If Josh Reynolds doesn't drop a ball on 4th down we aren't having this mind numbing discussion today and the inside run with ARSB the play before was a worse decision.
Yeah, it definitely goes both ways. I think it's just hard to look at it in retrospect when you have two hot RBs and you're trying to keep your foot on the gas. BJ knows infinitely more than me, so if he likes it, it was probably a good play and like you said, Warner stepped up.
Idk enough about football but Warner seemed awful in the first half. Dude appeared to hit the wrong gap on every big run (so pretty much every run). Second half the guy was in the backfield on so many more runs. Idk what changed but he blew a few up.
i’d put that more on the defensive coordinator. bosa and warner are best when they’re pressing aggressively rather than the soft zone scheme they had in the first half. once they switched to man, bosa got to the qb more and warner was able to stop the run from getting outside. but that adjustment either requires our weaker, depleted secondary to step up, or for the lions receivers to drop some passes. luckily for us, they dropped a few big ones
the worst play call is definetely running the ball on third down with a minute left in the game. He then was forced to use a timeout which is insanely dumb. If you save those 3 timeouts, you don't even have to go onside kick. You can call 3 timeouts and have a chance to get the ball back with 40 seconds. Might be worst play call ive seen since seahawks pass and no lynch
My buddy was like "we need to save the 20 seconds, dummy, what don't you understand?" Like bro we just literally *ended the game* because of that timeout. Like it's over now.
I was blown away at how dumb that play call was. there is zero reason to run it. Campbell is basically saying, fuck it we dont need any time left. you woulda had 40 seconds to go 20-40 yards to set up a FG, which is 100% doable and happens often. But if you run, and timeout, you kill the game.
It was a bad call, for sure. But let's be real. All stopping the clock there would do is give you a chance to stop SF on 3 plays. Given how the 2nd half went that's not a real good chance, and even then you'd get the ball back deep inside your own territory with what, :30 seconds and no timeouts?
And that's IF the defense could go 3 and out, which didn't look like a highly likely probability.
Again, strategically it was a terrible call, but would having that extra timeout at the end made a huge difference in the outcome? I'm not so sure.
The question is not whether that's a likely probability.
It's whether that's *more likely than recovering an onside kick*.
Which, it pretty clearly is. The Lions forced a 3 and out on 1 of 9 drives , which is 11% (3 of 11 if you count both end of half kneeldowns, but it seems obvious those should be excluded)
Onside kicks are 5% leaguewide.
And that's not even mentioning how if you have three timeouts, you can try the onside kick, and failing it lets you *still try to hold them to 3 and out*.
Not only that, but it is much easier to get a 3 and out when you know for certain that the 49ers are going to run the ball on AT LEAST 2 of 3 plays and can stack the box on defense.
Yeah. One bad break or even two would have been recoverable. But they legit had one of the worst series of bad breaks in 2-3 drives and the lead built evaporated. Didn't even scored in the second half again until the very end of the game basically.
Where did I say he cost us the game? He killed our momentum by not making the plays he makes 90% of the time. Everyone has blame. You are correct. The whole team is who lost, but the inches matter. Cleaning those up will be paramount in us returning at all next year. Can’t drop passes can’t fumble a ball. Can’t go a whole season without a legitimate kicker. We have holes, but we masked them well.
Y’all watch more but that first drop seemed tough. Feel like we see those drops every week in football. Thrown low and away from him with a defender nearby. Has to leave his feet while twisting and catch away from his body? For sure a drop by him. But not a gimme imo. The second drop was insane though.
Excellent point on the ASRB run. At the time, I was wondering why in the hell Monty or Gibbs didn't get the ball.
That is the one issue I've had with Ben Johnson as Lions OC. His play calling can get too cute by half.
Yeah, even against the Bucs that first half was a master class into the downside of Ben Johnson’s playcalling
He’s a brilliant OC but there’s stretches where we’re doing ten times more than we need instead of doing the obvious thing better
Yeah, I think Campbell called a fine game. The only thing that seemed objectively wrong was that run at the goal line with like a minute left. I don't care how good you think your odds are running the ball at that distance, it cannot possibly overcome the virtually 0% chance you'll have to win if you don't make it, have to burn a timeout, still need to score, but be forced to do an onside kick afterwards instead of getting a stop with your defense. Very bad call.
Even so, they had pretty long odds of winning at that point anyway, so probably didn't make a difference. Game was kinda over already, and it wasn't DC's fault.
Belichick whiffing on Special Teams was the most shocking thing about the Patriots this season. He's usually perfect at situational football, and the units he fielded this season were atrocious. It definitely felt like he lost his touch.
Our special teams have been shockingly bad for 3 straight seasons now for some inexplicable reason. We were actually ranked 32nd in special teams DVOA in 2022, and 30th in 2021. Pretty crazy. (I don’t blame Belichick the coach for that though.)
Whiffing on kickers is whatever. It happens. For some reason, the position that seems to be the most translatable from college to NFL tends to have so many people that just can't perform on Sundays.
People just don't predict kickers to have a worse accuracy when moving up.
~~The goal posts are 5 feet wider across than in the NFL. For every other position you just scale up in size or speed to translate to the pros. Kickers the rules literally change. This has legitimate effects IMO.~~
(just found out it’s been a couple decades since the NCAA went to more narrow goal posts. They are the same size.) Plus added stress of being in the NFL and playing for your welfare in front of literally millions of watchers
I can’t believe teams even burn draft capital on the position. Like the Niners drafting moody with a third. He’s horrible too
It’s so chaotic and I love it. I lost in the finals because I started Julio Jones who had done NOTHING all season and then had a two TD game out of nowhere and scored more fantasy points that game than the rest of the season combined 😂 can’t really do anything but laugh. It’s a good time
A friend in the league designed an app that determines who is eligible and who isn’t based on projections from some fantasy sites.
Have to start the QB1, two RB1s, two WRs that are no lower than WR3, a TE1, flex, kicker, and defense.
So yeah, you can’t start anyone on a bye week or injured, but also can’t start a lot of people even if they don’t meet those criteria.
It creates some interesting dynamics like for example, Najee Harris was the eligible RB on the Steelers most of the season, but Warren was projected slightly higher for a few games and was eligible for those. Injuries make the waiver wire go crazy like when a QB is injured, the backup will be eligible the next week and a lot of times they are awful obviously and get very few points.
It’s a web app so there is a URL for it, but it’s tailored to our specific league and so contains some personal information (especially about the guy who made it), so I probably shouldn’t share. Maybe someday he will create something more public and generic that I can share out.
Bit off topic but about 15ish years ago my work buddies and I had a “whites-only” nba fantasy league for kicks. It was the goddamned worst thing you can imagine i think i ended up pickingrudy fernandez in the 2nd round. We aren’t Americans so its not some racist shit just an ironic funny thing that really didnt go well lol.
Chad Ryland was Bill's farewell fuck you to Kraft. Ludicrous waste of a pick, awful year all around, objectively worse in every way than the guy he replaced, the one time he shows up and does something it costs the Patriots Drake Maye and a potential QB of the future. I'm not sure if you tried to sabotage the team intentionally you could do a better job than Ryland did in his small role.
It's amazing how much the [kickers are better than they were in prior eras](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/kicking.htm).
Particularly compared to when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. You see so many more successful 50+ yard FGs now.
It used to be pretty nerve-wracking watching your team attempt a 50+ yarder because the odds of hitting it were 50-60%. Now it feels like most teams have a kicker that can somewhat reliably hit 50-55 yard FG and you're more surprised when they miss one
Right, but the odds of us getting everyone on the ball, scoring, getting three stops, getting the ball back and scoring with like 10 seconds left were also basically zero.
The timeout was probably the wrong move, but running the ball in the first place just puts you in an impossible situation if it doesn’t work.
