Yes, a tie is better than a loss, but a win is better than a tie. Speaking only from my POV, I'd rather fight for the win than settle for the tie.

What almost worked? A completed pass that was still 20 yards away from FG range with 15 seconds left?

Going for it wasn't dumb. Going for it when even if you make it you're still not going to win the game... that was dumb!

https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...lts#/questions

No, he doesn't. He gets paid millions of dollars to know **** like this. It's not just Reich, it's a problem throughout coaching in the NFL. Hardly any of these people know what they are doing.

This is a fair point I think. While I don't hate the decision to go for it, it's true that there wasn't going to be much time left on the clock (20-24 seconds) even if they did make it. The Colts would still have had one timeout, however, and all they needed was a FG, so wasn't THAT crazy. And absent a turnover, they wouldn't have done worse than a tie.

Another 10-15 seconds would have been better, but then again Reich would be giving this extra time to the Texans if the effort failed. Lost in all of this, by the way, is Texas's bad decision not to use a timeout after the 3rd down play.

28 seconds left, and two timeouts remaining, plenty of time remaining to get into field goal range!!

I don't believe the chance was only 10% for a victory. Lots of assumptions built into these types of analyses, and they are highly debatable.

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THEY DID fight for the win.


After the Texans tied the game with a field goal, the Colts went to the air, and got a first down. At that point, the Texans only had one timeout left with 1:24 left to play. If the Colts were playing for the tie, they would have gone with 3 extremely conservative run plays to run all of the time off of the clock. They didn't do that. They continued to aggressively throw the ball downfield, attempting to get themselves into field goal range. Once it was 4th down with only 27 seconds to play from that part of the field (their own 43 yard-line), punting would not have been playing for the tie ...... it would be accepting the reality that after having played for the win and not getting it, salvaging the tie was the most prudent and realistic option at that point.



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I agree ...... those formulas are debatable, and I do think that the Colts had better than a 10% chance to win by going for it on 4th down at that point.

However, I do think that their chances were still well under 50% at that point (perhaps somewhere between 20% and 25%), which is why I would have chosen to punt the ball.


If there were 10 second less left on the clock (17 instead of 27), I would have gone for it ........ the Texans were out of timeouts, and even if the Colts had failed to get the 1st down, there would have been only 11 or 12 seconds left on the clock, which is not enough time to complete a pass over the middle and spike the ball like they did. They would have needed to either complete a pass and gotten out of bounds to stop the clock (much harder to do when the opposition knows that you have to do that) or tried for 2 Hail Marys to the endzone (another low percentage play.)



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Only in hockey.

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Peyton would have played aggressively for the win prior to that 4th down play, just like Luck and the Colts did.

He would not necessarily have demanded to go for it on 4th down as he did in the 2005 season playoff game against the Steelers. In that situation, the Colts were losing by a score of 21-3 with only seconds left to play in the 3rd quarter, and it was a playoff game. Calling the punt team off of the field in that situation is much different than punting the ball on 4th down from your own 43 yard-line with 27 seconds left to play in overtime in an early regular season game with the team having a record of 1-2 in their first 3 games.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHL647Mclzk


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