerable degree. If a team takes a safety to see a lead reduced from seven points to five, that matters a lot. It can no longer go to overtime in the event that it gives up a touchdown; it will lose. Similarly, when a team up by five gives up a safety to lead by only three, it is allowing a field goal to tie. Naturally, teams should give up those safeties only when the game is near its end (in the final 30 seconds or so). With a full minute left, a team up seven should never freely concede two points.
Some would say, though, that whether you’re up seven or five, the opponent still has to get a touchdown to beat you, and if the opponent fails, you win. That is true. However, like the manager in baseball who intentionally walks the star hitter and puts him on first base as the go-ahead run, giving up the safety to go from a seven-point lead down to a five-point lead invites a new set of possibilities in which you lose (instead of going to overtime). It is this constant tug of war between the hope for an ideal scenario and the awareness of possible negative alternatives which has to guide a coach’s thought process on these matters. If you can minimize the negative scenarios, the strategy should become more attractive. If you can’t, though, you shouldn’t go through with the strategy.
Let’s go back to Kelly and the Notre Dame-Clemson scenario one last time to drive home the point (and the verdict).
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Down 21-3 (18 points), Kelly looked at the long road in front of him and thought, “I need a TD, a 2-point conversion, a second TD, and a field goal to tie. If I miss the 2-point conversion, I still have plenty of time — nearly a full quarter — in which to score two touchdowns.”
What Kelly didn’t account for — perhaps intentionally, as hinted above — is that Clemson would get a field goal. In many ways, though, the argument here is that Kelly should have done exactly that.
The explanation: Kelly might have been busy adding 8 plus 7 plus 3 to get to overtime (21-21) when Notre Dame was about to score that first touchdown and create the 21-9 score early in the fourth quarter. He might have wanted to be down by 10 and not 11 so that the thorny nature of the 2-point conversion would no longer affect him or his team. Indeed, trailing by 10 puts the 2-point conversion out of the picture the rest of the way.
My guess — and it is a guess — is that Kelly was fixated on the question of being down 10, 11 or 12. Did it matter that much if he was down 12 versus 11? If not, it was then worth it for Kelly to try to be down by only 10. I think Kelly got wrapped up in this question — 10, 11 or 12 — when he made his decision two plays into the fourth quarter.
Had Kelly put more stock into the idea that with nearly a full quarter left, Clemson wouldn’t have gotten shut out, he would have re-thought his move and come up with a better counter-argument: “Do I want — in the event of a Clemson field goal (which I hope to prevent but acknowledge might happen) — to be down 15, 14 or 13?
See how that question — a product of playing out scenarios — changes the whole ballgame?
If Kelly had allowed for the possibility of a Clemson field goal in nearly a full quarter of action (as opposed to roughly half the quarter or anything inside the final 10 minutes of the game), he would have realized that if he trailed by 12, Clemson had the chance to build the lead back to 15 points… which is precisely what it did. Trailing by 15, Notre Dame had to go for another 2-point try… the one which failed and thereby sealed defeat for the Fighting Irish.
If, on the other hand, Kelly accounted for a Clemson field goal and nothing more in that final quarter, he would have kicked the PAT when down 21-9. Here’s the key to this whole piece: Kelly would have valued an 11-point deficit not as a gateway to trailing by eight points and forging a tie from that end; the 11-point deficit would have been particularly valuable for Notre Dame (as opposed to Miami the other night) because it would have removed the need for a 2-point try if Clemson scored a field goal. If Kelly had seen the issue through this lens, he wouldn’t have made the decision he made.
Clearly, Kelly saw this in a different way. He had some valid reasons, but from my vantage point, the counter-arguments were better than Kelly’s argument.
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There is, ultimately, a time and a place for everything. This very much includes when to go for two, and more specifically, when to conclude that a game is in its home stretch and therefore demands a different way of proceeding. Being able to break up a game into its endgame phase and its preliminary phase is, in many ways, the bigger topic of importance here in the aftermath of Notre Dame-Clemson. The 2-point conversion issue isn’t exactly peripheral, but it is secondary to the larger tension between the “preliminary or regular” game and the “endgame phase” of a football contest.