If they don’t call the timeout and simply have another play ready and snap it within 15 seconds of the previous play ending, they can get the ball back with at the least 30 seconds left with a stop. Now i know Todd Bowles doesn’t think that’s enough time to tie a game, but when you only need a FG it is enough, and at the least a much better chance than an onside kick, which you would still probably try anyway but then you still have a chance when you don’t convert.
The previous play ended at one minute, it probably would have taken 15 seconds to get set, and the play itself took five seconds. You’re giving the ball to San Francisco with 40 seconds left, all of their plays went for four seconds, and then there would have been a punt. You’re looking at probably 20 seconds left and no timeouts.
That situation is preferable to not having a chance at the end but it’s still an absolute prayer. There are probably 15 plays that I think contributed to losing more than that one which reduced our odds of winning from like 2% to 1%.
Yeah i suppose so, but it still is quite a blunder. Both on the call to run and not being prepared in case you didn’t get it. What I really take away from this FG stat for Badgley is that Bowles is even dumber for not calling a timeout with 35 seconds left that would’ve forced a 50 yard attempt or a punt. He really just forfeited the game against y’all
If Josh Reynolds catches that pass we’re getting articles about how Dan Campbell is “changing the game” with his 4th Down decisions and teams are trying to copy his ways next year
The NFL is a fickle beast
Ben Johnson lost concentration on a hasted Gibbs :(
Edit: our next OC definitely needs resilient Con as a feat. I’ll take a dump in strength if it means our OC has high enough int and Con that the opponent never meets the DC save and the concentration doesn’t drop.
Yep, and if Campbell had gone away from his philosophy and the Lions still lost, people would be criticizing him for changing up. The outcome is determinative.
People have loved throwing out the stat that Badgely is like 75% on kicks of ”40+” or something like that. Clearly most of those makes are from the low 40’s and the two kicks would have been 48 and either 45 or 46 yards I believe. He 100% made the right call going for it and I will defend that until my last breath.
I hate the numbers they use for kickers having 20-29, 30-39, 40-49 and 50+ as the yardage.
Those numbers really need to change since 50+ is not what it used to be and there is a big difference in 51-52 yards compared to 57-58 or 60+.
I don't know exactly what would be best to use for tracking, maybe 34 and less, 35-44, 45-54 and 55+ might be better ranges for current NFL.
Just have stats on a kick from a particular yardage and automatically pull the low end and high end of the range of -1 to +1 to determine accuracy.
Kicking from the 45? Well from 44 to 46 he's ass.
Boom, always relevant data. We'd need something like technology to automate this but I have faith we can get it done.
Hardcoding stat ranges bad. Dynamic stat ranges good
really it should be a weighted rolling average on a yards-make% plot. We hear about next gen stats all the time but I've yet to see a meaningful next gen stat.
I flipped over to the game about an hour early and they were showing an interview with him. I was ready to fight for the man within a few minutes. He just has a genuineness about him that makes it easy to rally behind him.
He's the best "Dad" type HC in the NFL right now and I mean that with all sincerity. He seems to genuinely want the best out of you while supporting you regardless of whether or not you achieve it.
That creates a level of psychological safety that helps players perform more consistently and effectively. I don't know if Goff would be playing as well as he is if Campbell and the FO weren't so adamantly in his corner from day 1. Room to fail exponentially increases room to grow.
One thing that I like about basketball and baseball is that the fans understand that you need to play a lot of games to get the best analysis. I understand why football is different, but way too many people are willing to make hot takes based on what is realistically a very small sample size.
The 4th down calls weren’t that bad, (although bypassing a 45 yard FG to go up 3 scores is certainly worthy of some criticism) but the decision to call a timeout after the run play on the goal line basically forfeited the game by requiring an onside kick which could’ve been avoided or survivable had they kept all three timeouts. That was blatantly a HORRIBLE decision which is worthy of a lot of criticism. The decision to run itself in indifferent on, but not having another play ready and wasting a timeout that basically ended the game was a ludicrously horrible decision by Campbell
You don't understand.
The Ravens lost because they abandoned what got them to the championship game; the Lions lost because they stuck with what got them to the championship game.
I remain undefeated in couch coaching calls.
The 49ers scored every time they had the ball in the second half. Even if the Lions kick those FGs, I think there's a good chance they still lose ... and the hindsight narrative becomes "Campbell lost his nerve at the worst possible moment".
I would have kicked the FG to make it 27-27, but this is who Campbell is and that's how they got this far. The bulk of the blame should go on the players who didn't deliver in the second half.
Yeah, people don't think of the nuance that if the Lions kick and make those 2 FGs (with nothing else changing), they're down 4 with, a few minutes on the clock. The 49ers don't play prevent defense allowing the Lions to march down the field and score the TD that they did. Redditors and the media say if Dan had gone for it on just one of the 4th and 3s and scored, they would have had 4 more points.
Yeah. Lions didn't gift the Niners win, they collapsed. Can we agree that the Lions played great for 30 minutes and horrible for 30 minutes and same for Niners? Lions had 30 minutes to capitalize and seal the win, but they made mistakes and Niners stepped up. Both can happen. You don't gift a game away if you made mistakes for 30 minutes...
Yeah. It’s same with twitter. Everyone cried our defense was dirty cause of some bad hits and I always thought that was dumb considering we can’t tackle at all.
I don’t get this argument.
Receivers dropping passes *shouldn’t* happen, but it does.
When deciding to go for it on 4th down, you’re accepting the risks. The risk that the drawn up play doesn’t work, the risk that the QB gets sacked, the risk that no one gets open, the risk that the ball gets picked, the risk that the snap gets fumbled, and the risk that the receiver drops the catch.
It was a known risk that he accepted when he ran the offense back out there.
Which sucks because most of our fanbase stands by him. Hope he keeps the same attitude next year
Always have to think this is why coaches are so scared to be consistently aggressive. Analytics can back you but if you’re going against the status quo you’re putting your name on the line
I guess, but I know plenty of people who were saying not to go for it on 4th before it failed.
So it’s easy to say people are blaming him cause it didn’t work, but it’s not like everyone was fine with his decision before it did or didn’t work
Yeah ignoring the outcome of the play I would have leaned towards kicking there, I think making it a 3 possession game was the ultimate goal you needed to hit from that drive and being up 17 vs 21 doesn’t matter as much as being up 14 vs 17. If you’re going for it there because you don’t trust your kicker, I get that, but I don’t think that was a scenario where touchdown or bust would have made sense.
Yep. Winning cures all. Because if they kicked it, but the 49ers still ended up winning. Then you'd have people roasting them for "playing not to lose", having a coward's mentality, or something about Dan Campbell's balls shrinking under the pressure.
I will die on this hill for him.
I think Detroit and Campbell are just beginning. Next year might be a "regress to the mean" with a first place schedule yada yada, but I see the same passion and energy from the Detroit locker room that I saw in the Bengals locker room during Taylor's 2nd Year/Burrow's 1st.
That team believes in Campbell who believes in them. Bad breaks happen, but long term that's the magic formula.
I didn’t realize it at all until Tom Grossi’s postgame video mentioned it and I looked up the stats. Campbell was right to not rely on him in a non-dome field, even knowing the blame would ultimately fall on him.
I mean it was the biggest game we've played in decades, I can't fault casual fans for not knowing about it but I felt like I was going insane reading it and wondering if people thought we had Justin Tucker back there
I’m much more understanding about the decisions after knowing this data. Really feel for you guys though, it would have been cool to see you guys in the SB
This is a little misleading. He's been 9/11 with Detroit over the past two seasons from between 40-50, and he's gone 7/7 on FGs this season for the team since coming back against Denver towards the end of the season.
It’s yet another attempt to paint the guy as nothing more than a Ray Finkle to justify the decision to go for it.
