4th Quarter Play Calling

[Bengals Mike]

Originally Posted by Night's Watch

The difference is our running back was averaging over 7 yards a carry, and ML chose to pass the ball. Earlier in the year he was averaging under 4 or even 3 sometimes, and we were continuing to run the ball.

That said, their players made the plays that counted, ours did not. They get paid to play the same game as our do. They made mistakes yesterday just as ours did, and at the end of the day, Their total score beat ours.

As to the OP, I do believe that ML makes the call as to run or pass, and Gruden comes up with the exact play after ML choses. So the questionable pass calling in the 4th quarter goes on ML in my opinion, not Gruden.

just to add to this, Law Firm's last carry of the game was with 11:59 left in the 4th

[Ryan Mc]

Originally Posted by fredtoast

This is getting silly. All I hear all year long is how Marvin is too conservative because he runs tha ball with the lead instead of "keeping his foot on the peddle" and "going for the throat".

Now ehen he does exactly what everyone has been screaming for him to do he gets ripped for it.

If you can find a post of mine where I use either one of those phrases I'll admit you have a point. But, it's not silly when it's different people making different comments. And, as mentioned before, context is everything. If we were getting stuffed every running play of course I wouldn't be on here criticizing us for not running the ball more. The Cowboys are 19th in run D, 23rd in yards per carry allowed ... and we choose this game to give a RB with three straight 100-yard games his 2nd fewest carries of the season!? (in a game we led the entire 2nd half) The only game Green-Ellis had fewer carries was against Miami when a) Miami were the #1 run D in the league at the time, b) he was getting stuffed (1.4 yards per carry) and c) we trailed for most of that game.

I understand that the point of your post was not to comment on the play-calling, but to call out perceived hypocrisy/inconsistency. But, if you have an actual defense of our strategy given the points I noted above I'd love to hear it.