A recap of all that was stupid during the 13th weekend of the 2014 NFL season…
The stupidest penalty
This essentially won the game for the San Diego Chargers in Baltimore:
Defensive pass interference was called on Anthony Levine, but that’s a ridiculous amount of contact from Malcom Floyd. At the very least, incidental penalties should have been called by Walt Anderson’s crew. As Ravens head coach John Harbaugh stated after the game, it’s clear the cornerback wasn’t given an opportunity to play defense.
The second-stupidest penalty
Devin Hester of the Falcons has an NFL-record 20 return touchdowns in his career, but that should probably be 21. It’s sort of ridiculous that Hester was called for grabbing the facemask of Cardinals punter Drew Butler just a few yards from the end zone, since Butler was the initiator:
The stupidest quarterback decision
Oh, Andy Dalton. You’re lucky your Bengals won, because this throw — down 10-0 in the second quarter — was unacceptable:
It’s one thing to have a lot of confidence in A.J. Green, but c’mon….
The stupidest 4th-down play
Ballsy decision from Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden, going for it on 4th-and-inches from his own 41-yard line down 11 points in the third quarter in Indianapolis. Little to lose, but the play call had me thinking he wanted to do exactly that. The hell was this?
An explanation from ESPN.com’s John Keim:
Gruden had something else called, then spotted a favorable matchup right before Indianapolis called a timeout. So he switched the play call and it led to more trouble for Washington.
On the fourth-and-1 call in the third quarter, Gruden said he originally wanted to run the ball with Alfred Morris. The Redskins used play-action instead, Colt McCoy was sacked, fumbled and the Colts returned it for a touchdown and a 35-17 lead en route to a 49-27 victory.
“I saw they had a guy play bump and run on DeSean [Jackson] with a safety, not much help” Gruden said. “So I decided on a play-action pass and launch it to DeSean and try to get it. I got a little greedy. That’s all I can say and we blew the protection.”
That was pretty much a game-clincher.
The stupidest coaching decision
Tony Romo is 34 years old and just a few weeks removed from missing time due to a pair of fractures in his back. And yet Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett had Romo on the field with five minutes remaining in a game which Dallas trailed by 23 points. That’s just silly.
In fact, it was tough to tell what the Cowboys were thinking in the fourth quarter of that blowout loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. After all, this is a team that punted on 4th-and-11 while down 23 points with six minutes to go, indicating it was waving the white flag. Then, Garrett went on to use all three of his timeouts on defense in order to get the ball back in Romo’s hands. Make up your mind!
The stupidest strategy
Matt Forte ranks third in the NFL with 1,478 yards from scrimmage. But against the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, Marc Trestman and the Chicago Bears handed the ball off to Forte only five times. That tied a career low. I know Detroit’s defense has been staunch against the run, but you can’t lack balance that badly against a solid all-around defense like that. A weapon like Forte can’t be ignored.
The stupidest, um, everything
Some controversy coming out of Sunday regarding Marvin Lewis’ decision to throw a challenge flag in order to get the attention of the officials in the dying moments of the Bengals-Buccaneers game. You can’t challenge plays inside two minutes of either half, but Lewis knew the Bucs had 12 men on the field on the previous play — a 21-yard completion to move Tampa Bay well within reach of the game-winning field goal.
If a coach has a timeout to spare, I’ve got no issue with him throwing the challenge flag there. Lewis had tried to call timeout but apparently couldn’t get through to Bill Leavy’s crew. And that’s what leads us to the stupid:
1. How could Leavy’s crew miss the fact that Tampa Bay had 12 men in the huddle and throughout the entire play? This wasn’t one of those cases in which a guy was late getting off the field — the Bucs ran a full play with an extra player.
2. How could Leavy’s crew fail to see Lewis asking for a review and/or a timeout?
3. How did nobody at the NFL’s command center notice?
4. Why the hell can’t coaches use their challenge flags whenever they want? I understand that the league wants to be able to review anything in the last two minutes, but if a coach has challenges left, why does it hurt anybody to give him the ability to use them? Wouldn’t that just provide some extra coverage in order to ensure that nothing is missed?
5. How does Lovie Smith let this happen?