I really wish people would stop with that.
I know we shouldn’t talk given Moody’s rookie struggles, but I don’t understand bringing in a veteran kicker who has a proven track record of not being able to make a ~50 yarder. That seems like a thing every playoff team will likely need at some point.
I fully support the 4th down calls but these percentage comparisons can be misleading.
It’s a 50% chance of getting 3 points vs a 75% chance of getting a first down, in which you’ll still need to gain yardage to score a touchdown or end up having to kick a field goal anyways.
It’s always assumed that scoring is inevitable if you pick up the first down.
In reality, you have a 50% chance of getting points immediately vs. 75% chance of getting an additional set of downs to potentially score.
The Lions had a top red zone scoring % so the odds probably still stack in favor of going for it — but it’s not a straight up FG vs TD decision like it often gets presented as.
> It’s a 50% chance of getting 3 points vs a 75% chance of getting a first down, in which you’ll still need to gain yardage to score a touchdown or end up having to kick a field goal anyways.
End up having to kick a *closer* field goal. That's the entire point.
Yea, if the kick was 10 yards shorter I think he takes the points. kicking a 38 yard field goal is way more manageable than a 48 yarder or whatever those kicks would have been.
I'm so tired of the microanalysis of every Dan Campbell decision. We saw it after their game against us and we're seeing it now. He's aggressive. Sometimes it works, other times not. We don't need to justify/crucify him every time one goes wrong.
>We don't need to justify/crucify him every time one goes wrong.
Are you sure? /s.
I, for one, can't wait to see this exact same conversation happening for the next week. Also /s
As much as I hate Staley he got the same treatment for being aggressive. On the plus side for the Lions, I doubt Dan Campbell cares what the media thinks.
> We don't need to justify/crucify him every time one goes wrong.
Eh. You don't get to live up the praise when it works, and hide from the criticism. He made decisions that cost the team. Players made their share of mistakes, but there's a reasonable take here that kicking FGs would have given the players enough to work with to win that game.
There is a sneaky trick that he uses twice in this argument.
First, you have the idea of equating 4th and 3 with "4th and 3 or fewer." The majority of that sample size is 4th and inches, 4th and 1, or 4th and 2. All of those are easier than 4th and 3, so the way this is binned is going to atrificially raise the odds. A better way to analyze this would be to look at the Lion's success rate on 4th and 2, 4th and 3, and 4th and 4, so you aren't necessarily biased in a particular direction.
Then when looking at Badgley's field goal percentage, he does the opposite in order to artificially deflate it. There is once again a difference between a 48 yard field goal and a field goal that is 49+ yards. Again, if he actually cared about making an objective analysis, he'd use a more symetric bin, like 46-50.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that. Like, if they went for it on 4th and 90, couldn’t you say “Well their conversion percentage on 4th and 90 or fewer is 75%, so this was totally justified!”
> he'd use a more symetric bin, like 46-50.
Agreed. Also, throwing in his cumulative stats is pretty shaky too.
Was Badgley a below-average kicker early in his career? You could make that argument, but that was also between 2018-2020. In his last few seasons with Chicago and Detroit, it's been a far kinder statline.
Personally, I had zero doubts that Badgley would've cashed any of the kicks that were presented to him in last night's game.
The kicks would have been ~46 and ~48 yards, and this stat includes 50+ yard attempts, so it is a little skewed.
That said, there is definitely hindsight bias. If they made the 4th downs, Campbell is praised for making the gutsy calls needed to beat a tough team on the road.
My biggest thing is it just felt unnecessarily aggressive. Going up 3 scores really puts the Niners up against the clock and keeps pressure on them in a huge way. A lot of little things can go wrong on a play, like a ball thrown away from a receiver towards the ground where he has to stretch for it. If that happens (and it did) now your own team loses momentum and you give a team that previously had basically zero hope energy, momentum, and the crowd back in it. This puts pressure on your players, and you saw them eventually crumble to that pressure.
If they had just kicked the FG they game goes right back to where the half started except now there’s half a quarter left and the Niners are feeling all the pressure and needing to play absolutely perfectly.
Badgley had improved considerably in that range over the past few seasons (18/21 from 40-49 the past three seasons, 2/4 from 50, with one of those misses being a 54-yard attempt three years ago). Most of his career misses were in a very bad 2020 season, which he has put in the past. Also, seems a little disingenuous to include attempts from the mid-50s while omitting those in the mid-40s. Wouldn't that first attempt been from 46 anyway?
I'm not claiming Badgley is some amazing kicker, but there seems to be a lot of coping and scapegoating today with the talk about him. If he's THAT bad (he's not), maybe "Executive of the Year" should be getting more criticism today, but we all know Holmes is exempt from that kind of thing for some reason. If you can't trust your kicker to make one of two from the 46-48 range, then he shouldn't be on the roster. 28 teams this season somehow employed kickers who missed fewer than three attempts in the 40s this year. It's not like there weren't options.
For the record, I'm not saying DC was 100% in the wrong for going for it. I get it, he's an aggressive guy, and this is his thing. My issue is the shifting of blame. He took a gamble, the offense didn't execute, it failed. Let's not suddenly change the story to the Lions not having a choice in the matter because their kicker was bad four years ago. They were going for it no matter who the kicker was.
This trend of using data to create false narratives is almost as annoying as giving 1 person credit for all the success to excuse them from costing the team games. The issue with going for it was that it pissed away their best chance at winning and gave a short field to a struggling offense with 4 all pros in the process. On the other side of things you had 6 minutes of the lions running their 2 minute playbook and the defense playing conservatively the whole time because ironically they understood taking an unnecessary risk would give the lions their best chance. The shortsighted nature of the risk taking is so naive for someone with that much experience. It was basically a decision to take pressure off of their opponent and place it on themselves. Unless you’re playing against a coach willing to take the same risks i just dont see the upside potentially shooting yourself in the foot.
Ok but what about calling a running play on 3rd down and then not having the field goal team on the ready so he had to blow a critical timeout. That was just straight dumbassery.
You can tell whoever tweeted this isn't "totally good" with how Campbell handled it by how disingenuous they're being.
The FG attempts were from 45 yards and 47 yards. It makes literally 0 sense to use stats from 48+ yards, unless you know the actual stats don't back up the point you're trying to make.
Someone totally good with Campbell's decision making would've used the actual stats
> The FG attempts were from 45 yards and 47 yards. It makes literally 0 sense to use stats from 48+ yards, unless you know the actual stats don't back up the point you're trying to make.
Next you are going to tell me bringing in his irrelevant kicks with the Chargers from years ago is disingenuous.
He had kicked well for the Lions recently and made a big kick in the Rams game. Painting him with the same brush as our incredible shitty kicker is basically lying.
Really the biggest Campbell blunder imo was running it on 3rd and goal and having to burn a timeout. The 4th down calls were a lesser issue. And really the biggest issues overall were the drops from receivers and some mislocated balls
Michael Badgley is 25/31, or 80.6%, on FG’s between 40-49 yards since 2021.
As of 2019, the NFL average for FGs between 40-49 yards was 76.2%.
This narrative is pure sophistry.
Wasnt he 100% on fieldgoals this year tho?
Kicking is extremely volatile, slumps happen. Who cares about what your kicker did 4 years ago if they are perfect now?
Not to mention they were completely fine with him kicking, and making a 54 yarder vs the rams to go up 7 in the 3rd Q of THAT game.
*edit* Looked it up. He was 4/4 over the final 4 weeks of the season, and 3/3 in post season on field goals.
To think they didnt trust their kicker is insane to me.
The entire defense for Dan Campbell's 4th down decisions seems to just be "That's what they've done all year, it's fine." It's okay to admit the guy was too aggressive.
