someone was banned for saying mental aptitude?
Talk about sensitive.
At the time, I though Tomlin's decision to kick in OT was absurd. But in hindsight, I support it.
As Tomlin stated, their kick off team was doing a great job of landing the kickoffs around the 2 yard line with a lot of hangtime. Our returners are mostly awful. And our offense was struggling to sustain long drives.
Our D was playing lights out and the plan worked as Tomlin hoped it would, giving us the ball with good field position, only needing reasonable yardage to get us in field goal range for the.
Sadly, Juju fumbled those plans away.
We started that drive at the 31, only 6 yards more than a kick off into the endzone and 15 yards more than our average starting positions. There is also the chance your return team has a big return.
That yardage isn't worth giving the other team the chance to beat you.
Why would the Ravens kick the ball into the end zone when they had success forcing the Steelers to return it by kicking inside the 5 with hang time and covering the KO? A chance our return team has a big KO return, yes, there is a chance but what hsa a greater chance of happening? The Ravens kick it inside the 5 and the return sets the Steelers up somewhere between the 20 and 25 or the Steelers KO return team returns it 40 yards or more? And, the Steelers would need a TD to win, when they took over on the 31 yard line, they needed 39 (probably less) yards to give Boz a chance to win the game. I'll take a 39 yard drive for a FG over a 60 plus yard drive and needing a TD any day.
The only way its a bad decision is if the Steeler defense gives up a TD and that seemed unlikely to happen based on the 2nd half defense. Even if the Ravens get a FG frm Tucker, the Steelers get their chance for a TD or FG and get 4 downs on every series until they make the decision to kick and tie or go for the win with a TD. That's a big advantage to have,
Pappy
1.20 - JC Latham, OT, Alabama
2.51 - Xavier leggette, WR, South Carolina
3.84 - Sedrick Van-Pran Granger, OC, Georgia
3.98 - Andru Phillips, CB, Kentucky
4.119 - Maason Smith, DT, LSU
7.178 -
7.195 -
"Football is a physical game, well, it used to be anyways" - Mel Blount
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