End of First Half: Childress error?

[football karma]

Question:

End of the first half. Cards have the ball at the 5 yard line or so. 13 seconds left and Minnesota has three time outs.

Cards kneel on first down and everyone trots off the field.

Why didnt Childress use his time outs? He could have had the Cardinals punting from their endzone with 6 seconds left.

At that point -- so many things could happen, and all of them would have been good for the Vikings -- up to and including the old: fair catch and get a free kick for 3 points.

Am I missing something?

There was a Viking fan sitting in front of me and I started making this point. He just rolled his eyes, sighed and said "welcome to my world".

 

[The Grud Man]

I think your assumption that running 3 plays would only take the clock down to 6 seconds is wrong. There pretty much would have been no time left had we run the ball instead of kneel down.

 

[lauraw]

nonissue

 

[Big Deal]

you could still have run a 4th down play or even kicked the punt out of bounds. No way they would have gotten their hands on the ball.

 

[RedViper]

I think Whis would have tried it. One of the things I love about that guy is he is very greedy at the end of the half. Last year, I think it was the Rams game, we scored ten or fourteen points in the last minute or so of the half. The attitude of "just when you clowns think its over, its not over-you're not getting to the locker room until we suck every last drop of blood from you."

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Because instead of kneeling it 3 times, you just run it up the middle 3 times instead. Each one would take 3-4 seconds a piece. Plus when you intentionally kick the ball out of bounds, the half is over. If there were 20+ seconds, I could have seen him do that.

 

[football karma]

my reasoning:

when Warner kneeled on 1st down -- the clock said :12. An immediate timeout stops it at :11. Two plays -- even running plays -- with quick timeouts and you could force a punt.

By calling the timeout on first down, you make the Cardinals actually run the ball (as opposed to kneeling) to burn time. While the probability is low -- wouldn't a fumble at that place on the field be a good thing?

With quick timeouts, the Vikings could have forced a punt with 1 or 2 seconds left. Sure the odds of a bad snap, blocked punt, bobbled snap -- all those things are low. But they are infinitely higher than the odds of one of those things happening while sitting in the locker room at half time.

I just see it as a freebie that Childress passed up. The odds of the Cardinals going 95 yards for a score was as close to zero as it got. The odds of a Cardinal mistake were much higher. It was all reward for the Vikings with very little risk.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

my reasoning:

when Warner kneeled on 1st down -- the clock said :12. An immediate timeout stops it at :11. Two plays -- even running plays -- with quick timeouts and you could force a punt.

By calling the timeout on first down, you make the Cardinals actually run the ball (as opposed to kneeling) to burn time. While the probability is low -- wouldn't a fumble at that place on the field be a good thing?

With quick timeouts, the Vikings could have forced a punt with 1 or 2 seconds left. Sure the odds of a bad snap, blocked punt, bobbled snap -- all those things are low. But they are infinitely higher than the odds of one of those things happening while sitting in the locker room at half time.

I just see it as a freebie that Childress passed up. The odds of the Cardinals going 95 yards for a score was as close to zero as it got. The odds of a Cardinal mistake were much higher. It was all reward for the Vikings with very little risk.

You're right. The Vikings could have forced a punt, but any punt would take anywhere from 3-5 seconds.

 

[Linderbee]

Here's where I thought he made a mistake...their possession just before that. First down, Peterson gets a 7 yard gain, but he's inbounds. He should have called the time out there...they lost 25 seconds by not calling the time out:

Minnesota - 1:12
1st-10, MIN29 1:12 B. Favre passed to A. Peterson to the left for 7 yard gain
2nd-3, MIN36 0:47 B. Favre passed to B. Berrian to the left for 8 yard gain

It wound up being moot, but still...you don't let 25 secs run off the clock when you're down to your last minute & you're trying to score.

 

[Big Deal]

You don't have to force a punt. The QB takes the fourth down snap, fakes going to a knee, takes a step back, takes the knee, half is over. If you do actually punt and they call for fair catch they can send the kicker out for a free kick with no time left, so obviously that wouldn't be option A.

 

[Early]

It was a mistake, but not huge at all. You couldn't kneel down three times since you lose yardage every time. You do not want to get close to your own endzone.

So first down i understand the knee taken as it removes the risk of fumbles....

Now, if they have taken the timeout, it would have forced Arizona to run the ball the remaning two downs. I dont see us taking the knee offcourse

The chances of fumbles...And especially with our backs, are there, but are considerably less, because all the staff will tell our backs to focus on keeping the ball and protecting it, rather than gain extra yardage.

There is also the chance of 95+ yard run for TD that counts in the negative way of taking the timeouts.

There is a huge chance that those runs will be for small gains, which will force a punt with few seconds left. A punt that deep from the endzone is always hard for punters and coverage unit, and the chances of a block are higher than usual. It's almost claustrophobic for the punter in that siutuation

There is also the chance of a bad snap

All in all i think the chances of Cardinal freak mistake are defenitely higher than the long TD run. However chances for either one are very very very very low... Still worth taking them, since the risk is more on Cardinals side than on Vikings side, but we talk about very low percentages here

 

[Early]

You don't have to force a punt. The QB takes the fourth down snap, fakes going to a knee, takes a step back, takes the knee, half is over. If you do actually punt and they call for fair catch they can send the kicker out for a free kick with no time left, so obviously that wouldn't be option A.

What if they blitz both A-gap's, hit warner in his face way before he is able to do that, he fumbles and they recover it for TD?

With Warners hands, the punt is much more safe

 

[cardpa]

If the Vikings had called a timeout after the first knee I would have called a run to the wide side of the field and chewed as much time as I could. That sort of run usually uses 5-7 seconds at least. Do that on second and third down and the clock would say 0.

 

[Cbus cardsfan]

If the Vikings had called a timeout after the first knee I would have called a run to the wide side of the field and chewed as much time as I could. That sort of run usually uses 5-7 seconds at least. Do that on second and third down and the clock would say 0.

Warner would've audibled in to a 90+yard TD to Fitz. Childress knew it and decided to let the clock run out. SMART move on his part .