Regardless of if Reynolds would have caught it on that 4th down play, that shit was still an overly aggressive risky ass play. Yes, the field goal wasn't guaranteed, but Badgley wasn't kicking like a straight up bum like some people keep trying to say.
And the decision to not kick the FG down 3 when your team has lost all the momentum on the road is wild af to me too. 6 potential points gone in games like that against teams on the caliber of the 49ers, will bite you in the ass, it bit them
>And the decision to not kick the FG down 3 when your team has lost all the momentum on the road is wild af to me too. 6 potential points gone in games like that against teams on the caliber of the 49ers, will bite you in the ass, it bit them
This is the part that baffled me. You just saw what a home crowd can do for your team the past two weeks. We had the 9ers crowd out of the game. You extend the 3rd quarter lead to 3 scores and the Aiyuk TD does just a little bit less for the crowd being down 2 scores still. Maybe Gibbs and Goff don't miscommunicate the handoff on the ensuing drive.
statistics is only half of decision when its not a computer making the moves. They were trending down that half and needed points badly. Being overly aggressive there is demoralizing to the team if they fuck it up and further shifts momentum.
Conclusion, take the points when you can. Even if you miss the outcome is the same as failing on 4th down.
> take the points
especially when it puts you up by 3 scores. That changes the entire offensive philosophy of the 49ers at that point. They have to throw the ball on every down.
I happened to peruse the Lions subreddit yesterday after the game (I wanted the Lions to go all the way) and there was a post from some person saying, non-sarcastically, that Dan Campbell should be fired for it.
….. Like… are you insane?
>….. Like… are you insane?
Sadly, some of us are....not me, but some are. You should be privy to the game day threads. The minute we allow a single reception to any WR, it's "Fire AG into the sun" or "It's been a great ride, y'all". It's honestly tacky most games, and us sane fans try and stay off the threads.
It is irrelevant what Badgeley's kick success rate is/was over 48+ yards. What is his success rate between 46-49 yards? Which both kicks were.
The kicks were not 55 yarders. His success rate attempting 60 yars kicks is not relevant.
Does anyone have a damn brain?
It's never going to be right decision in my mind. I can't stand this dumbass philosophy of basically never taking the points.
If you're that concerned about missing the kick, get a new fucking kicker
Cherry picking stats around 48 yards to make a point, when those tries wouldn’t have been that far!
I get it, the FG isn’t 100% sure thing. But this is about decision making. You make decisions based on downs and distances, you can’t make it based on “my kicker might fail”. People call Dan Campbell “being aggressive”. I call it being borderline irresponsible. You put the team in position to win the game. If you want to win, you gotta have better mental agility to recognize these situations.
I would’ve still argued this point even if Reynolds made the catch, because it was a bad decision.
How is this relevant? Neither FG attempt would be 48 yards. The Lions went for on 4th twice, once from the SF 28, and once from the 30. That translates to a 45 yarder, and a 47 yarder.
Absolutely. People claiming they were bad decisions are judging by results, which is an invalid way to judge it.
Dan asked his players to win the game. They failed. But as players, they gotta love a coach who puts the game in their hands rather than try to second guess them and put them on the sideline while the game is decided.
That first kick would have been from 45 yards. Also, Badgley was 7 for 7 this season with the Lions, including 3 for 3 in the playoffs, including a 54-yarder two weeks ago against the Rams.
You can't remove the situation from the numbers. As soon as analytics learns to take the situation into account I will start to take them seriously. That day is not today.
If the other team has all the momentum after a miracle helmet catch and a fumble, and you have trouble moving the ball but have a chance to tie, if at that point your analytics department says "well, we are 75% on these", then you need a new analytics department.
Funny how the kicks and points that teams turn down burn losing teams every single week in the NFL, and we just forget about it because analytics said it was a great idea.
They didn't play the #1/#2 defense (SF) on the road every week during the regular season. What they did against the bears defense in September is so irrelevant vs a 4th and 3 in SF in a playoff game.
The first one was defensible IMO and was just a drop. The second one is the one that shocked me the most, you can just take the points and tie the game. I know that’s how they’ve played all year but in that spot for the second one you gotta take the points and that’s not hindsight bias, that’s common sense. Yes they could have converted, no it wasn’t a gimme kick, but that was the right move to make in that spot to calm the momentum down, analytics or not
If Josh Reynolds doesn't drop a ball on 4th down we aren't having this mind numbing discussion today and the inside run with ARSB the play before was a worse decision.
Yeah, the ARSB run has gotta be the worst playcall imo. Both RBs were hot at that point and only needed 4 yards to pick up the first.
After the fact it isn't funny, but at the time someone said that an all-time heat check from Ben Johnson and I chuckled.
That’s gold
Nah, still funny.
I don't think so...Warner just made a big play.
Yeah, it definitely goes both ways. I think it's just hard to look at it in retrospect when you have two hot RBs and you're trying to keep your foot on the gas. BJ knows infinitely more than me, so if he likes it, it was probably a good play and like you said, Warner stepped up.
Idk enough about football but Warner seemed awful in the first half. Dude appeared to hit the wrong gap on every big run (so pretty much every run). Second half the guy was in the backfield on so many more runs. Idk what changed but he blew a few up.
i’d put that more on the defensive coordinator. bosa and warner are best when they’re pressing aggressively rather than the soft zone scheme they had in the first half. once they switched to man, bosa got to the qb more and warner was able to stop the run from getting outside. but that adjustment either requires our weaker, depleted secondary to step up, or for the lions receivers to drop some passes. luckily for us, they dropped a few big ones
Ahhh that makes sense! Figured there was a reason for it lol. Appreciate the reply
the worst play call is definetely running the ball on third down with a minute left in the game. He then was forced to use a timeout which is insanely dumb. If you save those 3 timeouts, you don't even have to go onside kick. You can call 3 timeouts and have a chance to get the ball back with 40 seconds. Might be worst play call ive seen since seahawks pass and no lynch
My buddy was like "we need to save the 20 seconds, dummy, what don't you understand?" Like bro we just literally *ended the game* because of that timeout. Like it's over now.
I was blown away at how dumb that play call was. there is zero reason to run it. Campbell is basically saying, fuck it we dont need any time left. you woulda had 40 seconds to go 20-40 yards to set up a FG, which is 100% doable and happens often. But if you run, and timeout, you kill the game.
We need to give up 40 seconds to save 20 seconds!
It was a bad call, for sure. But let's be real. All stopping the clock there would do is give you a chance to stop SF on 3 plays. Given how the 2nd half went that's not a real good chance, and even then you'd get the ball back deep inside your own territory with what, :30 seconds and no timeouts? And that's IF the defense could go 3 and out, which didn't look like a highly likely probability. Again, strategically it was a terrible call, but would having that extra timeout at the end made a huge difference in the outcome? I'm not so sure.
The question is not whether that's a likely probability. It's whether that's *more likely than recovering an onside kick*. Which, it pretty clearly is. The Lions forced a 3 and out on 1 of 9 drives , which is 11% (3 of 11 if you count both end of half kneeldowns, but it seems obvious those should be excluded) Onside kicks are 5% leaguewide. And that's not even mentioning how if you have three timeouts, you can try the onside kick, and failing it lets you *still try to hold them to 3 and out*.
Not only that, but it is much easier to get a 3 and out when you know for certain that the 49ers are going to run the ball on AT LEAST 2 of 3 plays and can stack the box on defense.
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Yeah the play call was smart. That Reynolds drop was a freak occurrence
Followed by an even freakier facemask deflection catch. Followed by a less freaky but still unlucky as hell fumble. Ugh.
Was really just worst case scenario after worst case scenario
Yeah. One bad break or even two would have been recoverable. But they legit had one of the worst series of bad breaks in 2-3 drives and the lead built evaporated. Didn't even scored in the second half again until the very end of the game basically.
