Bob Sacamano

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I remember the play so vividly and thinking when they did it initially I didnt have a problem with it but I made a mental note about it for some reason. After the next play when they flashed that it was 3rd down I immediately realized that it was a bad call to spike the ball for a bunch of reasons.
Green Bay was on its heals
We had PLENTY of time
We had a Time out in our pocket


Some people may say "how can you give Garret shit if you yourself didn't have a problem with it"

The difference

Im a fan who was on my couch with my 2 kids playing in front of me with distractions everywhere and even I had an inkling something was off.

I wasnt the coach of this team whose sole purpose is to prepare for these very instances and make the right call

Thats why Garrett is a major problem

Exactly how it went in my head. I was like 'wtf' but only in my head. Then a split second later I was like, 'kind of makes sense given the situation; don't want to knock yourself out of FG range'.

Turns out our initial reaction was right. That subconscious fear of late game, Rodgers heroics.
 

Bob Sacamano

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The best thing to do in that situation IMO is line it up quickly and take a shot into the endzone. It would basically have saved the same purpose but taken a couple of more seconds off the clock.
 

Dustdevil

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First you admit you are a fucking idiot just like Garrett was with the spike decision, then you resort to this stupid assed response when called on it? You've moved passed stupid into a whole new category.
Well I suppose in hindsight it might have not been the right decision, although nobody knows what would have happened on that extra down. But it's not the slam dunk no-brainer you guys are making it out to be. Imagine being on the 17 with 25 sec. left. Would a TO be nice to have there? Even better, how about the ball on the 3 with 12 sec. left?

I'm hearing a lot of "if we hadn't spiked the ball" or "if we had just tried that 73 yd. FG at the end of the half" stuff. You want to know why we lost?

Offense:
QB: Best rookie QB in the league backed up by the best $18 M 2nd string QB money can buy.
RB: Best RB in the league backed up by last year's 1000 yard rusher backed up by a solid former 1000 yard rusher.
OL: 3 All Pros and 2 pretty decent G's who are fairly interchangable.

Defense: Sean Lee and......

That's where we need to concentrate our efforts. We're not one play away. Atlanta would have killed us.

Now the question of whether or not Garrett is a good coach is a different matter. I will say he did a BETTER job of clock management than he did last year, but that's as far as I'm willing to go.
 

NoMoRedJ

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I don't think Jerry had anything to do with that.

Not specifically but he hired the red clown and has kept the red clown so he deserves to be included. It was a failed attempt at a post.

But Garrett used the "we" and we as fans dont know who the we was. Was it just Garrett using a plural pronoun to deflect from him as the lone one responsible for the decision?
 

Doomsday

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Offense:
QB: Best rookie QB in the league backed up by the best $18 M 2nd string QB money can buy.
RB: Best RB in the league backed up by last year's 1000 yard rusher backed up by a solid former 1000 yard rusher.
OL: 3 All Pros and 2 pretty decent G's who are fairly interchangable.

Defense: Sean Lee and......

That's where we need to concentrate our efforts.
You keep stating the obvious and what everyone knows. It's got nothing to do with what happened, IN THAT SITUATION. It's just deflection via excuse making.

In the end the head coach decided to TRUST THIS DEFENSE to keep GB from getting into FG range. And he didn't have to, he could have left them, no time to operate. Bottom line.
 

LAZARUS_LOGAN

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Not specifically but he hired the red clown and has kept the red clown so he deserves to be included. It was a failed attempt at a post.

But Garrett used the "we" and we as fans dont know who the we was. Was it just Garrett using a plural pronoun to deflect from him as the lone one responsible for the decision?

No doubt.
 

Dustdevil

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You keep stating the obvious and what everyone knows. It's got nothing to do with what happened, IN THAT SITUATION. It's just deflection via excuse making.

