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David Boclair
14 hours ago
NASHVILLE
– Mike Vrabel relies heavily on the notion that players win games and coaches
lose them.
He
stuck to that philosophy Monday, the day after his Tennessee Titans lost 27-24
to the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was the Titans’ first loss of the season.
“It's
always going to be when we play well, it will be the players that determine the
outcome,” Vrabel said Monday.
The
outcome was not what he wanted, but Vrabel did his part to help the Titans win. According to the
athletics analytics website
EdjSports, he actually enhanced his team’s chances in the matchup between the
AFC’s only remaining unbeaten teams with a couple of his fourth quarter
decisions.
First,
with the Titans behind by 10 points (27-17) with 10:19 to play, Vrabel elected to go for it on
fourth-and-goal from the 1 rather than attempt a short field goal that
would have made it a one-score game. The Steelers were called for defensive
pass interference on the play, and on the next snap Derrick Henry scored on a
1-yard touchdown run.
EdjSports’
analysis determined that the decision to kick would have meant an 11.9 percent
chance for Tennessee to win at that time. The decision to go for it improved
the chance for victory to 18.1 percent, a difference of 6.2 percent in the
Titans’ favor.
Based on the numbers, no other NFL
coach made a single call on Sunday that improved his team’s opportunity for
success as much.
The
second-best call, according to EdjSports, came from Seattle’s Pete Carroll, who
went for it on fourth-and-2 from the Arizona 3 with 6:50 to play and his team
ahead by three points. That choice improved the Seahawks’ chances 4.9 percent
in a game they ultimately lost.
EdjSports also highlighted Vrabel’s choice
to accept an offensive pass interference penalty against the Steelers, which
made it third-and-12 from the Tennessee 19 with 2:40 to go rather than
fourth-and-1. Safety Amani Hooker intercepted a pass on the next play, which
gave the ball to the offense and ultimately led to Stephen Gostkowski’s
unsuccessful game-tying field goal attempt with 19 seconds
remaining.
“I
was talking to [referee] Shawn [Hochuli] there, he told me it was going to be
fourth [down], and I said, ‘It's going to be really short,’ and he said,
‘Yep,’” Vrabel said. “I thought that just kind of having watched Pittsburgh and
their philosophy that they probably would have gone for it. I felt like at that
point in time, backing them up would have been the right thing to do.”
Analytics
agreed. From EdjSports’ Week 7 analysis:
The Titans trailed the Steelers by three, and Pittsburgh faced 3rd
and 2 at the Tennessee 9-yard line, giving the Titans 14.2% GWC. The Steelers
gained one yard setting up 4th and 1, however, there was an offensive pass
interference penalty on Pittsburgh. Vrabel chose to accept the penalty, giving
Pittsburgh 3rd and 12 on the 19-yard line, increasing Tennessee’s GWC to 22.3%.
Had Vrabel declined the penalty, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin would have had a
decision to make: go for it on 4th and 1 (Titans GWC 10.2%) or kick a field
goal (Titans GWC 28.0%). Vrabel
must have expected Tomlin to go for it and made the correct call to accept the
penalty. The interception on the next play increased the Titans’ GWC by 14.7%.
In
his first two seasons as an NFL head coach, Vrabel has taken some heat
for his decision-making.
Increasingly,
though, he has started to
build a reputation as a coach who gets the most out of every game and gives his
team every opportunity to win. The NFL even implemented a rule change during the offseason based on his ability to
manipulate the clock.
He
likes to say that any loss is on the coaches. In this case, it simply is not
true.
