There’s no good reason why the Buccaneers should not have punted while leading the Falcons with two minutes left in regulation on Sunday at the Georgia Dome.
Coach Lovie Smith didn’t punt, and that decision didn’t work when the Falcons stopped the Bucs and drove a short field for the tying touchdown. But the Bucs escaped with a 23-20 victory in overtime in spite of Smith’s inexplicable decision.
Afterwards, Smith said he’d so the same again.
“I’d make that call 10 out of 10 times,” Smith said.
The math says he’d be wrong all 10 times.
The Buccaneers had a fourth-and-one at the Falcons’ 40-yard line. The Bucs could have tried to pin the Falcons with a punt inside the 10 or, at worse, kicked it into the end zone and force the Falcons to drive 80 yards with less than two minutes left and no timeouts.
“I considered that, of course,” Smith said. “But I just felt like it was a seven-point game. Either way we were going to have to, if we punted the ball, we were going to have to stop them. They had an opportunity to finish the game right then.”
Following the two-minute warning the Bucs huddled up but called a timeout. It appeared that perhaps Smith had changed his mind, but the Bucs came out of the timeout and snapped the ball.
Bucs quarterback Jameis Winston scrambled toward the first-down-marker but the Falcons stopped him inches short —though Winston insisted that they didn’t.
“I got it,” Winston said.
Game officials disagreed and the Falcons took over with 1:52 to play. They needed just five plays and 1:35 to tie the game on Matt Ryan’s eight-yard touchdown pass to Julio Jones.
The Bucs got the ball first in overtime and Winston led them on a 15-play drive for a field goal. Winston converted three third-down passes on the drive.
Tampa Bay’s defense stopped the Falcons after just four plays to preserve the overtime victory and save their coach from taking a lot of heat for his decision to go for it on fourth down.
“I felt good about it for our football team,” Smith said. “When you are going through adversity you do need to fight back and see you can come through it at the end.”
It’s just that the Bucs had to fight through more adversity than necessary because of Smith’s decision to go for it.
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