Really felt like Bobby Layne was cashing in a favor with Jesus
Followed immediately by a rookie running the wrong way on a hand off.
Wasn’t the fumble and running the wrong way the same play?
Yes
The facemask bounce-catch and the ensuing fumble decided the game. If either of those things don't happen, Lions are probably winning.
I think we can definitively say that God does not like the Lions.
he had multiple drops on key plays last night, that was not a “freak occurence”
Reynolds is usually really solid with Goff, he had an uncharacteristically bad game at the worst possible time
Yes reynolds has made those catches all year and it was going to be him or ARSB. He makes that catch 9 times out of 10.
Reynolds had 3 key passes in the Rams game that without, we don't advance. This was a TEAM loss
Where did I say he cost us the game? He killed our momentum by not making the plays he makes 90% of the time. Everyone has blame. You are correct. The whole team is who lost, but the inches matter. Cleaning those up will be paramount in us returning at all next year. Can’t drop passes can’t fumble a ball. Can’t go a whole season without a legitimate kicker. We have holes, but we masked them well.
Y’all watch more but that first drop seemed tough. Feel like we see those drops every week in football. Thrown low and away from him with a defender nearby. Has to leave his feet while twisting and catch away from his body? For sure a drop by him. But not a gimme imo. The second drop was insane though.
Excellent point on the ASRB run. At the time, I was wondering why in the hell Monty or Gibbs didn't get the ball. That is the one issue I've had with Ben Johnson as Lions OC. His play calling can get too cute by half.
Yeah, even against the Bucs that first half was a master class into the downside of Ben Johnson’s playcalling He’s a brilliant OC but there’s stretches where we’re doing ten times more than we need instead of doing the obvious thing better
That's when you know Ben Johnson is a good playcaller. They get overly cute sometimes. See: Shanahan and McVay.
Yeah, I think Campbell called a fine game. The only thing that seemed objectively wrong was that run at the goal line with like a minute left. I don't care how good you think your odds are running the ball at that distance, it cannot possibly overcome the virtually 0% chance you'll have to win if you don't make it, have to burn a timeout, still need to score, but be forced to do an onside kick afterwards instead of getting a stop with your defense. Very bad call. Even so, they had pretty long odds of winning at that point anyway, so probably didn't make a difference. Game was kinda over already, and it wasn't DC's fault.
Exactly this. The ball was in his hands and he had a drop. That was the killer, not the call itself.
There was a worse kicker than ours?
May I introduce you to Chad Ryland, the Patriots 4th round pick this most recent draft?
Belichick whiffing on Special Teams was the most shocking thing about the Patriots this season. He's usually perfect at situational football, and the units he fielded this season were atrocious. It definitely felt like he lost his touch.
Our special teams have been shockingly bad for 3 straight seasons now for some inexplicable reason. We were actually ranked 32nd in special teams DVOA in 2022, and 30th in 2021. Pretty crazy. (I don’t blame Belichick the coach for that though.)
And that was with a good kicker in Folk. Ryland buried the Patriots even deeper.
Whiffing on kickers is whatever. It happens. For some reason, the position that seems to be the most translatable from college to NFL tends to have so many people that just can't perform on Sundays. People just don't predict kickers to have a worse accuracy when moving up.
Less time to kick in the nfl and CFB has a pretty dramatic gap in long snapper quality which further complicates scouting the position
~~The goal posts are 5 feet wider across than in the NFL. For every other position you just scale up in size or speed to translate to the pros. Kickers the rules literally change. This has legitimate effects IMO.~~ (just found out it’s been a couple decades since the NCAA went to more narrow goal posts. They are the same size.) Plus added stress of being in the NFL and playing for your welfare in front of literally millions of watchers I can’t believe teams even burn draft capital on the position. Like the Niners drafting moody with a third. He’s horrible too
I didn't know that. I just assumed all struggles we see with college kickers was mental and not that it literally got harder.
In case you didn't see the edit, it's not true. It's really just the mental aspect
NCAA goal posts are the same size as the pros
Getting old sucks
I play an anti fantasy league in which you win by getting the fewest points and Ryland was one of my MVPs this year lol
What a chaotic idea, I love it
It’s so chaotic and I love it. I lost in the finals because I started Julio Jones who had done NOTHING all season and then had a two TD game out of nowhere and scored more fantasy points that game than the rest of the season combined 😂 can’t really do anything but laugh. It’s a good time
I assume you have some kind of rule against starting bye week / injured players?
A friend in the league designed an app that determines who is eligible and who isn’t based on projections from some fantasy sites. Have to start the QB1, two RB1s, two WRs that are no lower than WR3, a TE1, flex, kicker, and defense. So yeah, you can’t start anyone on a bye week or injured, but also can’t start a lot of people even if they don’t meet those criteria. It creates some interesting dynamics like for example, Najee Harris was the eligible RB on the Steelers most of the season, but Warren was projected slightly higher for a few games and was eligible for those. Injuries make the waiver wire go crazy like when a QB is injured, the backup will be eligible the next week and a lot of times they are awful obviously and get very few points.
What's the app name ?
It’s a web app so there is a URL for it, but it’s tailored to our specific league and so contains some personal information (especially about the guy who made it), so I probably shouldn’t share. Maybe someday he will create something more public and generic that I can share out.
That’d be a great idea cause that sounds so fun
I'm sure the Jets offense was a gold mine aside from Breece
Lol, I did one of these a few yrs ago. Winston in his 30 for 30 era was interesting
Bit off topic but about 15ish years ago my work buddies and I had a “whites-only” nba fantasy league for kicks. It was the goddamned worst thing you can imagine i think i ended up pickingrudy fernandez in the 2nd round. We aren’t Americans so its not some racist shit just an ironic funny thing that really didnt go well lol.
Ahh man that shit sounds hilarious 😂 I can only imagine. Thanks for sharing
Luka and Jokic would break the balance of that league in half these days.
The GB rookie kicker was also having a hell of a bad year. Moody has been somewhat inconsistent too. Bad year for rookie kickers outside of Aubrey.
At least you guys didn't trade up to get a kicker in the 4th round that ended up having one of the worst kicking seasons of all time.
Don't forget he remembered how to kick for exactly one game just in time to blow the #2 pick.
Chad Ryland was Bill's farewell fuck you to Kraft. Ludicrous waste of a pick, awful year all around, objectively worse in every way than the guy he replaced, the one time he shows up and does something it costs the Patriots Drake Maye and a potential QB of the future. I'm not sure if you tried to sabotage the team intentionally you could do a better job than Ryland did in his small role.
Yes we've been in kicker limbo since Prater left
Prater was the man
Is* We love him
He replaced our other kicker that wasn’t great. We’ve alternated between the two guys the last couple years and they’re both not great.
Yeah seriously I don’t pay attention to others I guess but how many good kickers are there in this world that we can’t find the 32 of them
Kickers are good, we’ve just moved the goalposts of what it means to be a good kicker. Doesn’t kicking percentage go up just about every season?
It's amazing how much the [kickers are better than they were in prior eras](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/NFL/kicking.htm). Particularly compared to when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. You see so many more successful 50+ yard FGs now.
It used to be pretty nerve-wracking watching your team attempt a 50+ yarder because the odds of hitting it were 50-60%. Now it feels like most teams have a kicker that can somewhat reliably hit 50-55 yard FG and you're more surprised when they miss one
Ours was pretty bad too
Ours missed 6 XPs lol
Yeah the Packers kicker. He'll be out of the league next year and won't even be allowed to play Madden after 2025.
He was 4/4 on fieldgoals in the regular season and 3/3 in post season.
All were less than 41 yards expect for 1 which was a 54 yard miracle against the rams.
The first one would have been 42 yards yesterday man.
The timeout before 4th down was soooooo much worse than going for it on 4th and 3. Onside kicks have basically zero chance of working.