In the end the head coach decided to TRUST THIS DEFENSE to keep GB from getting into FG range. And he didn't have to, he could have left them, no time to operate. Bottom line.
But "no time to operate" for the GB offense also means "no time to operate" for Dallas as well. It would be great if we could score at will and leave no time on the clock, but nobody's that good. Nobody counted on or wanted the drive to end at the 32. (unless you're saying we should have played for the FG)

I just don't think this is the hill you want to die on if you want to prove Garrett's a bad coach.
 

Doomsday

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But "no time to operate" for the GB offense also means "no time to operate" for Dallas as well.
Actually no, it does not. You run a play there, preferably a shot at the end zone, one that if what Dak wanted wasn't there he throws the ball away. We had them on their heels with no idea what to do and instead gave them a free time out
I just don't think this is the hill you want to die on if you want to prove Garrett's a bad coach.

He proves that all by himself, all the time. If you don't think so there's no amount of forum board posting that could possibly change your mind. I'm not trying to prove what is already a established fact for all except the few mindless fanboys he has.

Let's see: We drove 90 yards for a TD on them in about 30 seconds back in October at Lambeau with Dak, and Ginger thought it was okay to give Rodgers 34 seconds and two time outs to drive for a FG on us. He trusted this defense. That really should be all the proof you needed.
 

LAZARUS_LOGAN

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Let's see: We drove 90 yards for a TD on them in about 30 seconds back in October at Lambeau with Dak, and Ginger thought it was okay to give Rodgers 34 seconds and two time outs to drive for a FG on us. He trusted this defense. That really should be all the proof you needed.


And yet in the first half, when in the red zone... he didn't trust his All-Pro RB.
 

ThoughtExperiment

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https://theringer.com/cowboys-packers-dak-prescott-spike-2e6aba1a8c5e#.qs2y5owr2


For decades, it was conventional baseball wisdom that a sacrifice bunt was a smart thing to do. Runs are rare, and teams gladly gave up one of their 27 outs to put a player closer to scoring. But when people started actually thinking about the math of baseball, they realized this doesn’t always make sense. The reward isn’t so great. Moving a runner from first to second matters only if you get a single, since a double, triple, or homer would score them anyway. And the cost is high: Hits happen rarely, about a quarter of the time a player comes to bat. Each sacrifice bunt costs a team one of their three (or two) opportunities in a given inning to make that happen. They make it slightly easier for a team to score once while making it much harder for them to score multiple times. Unless a team really needs one run or a particularly bad hitter is batting, the sacrifice isn’t helpful.

Football’s version of the sacrifice bunt is the spike. Instead of sacrificing one of your three outs for a better position, you’re sacrificing one of your four downs for the ability to stop the clock. Although a team is normally assessed an intentional grounding penalty for throwing the ball to nobody, the rulebook specifically grants a team the right to concede a down to save a few precious seconds.

But time hadn’t yet become precious for the Dallas Cowboys when they opted to spike the ball Sunday night. There were 67 seconds remaining when Dallas completed the previous play, and the team had a timeout remaining down only three points with the ball on Green Bay’s 40-yard line. After spiking it on first down, with 49 seconds left, the Cowboys’ second-down play went just 7 yards, and on third down Dak Prescott threw an incompletion. Now facing fourth down, the Cowboys kicked a game-tying field goal with 35 seconds remaining. After the Packers got the ball back and drove down the field, the team had enough time — three seconds remaining — to kick a game-winning field goal. After its 34–31 loss, the best team in the NFC this regular season won’t play in the conference’s championship game.
We spent the day with Dallas Cowboys fans at AT&T Stadium on the day their team was eliminated from the playoffs. Join us (in masks) as we experience the highs and lows of being a Cowboys fan.

The Cowboys’ spike was the strangest in football this season. NFL teams opted to spike the ball 69 times this year, including the Cowboys’ spike on Sunday night. Only eight spikes took place with 45 seconds or more remaining in a half. Six of these were by teams that did not have a timeout remaining; one of the only remaining two was by the Cowboys on Sunday night.

