After the Eagles made the ill-advised decision to throw the ball on third and three with less than two minutes to play and the Falcons out of timeouts, the Eagles opted to kick a field goal and go up by six instead of going for it and, if unsuccessful, giving the Falcons the ball at or about their own 10, with a field goal needed to force overtime.
On Wednesday, coach Nick Sirianni was asked about the decision to kick the field goal. He made it clear that he believed it was the right call, and he said his own numbers backed it up.
“I’ve put myself in that situation prior to the call, so I felt like in the moment my conviction in the moment was I knew exactly what I want,” Sirianni told reporters. “Again, is the outcome always what you want? No. But your conviction in the call, I was completely convicted that kicking the field goal there was the right decision, based on all my studies. Now, I come back and I re-evaluate it, right? And I’m even more convicted, to be quite honest with you.”
He cited in support of the decision the “stress to having to have to score a touchdown when you’re giving a ball back to a team.”
Right, but kicking the field goal guarantees they’ll get it back. Going for it includes the possibility that they’ll never get it back, at all.
Sirianni added that his decisions aren’t entirely driven by the numbers.
“Analytics is a piece,” he said. “League study is a piece. This game always comes down to players and plays, right? What plays do you have the most confidence in to your players in those particular cases, right? And so that’s where your confidence is coming from to go for things on that.”
Sirianni said that, when they do go for it, it’s because of the quality of their players.
“No decision that a coach makes is made just on a piece of paper that says, ‘The chart says to go for it here,’” Sirianni said. “It’s not that easy and it’s not that black and white. There’s so many things that factor into it.”
Regardless, the decision made in this specific case didn’t work. And that’s the bottom line. Philadelphia’s misadventures on Monday night became a data point that points to going for it entailing a greater chance of winning the game.
And an even greater chance of winning if they’d simply run the ball and milked the clock on third down.