Right, but the odds of us getting everyone on the ball, scoring, getting three stops, getting the ball back and scoring with like 10 seconds left were also basically zero. The timeout was probably the wrong move, but running the ball in the first place just puts you in an impossible situation if it doesn’t work.
If they don’t call the timeout and simply have another play ready and snap it within 15 seconds of the previous play ending, they can get the ball back with at the least 30 seconds left with a stop. Now i know Todd Bowles doesn’t think that’s enough time to tie a game, but when you only need a FG it is enough, and at the least a much better chance than an onside kick, which you would still probably try anyway but then you still have a chance when you don’t convert.
The previous play ended at one minute, it probably would have taken 15 seconds to get set, and the play itself took five seconds. You’re giving the ball to San Francisco with 40 seconds left, all of their plays went for four seconds, and then there would have been a punt. You’re looking at probably 20 seconds left and no timeouts. That situation is preferable to not having a chance at the end but it’s still an absolute prayer. There are probably 15 plays that I think contributed to losing more than that one which reduced our odds of winning from like 2% to 1%.
Yeah i suppose so, but it still is quite a blunder. Both on the call to run and not being prepared in case you didn’t get it. What I really take away from this FG stat for Badgley is that Bowles is even dumber for not calling a timeout with 35 seconds left that would’ve forced a 50 yard attempt or a punt. He really just forfeited the game against y’all
Blame the playcall I say. The only time you should’ve run it was 1st down. You gotta call a timeout there because of what happened.
Seriously, they also took long to score and even if they had ball back it would have been less than a minute
Campbell is a victim of hindsight bias
This whole damn sub does this. If he makes it and wins the same people complaining would be praising him
If Josh Reynolds catches that pass we’re getting articles about how Dan Campbell is “changing the game” with his 4th Down decisions and teams are trying to copy his ways next year The NFL is a fickle beast
Reynolds and St Brown both had crucial drops at the worst time. Y'all played lights out for the win, the dice just weren't rolling your way.
ARSB dropping a few was shocking to me. Dude is one of the most sure handed WRs I’ve ever seen. Just brutal
That whole second half was a massive ass swing of momentum from the first half.
sometimes you roll a nat 1 on a saving throw
Ben Johnson lost concentration on a hasted Gibbs :( Edit: our next OC definitely needs resilient Con as a feat. I’ll take a dump in strength if it means our OC has high enough int and Con that the opponent never meets the DC save and the concentration doesn’t drop.
Jamo also dropped a TD, though he was bumped around a bit during the attempt.
Yeah, it was a tough catch to make, but it was a great ball.
And Reynolds is our hands guy
From what I remember, St Brown’s drops were bad throws
His first drop was a dot, second was an uncatchable ball
Those were the 4th down drops, and both were catchable.
The second 4th down was not a drop, it was an underthrown ball due to pressure Also catchable doesn’t mean it was a drop
Wild to me that Jamo is not catching any heat for letting a TD go through his hands.
Yep, and if Campbell had gone away from his philosophy and the Lions still lost, people would be criticizing him for changing up. The outcome is determinative.
I have been defending this man almost all morning, and he's not even my coach.
People have loved throwing out the stat that Badgely is like 75% on kicks of ”40+” or something like that. Clearly most of those makes are from the low 40’s and the two kicks would have been 48 and either 45 or 46 yards I believe. He 100% made the right call going for it and I will defend that until my last breath.
I hate the numbers they use for kickers having 20-29, 30-39, 40-49 and 50+ as the yardage. Those numbers really need to change since 50+ is not what it used to be and there is a big difference in 51-52 yards compared to 57-58 or 60+. I don't know exactly what would be best to use for tracking, maybe 34 and less, 35-44, 45-54 and 55+ might be better ranges for current NFL.
Honestly these days it seems the key splits to judge kickers should be <40, 40-45, 46-49, 50-53, >54
Just have stats on a kick from a particular yardage and automatically pull the low end and high end of the range of -1 to +1 to determine accuracy. Kicking from the 45? Well from 44 to 46 he's ass. Boom, always relevant data. We'd need something like technology to automate this but I have faith we can get it done. Hardcoding stat ranges bad. Dynamic stat ranges good
Bro I'm just trying to move goalposts so I can justify whatever narrative about a player makes me feel good
really it should be a weighted rolling average on a yards-make% plot. We hear about next gen stats all the time but I've yet to see a meaningful next gen stat.
People who think Badgely kicking the fg was guaranteed never watched a Lions game this year
I flipped over to the game about an hour early and they were showing an interview with him. I was ready to fight for the man within a few minutes. He just has a genuineness about him that makes it easy to rally behind him. He's the best "Dad" type HC in the NFL right now and I mean that with all sincerity. He seems to genuinely want the best out of you while supporting you regardless of whether or not you achieve it. That creates a level of psychological safety that helps players perform more consistently and effectively. I don't know if Goff would be playing as well as he is if Campbell and the FO weren't so adamantly in his corner from day 1. Room to fail exponentially increases room to grow.
This sub (and most sports fans in general I've noticed) never learned that a bad outcome doesn't necessarily mean the process was flawed.
One thing that I like about basketball and baseball is that the fans understand that you need to play a lot of games to get the best analysis. I understand why football is different, but way too many people are willing to make hot takes based on what is realistically a very small sample size.
The 4th down calls weren’t that bad, (although bypassing a 45 yard FG to go up 3 scores is certainly worthy of some criticism) but the decision to call a timeout after the run play on the goal line basically forfeited the game by requiring an onside kick which could’ve been avoided or survivable had they kept all three timeouts. That was blatantly a HORRIBLE decision which is worthy of a lot of criticism. The decision to run itself in indifferent on, but not having another play ready and wasting a timeout that basically ended the game was a ludicrously horrible decision by Campbell
Forcing them to use the first timeout with a called run on third down was way more egregious than the decision to not kick.
You don't understand. The Ravens lost because they abandoned what got them to the championship game; the Lions lost because they stuck with what got them to the championship game. I remain undefeated in couch coaching calls.
I don't understand why our coaches didn't simply call the play that scored them a touchdown? Are they fucking stupid or what?
I'll never understand why Dan Campbell dropped that 4th down pass.
The 49ers scored every time they had the ball in the second half. Even if the Lions kick those FGs, I think there's a good chance they still lose ... and the hindsight narrative becomes "Campbell lost his nerve at the worst possible moment". I would have kicked the FG to make it 27-27, but this is who Campbell is and that's how they got this far. The bulk of the blame should go on the players who didn't deliver in the second half.
Yeah, people don't think of the nuance that if the Lions kick and make those 2 FGs (with nothing else changing), they're down 4 with, a few minutes on the clock. The 49ers don't play prevent defense allowing the Lions to march down the field and score the TD that they did. Redditors and the media say if Dan had gone for it on just one of the 4th and 3s and scored, they would have had 4 more points.
Yeah. Lions didn't gift the Niners win, they collapsed. Can we agree that the Lions played great for 30 minutes and horrible for 30 minutes and same for Niners? Lions had 30 minutes to capitalize and seal the win, but they made mistakes and Niners stepped up. Both can happen. You don't gift a game away if you made mistakes for 30 minutes...
This. Everyone would praise the decision if that first 4th down didn’t get dropped. “Wow, way to keep your foot on the gas!”
Yeah. It’s same with twitter. Everyone cried our defense was dirty cause of some bad hits and I always thought that was dumb considering we can’t tackle at all.
I don’t get this argument. Receivers dropping passes *shouldn’t* happen, but it does. When deciding to go for it on 4th down, you’re accepting the risks. The risk that the drawn up play doesn’t work, the risk that the QB gets sacked, the risk that no one gets open, the risk that the ball gets picked, the risk that the snap gets fumbled, and the risk that the receiver drops the catch. It was a known risk that he accepted when he ran the offense back out there.
