12-29-2024, 11:11 AM
(12-29-2024, 01:27 AM)Isaac Curtis: The Real #85 Wrote: I have been very critical of ZT.
But the decision to score after Brown's injury was the correct one.
Now, one can question if we should have been kneeling from jump if the plan was to drain the clock...
Correct, the decision to score a touchdown after he got hurt was correct. The problem I have is the 1st down play and the mentality.
Chase should have been told to go right into the middle of the pile and that is it. We all know defenses are going to try to strip the ball and that can take several seconds before an official will even blow the play dead. If he does that twice we can take off close to 8 seconds minimum each time from the time the Bengals snap the ball to the time he runs into the line and they try to strip him before the official blows the play dead.
That is approximately 14-16 seconds off of the 1:39 that was left,plus they force Denver to use both of their timeouts. Bengals then snap the ball once again on third down now with no Denver time outs left and that uses around another 7 seconds and then you allow the play clock to start and use those 40 seconds. With all of that said, you give your field goal kicker a chip shot field goal at around 20-21 yards and you give Denver the ball back with around 37 or 38 seconds left on the clock and no timeouts.
This game is all about risk reward but, again, going into the first down play after the Jamar Chase catch is what I'm discussing and talking about. After Brown got hurt then I totally understand needing a TD score.
We've seen Zak Taylor for years not manipulate the clock to his advantage at both end of halves and at end of games and we've also seen him waste timeouts that seem almost inevitable every game.
Believe it or not, high school teams even practice all clock situations and having the ball and having the ability to utilize the clock to your full advantage and either not give your opponent the ball back or with minimal seconds is practiced all the time whether it's at Midfield or down by the goal line and that's especially true when you have a very very poor defense and one that ranks almost at the bottom of the entire NFL. And, sure enough, it came true to form and totally worked against Cincinnati.
