Coaching with Balls

Herm Edwards is not a good football coach. He was a good football player and he seems to be a pretty nice guy, but the man was not put on this earth to be a head football coach in the NFL. That said, Mr. Edwards does have something that most other coaches in the league seem to lack. Balls. Down by 7 on the road against the Chargers, Edwards had the stones to go for a two-point conversion (and a win) instead to putting his talk between his legs and heading to overtime. Herm knew that his team was gassed and overmatched and that his only chance to win the game was to roll the dice on the goal line, rather than waiting for the coin toss in overtime. He had confidence in his team, but it was a realistic confidence. He was confident that they can win the game, but also knew that he could maximize their chance to win by managing the situations that he put his team in. Unfortunately for coach Edwards and the Chiefs, it didn’t pan out, but although I can criticize the play call, I can’t criticize the decision to go for it. He made the right call for his team in that situation. Don’t get it twisted, having balls isn’t just about taking risks, it’s about taking the right risks, and that is exactly what Herm Edwards did. There are times when coaches know that their team can make the play, but fear of the negative overcomes faith in the positive. I can guarantee that every coach in the NFL has faced 4th down situations in which they knew that their guys could succeed, but they kicked anyway, because they thought more about failure than success. Now, my point here is not that more coaches need to go for it on 4th down, it’s that coaches need to rethink the rules for when it’s okay to take a risk. I could certainly present my own list of rules here, but that’s exactly what I’m arguing against. No two situations in a football game are alike and no two teams are alike, so there are no hard and fast rules for when coaches should take a risk. Head coaches know their teams better than anybody else, and as such, they shouldn’t let rules enforced by commentators govern their decisions. All I ask is that they have the balls to make the decisions that they know are right. My feeble plea for aggression can be summed up in just three words: Sack up, coach. At least one coach seems to have listened.