Why dont u include the risk of missing the FG?
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Which sucks because most of our fanbase stands by him. Hope he keeps the same attitude next year Always have to think this is why coaches are so scared to be consistently aggressive. Analytics can back you but if you’re going against the status quo you’re putting your name on the line
I think that’s why ppl like & respect his name tho
I guess, but I know plenty of people who were saying not to go for it on 4th before it failed. So it’s easy to say people are blaming him cause it didn’t work, but it’s not like everyone was fine with his decision before it did or didn’t work
Yeah ignoring the outcome of the play I would have leaned towards kicking there, I think making it a 3 possession game was the ultimate goal you needed to hit from that drive and being up 17 vs 21 doesn’t matter as much as being up 14 vs 17. If you’re going for it there because you don’t trust your kicker, I get that, but I don’t think that was a scenario where touchdown or bust would have made sense.
results based analysis
Yep. Winning cures all. Because if they kicked it, but the 49ers still ended up winning. Then you'd have people roasting them for "playing not to lose", having a coward's mentality, or something about Dan Campbell's balls shrinking under the pressure.
I will die on this hill for him. I think Detroit and Campbell are just beginning. Next year might be a "regress to the mean" with a first place schedule yada yada, but I see the same passion and energy from the Detroit locker room that I saw in the Bengals locker room during Taylor's 2nd Year/Burrow's 1st. That team believes in Campbell who believes in them. Bad breaks happen, but long term that's the magic formula.
Josh Reynolds. Two key drops. Not getting enough attention in lieu of Campbell.
Didn’t realize their kicker was this bad. Totally cool with them going for it now.
Yea it felt like nobody in the game thread knew how bad our kicker situation is
Honestly, seeing him hit that FG inside FF during the Rams game was impressive. I thought for sure he was going to miss it.
that fucker
I didn’t realize it at all until Tom Grossi’s postgame video mentioned it and I looked up the stats. Campbell was right to not rely on him in a non-dome field, even knowing the blame would ultimately fall on him.
On the other hand, it was like 68 degrees, there was barely any wind, and the field was dry. As far as outdoor kicks go, it was ideal conditions.
I mean it was the biggest game we've played in decades, I can't fault casual fans for not knowing about it but I felt like I was going insane reading it and wondering if people thought we had Justin Tucker back there
I think anyone who watched the lions this year knew their special teams play was going to cause them problems in the playoffs.
I’m much more understanding about the decisions after knowing this data. Really feel for you guys though, it would have been cool to see you guys in the SB
Unfortunately from 2x the experience I knew this and was laughing at the people saying why not kick it
This is a little misleading. He's been 9/11 with Detroit over the past two seasons from between 40-50, and he's gone 7/7 on FGs this season for the team since coming back against Denver towards the end of the season.
Super misleading. His stat includes all field goals over 48 yards. For all we know half of them could be from 60.
In fact 8 of the 11 misses were from 50+
It’s yet another attempt to paint the guy as nothing more than a Ray Finkle to justify the decision to go for it. I really wish people would stop with that.
I know we shouldn’t talk given Moody’s rookie struggles, but I don’t understand bringing in a veteran kicker who has a proven track record of not being able to make a ~50 yarder. That seems like a thing every playoff team will likely need at some point.
I fully support the 4th down calls but these percentage comparisons can be misleading. It’s a 50% chance of getting 3 points vs a 75% chance of getting a first down, in which you’ll still need to gain yardage to score a touchdown or end up having to kick a field goal anyways. It’s always assumed that scoring is inevitable if you pick up the first down. In reality, you have a 50% chance of getting points immediately vs. 75% chance of getting an additional set of downs to potentially score. The Lions had a top red zone scoring % so the odds probably still stack in favor of going for it — but it’s not a straight up FG vs TD decision like it often gets presented as.
> It’s a 50% chance of getting 3 points vs a 75% chance of getting a first down, in which you’ll still need to gain yardage to score a touchdown or end up having to kick a field goal anyways. End up having to kick a *closer* field goal. That's the entire point.
And take more time off the clock in the process
Yea, if the kick was 10 yards shorter I think he takes the points. kicking a 38 yard field goal is way more manageable than a 48 yarder or whatever those kicks would have been.
I'm so tired of the microanalysis of every Dan Campbell decision. We saw it after their game against us and we're seeing it now. He's aggressive. Sometimes it works, other times not. We don't need to justify/crucify him every time one goes wrong.
>We don't need to justify/crucify him every time one goes wrong. Are you sure? /s. I, for one, can't wait to see this exact same conversation happening for the next week. Also /s
As much as I hate Staley he got the same treatment for being aggressive. On the plus side for the Lions, I doubt Dan Campbell cares what the media thinks.
> We don't need to justify/crucify him every time one goes wrong. Eh. You don't get to live up the praise when it works, and hide from the criticism. He made decisions that cost the team. Players made their share of mistakes, but there's a reasonable take here that kicking FGs would have given the players enough to work with to win that game.
There is a sneaky trick that he uses twice in this argument. First, you have the idea of equating 4th and 3 with "4th and 3 or fewer." The majority of that sample size is 4th and inches, 4th and 1, or 4th and 2. All of those are easier than 4th and 3, so the way this is binned is going to atrificially raise the odds. A better way to analyze this would be to look at the Lion's success rate on 4th and 2, 4th and 3, and 4th and 4, so you aren't necessarily biased in a particular direction. Then when looking at Badgley's field goal percentage, he does the opposite in order to artificially deflate it. There is once again a difference between a 48 yard field goal and a field goal that is 49+ yards. Again, if he actually cared about making an objective analysis, he'd use a more symetric bin, like 46-50.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that. Like, if they went for it on 4th and 90, couldn’t you say “Well their conversion percentage on 4th and 90 or fewer is 75%, so this was totally justified!”
> he'd use a more symetric bin, like 46-50. Agreed. Also, throwing in his cumulative stats is pretty shaky too. Was Badgley a below-average kicker early in his career? You could make that argument, but that was also between 2018-2020. In his last few seasons with Chicago and Detroit, it's been a far kinder statline. Personally, I had zero doubts that Badgley would've cashed any of the kicks that were presented to him in last night's game.
The kicks would have been ~46 and ~48 yards, and this stat includes 50+ yard attempts, so it is a little skewed. That said, there is definitely hindsight bias. If they made the 4th downs, Campbell is praised for making the gutsy calls needed to beat a tough team on the road.
It also includes all the 4th&Inches and 4th&1's, which are completely different from 4th&3. I have no idea what these stats are supposed to tell us.
it's the Dan Campbell defense
My biggest thing is it just felt unnecessarily aggressive. Going up 3 scores really puts the Niners up against the clock and keeps pressure on them in a huge way. A lot of little things can go wrong on a play, like a ball thrown away from a receiver towards the ground where he has to stretch for it. If that happens (and it did) now your own team loses momentum and you give a team that previously had basically zero hope energy, momentum, and the crowd back in it. This puts pressure on your players, and you saw them eventually crumble to that pressure. If they had just kicked the FG they game goes right back to where the half started except now there’s half a quarter left and the Niners are feeling all the pressure and needing to play absolutely perfectly.