So far as I can tell, only one other team had chosen to spike a ball with 45 seconds or more remaining and a timeout in hand while trailing by just one possession since this 49ers-Cardinals game in 2013. (Because I like talking about old, bad quarterbacks, I got excited when I thought it could be this 2011 Cowboys game when Stephen McGee spiked the ball with 1:38 remaining or this 2009 Falcons game when Chris Redman spiked the ball with 1:20 to go, but alas, both teams had burned all their timeouts and there was more than 45 seconds on the clock in those instances.)

The spike certainly can be used as a critical football strategy in the game’s dying moments, as proved time and again this season. The Packers beat the Bears thanks to a spike, as they were able to get to the line and kill the clock after a 60-yard pass that let them kick a game-winning field goal. The Steelers used two spikes before their game-winning touchdown on Christmas against the Ravens and would’ve needed a third if Antonio Brown had been stopped short of the end zone. Three spikes helped the Colts beat the Jaguars on a game-winning touchdown with 14 seconds to go. The Titans set up their game-winning field goal against the Chiefs with a spike. The only other time the Cowboys had spiked the ball this season, they had the opposite problem, running out of seconds instead of downs: Week 1 against the Giants, a pair of spikes helped the Cowboys put together part of a late drive, but it ended when Terrance Williams decided to cut back inbounds instead of stopping the clock by running out of bounds.

Most teams have figured out when to properly value downs vs. time. We’ve seen teams mess it up in college before — Rutgers spiked the ball on fourth down a few years back — but most NFL teams have a solid grasp of when to spike and when not to spike. Besides Dallas on Sunday night, it’s difficult to find another scenario this year when a team ran out of downs due to a spike. The Titans gave the ball up with 41 seconds after a spike due to three straight incompletions, and the Texans left 23 seconds on the clock after following up a spike with two incompletions and a sack, but these are pretty much the most egregious examples. (Plus, they featured Matt Cassel and Brock Osweiler at QB, which explains why there were so many incompletions.)

This goes to highlight the rarity of what Dallas did — and the potential consequences of misplaying a spike situation. In all the successful situations we listed, teams were smart to recognize that time had become more valuable than downs. That simply wasn’t the case for the Cowboys. Even if it took them 10 seconds to communicate a play, they would have had almost a minute to go with less than half the field in front of them and the ability to stop the clock with a timeout. But it likely wouldn’t have taken them 10 extra seconds. The team already had to get to the line of scrimmage and get set in order to spike the ball. Considering how well-practiced teams are in two-minute drills, communicating the next play via hand signals and yelling probably would have added five seconds or less.

With four downs at their disposal, the Cowboys’ failure to go 10 yards in two plays would have meant little. With only three, that failure prevented them from pushing for a game-winning touchdown and gave Green Bay the ball back with enough time to win in regulation.

But the easy answer for the Cowboys was to spike and reorganize. While we gasp at other wastes of a down — say, a team punting on fourth-and-1 — the spike seems more understandable. Since we know it’s important for the offense to preserve time, and we know communication takes time, the Cowboys’ spike seemed to pass without much criticism. But a poorly used spike is just as wasteful of a down as a premature punt. Like a sacrifice bunt, it’s an intentional decision to not try to succeed offensively when the game’s rules have given a team the chance to do so.

In the end, the Packers won due to a seemingly impossible play. But they were helped toward it by one in which the Cowboys opted not to play at all. Aaron Rodgers’s strike to Jared Cook proved that preposterously talented football players can improvise magic and make the impossible possible — but only if they actually choose to try, instead of voluntarily throwing a precious chance into the ground.

This piece was updated after publication with more information about the last time such a spike occurred in a playoff game.
 

cml750

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When we rushed to the line and spiked it, my first reaction was "why the fuck did we do that?" We had plenty of time, the defense was on their heels, and we still had a time out. It literally made zero sense to me.

I thought it was a rookie mistake and would've given Dak a pass. To find out that decision came from the head fucking coach, its inexcusable.

Did you expect different?
 
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