Rams head coach Sean McVay is feeling the heat of an on field decision to punt rather than back the offense in their week 3 loss to the Bengals.
McVay found himself having to explain why the rams didn’t go for it with 6.09 to play on the fourth and five, which called for a broke or bust approach.
The team was trailing by 10 points and would need two scores to win which meant going for the fourth down, scoring then recovering the ball from an onside kick, something the LA team has not done in 11 years.
The smart play was to punt, and keep his team in the game, despite the Hail Mary of an onside kick recovery.
But critics believe the HC got it wrong.
On his decision of whether he thought of go for broke he said, ” thought about it, just didn’t feel like it was the right thing. There were some struggles that we had on third down and so had confidence in our defense at that point and so that was kind of the thought process there.”
Maybe there wasn’t that innate belief his offense could pull off a string of clutch plays, plus the near miracle recovery of the onside kick.
The head coach continued to justify his decision.
“A lot of it is, OK, what’s the inventory that you would have?” he said. “Where are you at in regards to who’s available? What’s your injury situation? So certain models and metrics that I definitely believe in, but I also think there’s a feel for the flow of the game and then there’s 22 moving parts. That’s a huge factor to me.”
McVay had plenty on his mind and probably made the correct call, but hindsight is a perfect science, a mythical recover and score not so much.
The Rams will not have much time to overtime the decision as they travel to Colts in a potentially explosive week 4 encounter. The colts are top of the AFC South Division while the 1 and 2 Rams will be out to quell ‘could-ofs’ and ‘should-ofs’.