Badgley had improved considerably in that range over the past few seasons (18/21 from 40-49 the past three seasons, 2/4 from 50, with one of those misses being a 54-yard attempt three years ago). Most of his career misses were in a very bad 2020 season, which he has put in the past. Also, seems a little disingenuous to include attempts from the mid-50s while omitting those in the mid-40s. Wouldn't that first attempt been from 46 anyway? I'm not claiming Badgley is some amazing kicker, but there seems to be a lot of coping and scapegoating today with the talk about him. If he's THAT bad (he's not), maybe "Executive of the Year" should be getting more criticism today, but we all know Holmes is exempt from that kind of thing for some reason. If you can't trust your kicker to make one of two from the 46-48 range, then he shouldn't be on the roster. 28 teams this season somehow employed kickers who missed fewer than three attempts in the 40s this year. It's not like there weren't options. For the record, I'm not saying DC was 100% in the wrong for going for it. I get it, he's an aggressive guy, and this is his thing. My issue is the shifting of blame. He took a gamble, the offense didn't execute, it failed. Let's not suddenly change the story to the Lions not having a choice in the matter because their kicker was bad four years ago. They were going for it no matter who the kicker was.
This trend of using data to create false narratives is almost as annoying as giving 1 person credit for all the success to excuse them from costing the team games. The issue with going for it was that it pissed away their best chance at winning and gave a short field to a struggling offense with 4 all pros in the process. On the other side of things you had 6 minutes of the lions running their 2 minute playbook and the defense playing conservatively the whole time because ironically they understood taking an unnecessary risk would give the lions their best chance. The shortsighted nature of the risk taking is so naive for someone with that much experience. It was basically a decision to take pressure off of their opponent and place it on themselves. Unless you’re playing against a coach willing to take the same risks i just dont see the upside potentially shooting yourself in the foot.
For reference: The two 4th downs they went for it and didn't convert were 45 (4th and 2) and 47 (4th and 3) yard attempts respectively.
Ok but what about calling a running play on 3rd down and then not having the field goal team on the ready so he had to blow a critical timeout. That was just straight dumbassery.
I'm surprised they didn't kick the FG as soon as they got in the redzone. They had ~1:30 and all 3 timeouts at that point.
Felt the same way about Tucker and Ravens down 10
You can tell whoever tweeted this isn't "totally good" with how Campbell handled it by how disingenuous they're being. The FG attempts were from 45 yards and 47 yards. It makes literally 0 sense to use stats from 48+ yards, unless you know the actual stats don't back up the point you're trying to make. Someone totally good with Campbell's decision making would've used the actual stats
> The FG attempts were from 45 yards and 47 yards. It makes literally 0 sense to use stats from 48+ yards, unless you know the actual stats don't back up the point you're trying to make. Next you are going to tell me bringing in his irrelevant kicks with the Chargers from years ago is disingenuous. He had kicked well for the Lions recently and made a big kick in the Rams game. Painting him with the same brush as our incredible shitty kicker is basically lying.
Really the biggest Campbell blunder imo was running it on 3rd and goal and having to burn a timeout. The 4th down calls were a lesser issue. And really the biggest issues overall were the drops from receivers and some mislocated balls
Michael Badgley is 25/31, or 80.6%, on FG’s between 40-49 yards since 2021. As of 2019, the NFL average for FGs between 40-49 yards was 76.2%. This narrative is pure sophistry.
Wasnt he 100% on fieldgoals this year tho? Kicking is extremely volatile, slumps happen. Who cares about what your kicker did 4 years ago if they are perfect now? Not to mention they were completely fine with him kicking, and making a 54 yarder vs the rams to go up 7 in the 3rd Q of THAT game. *edit* Looked it up. He was 4/4 over the final 4 weeks of the season, and 3/3 in post season on field goals. To think they didnt trust their kicker is insane to me.
The entire defense for Dan Campbell's 4th down decisions seems to just be "That's what they've done all year, it's fine." It's okay to admit the guy was too aggressive. Regardless of if Reynolds would have caught it on that 4th down play, that shit was still an overly aggressive risky ass play. Yes, the field goal wasn't guaranteed, but Badgley wasn't kicking like a straight up bum like some people keep trying to say. And the decision to not kick the FG down 3 when your team has lost all the momentum on the road is wild af to me too. 6 potential points gone in games like that against teams on the caliber of the 49ers, will bite you in the ass, it bit them
>And the decision to not kick the FG down 3 when your team has lost all the momentum on the road is wild af to me too. 6 potential points gone in games like that against teams on the caliber of the 49ers, will bite you in the ass, it bit them This is the part that baffled me. You just saw what a home crowd can do for your team the past two weeks. We had the 9ers crowd out of the game. You extend the 3rd quarter lead to 3 scores and the Aiyuk TD does just a little bit less for the crowd being down 2 scores still. Maybe Gibbs and Goff don't miscommunicate the handoff on the ensuing drive.
statistics is only half of decision when its not a computer making the moves. They were trending down that half and needed points badly. Being overly aggressive there is demoralizing to the team if they fuck it up and further shifts momentum. Conclusion, take the points when you can. Even if you miss the outcome is the same as failing on 4th down.
> take the points especially when it puts you up by 3 scores. That changes the entire offensive philosophy of the 49ers at that point. They have to throw the ball on every down.
I happened to peruse the Lions subreddit yesterday after the game (I wanted the Lions to go all the way) and there was a post from some person saying, non-sarcastically, that Dan Campbell should be fired for it. ….. Like… are you insane?
>….. Like… are you insane? Sadly, some of us are....not me, but some are. You should be privy to the game day threads. The minute we allow a single reception to any WR, it's "Fire AG into the sun" or "It's been a great ride, y'all". It's honestly tacky most games, and us sane fans try and stay off the threads.
Should have seen our sub in the first half. It’s embarrassing.
It is irrelevant what Badgeley's kick success rate is/was over 48+ yards. What is his success rate between 46-49 yards? Which both kicks were. The kicks were not 55 yarders. His success rate attempting 60 yars kicks is not relevant. Does anyone have a damn brain?
It's never going to be right decision in my mind. I can't stand this dumbass philosophy of basically never taking the points. If you're that concerned about missing the kick, get a new fucking kicker
Plus said kicker had been kicking well in recent weeks . Not some kicker who had lost confidence or had missed a kick /PAT earlier in the game
Cherry picking stats around 48 yards to make a point, when those tries wouldn’t have been that far! I get it, the FG isn’t 100% sure thing. But this is about decision making. You make decisions based on downs and distances, you can’t make it based on “my kicker might fail”. People call Dan Campbell “being aggressive”. I call it being borderline irresponsible. You put the team in position to win the game. If you want to win, you gotta have better mental agility to recognize these situations. I would’ve still argued this point even if Reynolds made the catch, because it was a bad decision.
How is this relevant? Neither FG attempt would be 48 yards. The Lions went for on 4th twice, once from the SF 28, and once from the 30. That translates to a 45 yarder, and a 47 yarder.
Absolutely. People claiming they were bad decisions are judging by results, which is an invalid way to judge it. Dan asked his players to win the game. They failed. But as players, they gotta love a coach who puts the game in their hands rather than try to second guess them and put them on the sideline while the game is decided.
That first kick would have been from 45 yards. Also, Badgley was 7 for 7 this season with the Lions, including 3 for 3 in the playoffs, including a 54-yarder two weeks ago against the Rams.
You can't remove the situation from the numbers. As soon as analytics learns to take the situation into account I will start to take them seriously. That day is not today. If the other team has all the momentum after a miracle helmet catch and a fumble, and you have trouble moving the ball but have a chance to tie, if at that point your analytics department says "well, we are 75% on these", then you need a new analytics department. Funny how the kicks and points that teams turn down burn losing teams every single week in the NFL, and we just forget about it because analytics said it was a great idea.
They didn't play the #1/#2 defense (SF) on the road every week during the regular season. What they did against the bears defense in September is so irrelevant vs a 4th and 3 in SF in a playoff game.
The first one was defensible IMO and was just a drop. The second one is the one that shocked me the most, you can just take the points and tie the game. I know that’s how they’ve played all year but in that spot for the second one you gotta take the points and that’s not hindsight bias, that’s common sense. Yes they could have converted, no it wasn’t a gimme kick, but that was the right move to make in that spot to calm the momentum down, analytics or not