If the Giants had driven 59 yards in 28 seconds to win last night’s game with a touchdown, Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy would have been wearing a supersized set of goat horns today.
With a five-point lead and a ticking clock after a third-down run that left the Cowboys facing fourth and eight from the Giants’ 32, McCarthy did not do what coaches usually do in that situation. Specifically, he didn’t stand next to an official, watching the play clock and waiting to call a timeout with only one second left.
Instead, the field-goal unit started out to the field, with both the game clock and the play clock running. The snap came with two seconds on the play clock — and the 51-yard field goal missed, wide.
McCarthy was asked about the failure to call a timeout before the field goal, which would have given the Cowboys a more relaxed and deliberate chance to set up for the snap, hold, and kick.
“That was the plan,” McCarthy told reporters after the game. “They like the rhythm of it. They wanted to stay in rhythm. So that was by design.”
It’s unclear who “they” is. “They” might not include he who missed the kick. From the locker room, Brandon Aubrey initially attributed his first career miss from 50 or more yards to his hip alignment. Then Aubrey added this: “Maybe a little bad eye discipline watching the play clock instead of my target line.”
Was he rushed by the play clock?
“No, I wasn’t rushed at all,” Aubrey said. “Just bad eye discipline.”
Eye discipline becomes irrelevant if McCarthy had called the timeout. Aubrey’s candor proves that McCarthy blew a basic element of game management.
As Rodney Harrison suggested on PFT Live when we discussed McCarthy’s mistake, the real reason for it might have been arrogance.
Fifty-one-yard field goal? It’s a chip shot. He can make it with his eyes closed. Or, as the case may be, with his eyes drawn to the play clock.
The fact that the Giants didn’t win the game doesn’t excuse it. The Cowboys gave the Giants a gift in the form of a chance they shouldn’t have had. When a team gives its opponents chances like that, it’s just a matter of time before it blows up in its face.