Keep the points or take the first down?

Originally posted by AZ9erfan520:
I don't thing the argument was for us to accept the penalty and try to score a touchdown. I think it was more to accept the penalty and chew up some more clock before sending out Akers to attempt another field goal. If the penalty is accepted we get the ball at the 25, call 3 consecutive running plays, gain on average a total of 6 yards and run almost 2 minutes of clock before attempting a 36 yard field goal. Either way it wasn't a bad decision. Harbaugh had plenty of justification to do what he did and thats fine. It doesn't always work out the way it did. What it comes down to is that if we were a better team we would have won. For having as little time to install our new schemes on o and d and suffering the injuries we did i don't think we did fine. Atleast we are going in the right directions.

Which is really weird because we did the exact thing last week, that he wouldnt do this week. We took the penalty, and ate some clock. I wish we had done that this week. Man when the cowboys had the ball, with 6 mins left, and we had a 10 point lead I was so sure we had the game.

should of decline the offense overall was moving the ball most of the day down the field playing football is about taking risk you win some u lose some & what happend anyways we still lost the game

Originally posted by kingairta:
You do when your Oline is getting worse with every posession. Who's to say the ball is moved forward and 2 minutes comes off the clock? The way the Oline was performing the odds were better the ball would go backwards and only 1 minute would come off the clock. If the team was able to move the ball as effectively in the third as they did in the first half I might be scratching my head a little. But given the performance upto that point it was the right call.

We drove to get into FG range. Why not try to drive further? We were doing OK on that drive.

Originally posted by Leathaface:

Originally posted by Otter:

Originally posted by qnnhan7:
It's about winning. Think back to the last 6-7 years of this team. Did we have anything to lose by taking the 15 yds, run off more time, maybe win the game with a TD, and still have a chance at a FG after 3 more tries. It's not like we can't kick a FG on at the end of those fresh downs.

A chance for a knockout punch or wait on a decision at the end of the fight.

You don't take points off the board.

Once again, the "you don't take points off the board" idea comes from the situation where it's 4th and 6 and you make a FG but there's an offsides to make it 4th and 1. THAT'S the situation that saying applies to. Not 1st and 10 on the opponents 22, LOL. You don't stop trying to score TDs in the 4th quarter of a 7 point game.

Tell that to BYU - The moment the penalty came down Saturday my mind was transported to a beautiful autumn day on the Palouse in 1974, when Joe Danelo kicked a late field goal to put the Cougars ahead of Stanford 21-20. The Card committed a penalty on the play, so head coach Jim Sweeney opted to take Danelo’s chip-shot trey off the scoreboard and go for the touchdown.
The specifics are blury now, 31 years later, but I think it was a fumble that ended the Cougs’ quest for the additional four points that day. The result was disastrous. The Cougars lost 20-18 – putting an exclamation point on a season in which they could never catch a break, losing five games that they had every right of winning.

Or statistical modeling that shows after 50 minutes of play it gives you a better than 80% chance of winning.



You don't take points off the board, if you are looking at another field goal attempt over 40 yards, if you fail to gain another yard.

Originally posted by islander:
For a team that had no chance Harbaugh has made me a believer. I too would have taken the 3 points at that time and made it a two score game. We will learn from this and keep getting better. Man that was a close game......... GO NINERS

I got excited watching this game for the first time in years. I support Harbaugh's decision to take the points.
They lost because of the crucial neutral zone penalty and giving up huge plays in the fourth quarter, oh yeah and the oline sucks!!!

If the clock read 5 minutes to go in the game, I think the decision is understandable. With almost a full quarter left, against a pretty good offense, it is a bad decision, plain and simple.

Originally posted by dtb49ers:

Way to bring something to the discussion...

not saying it was the wrong move as we had a lot of time on the clock and things looked good for the 49ers at that time, so why take 3 off the scoreboard? Taking time off the clock is great but if you end up not scoring at all its not a good move and with Alex playing poorly or the Dallas De-Line playing well in the 2nd half, I think it was the right move at the time. That being said, the 49ers were playing NOT TO LOSE and when you have a so so team that's not very good and a QB who's not very good, in the NFL you 90% of the time end up losing the game.

Originally posted by Leathaface:

Originally posted by Otter:

Originally posted by qnnhan7:
It's about winning. Think back to the last 6-7 years of this team. Did we have anything to lose by taking the 15 yds, run off more time, maybe win the game with a TD, and still have a chance at a FG after 3 more tries. It's not like we can't kick a FG on at the end of those fresh downs.

A chance for a knockout punch or wait on a decision at the end of the fight.

You don't take points off the board.

Once again, the "you don't take points off the board" idea comes from the situation where it's 4th and 6 and you make a FG but there's an offsides to make it 4th and 1. THAT'S the situation that saying applies to. Not 1st and 10 on the opponents 22, LOL. You don't stop trying to score TDs in the 4th quarter of a 7 point game.

I can give you another scenario: 4th and goal at the 7 yard line, you kicked a field goal. But because of a 5 yds penalty, it's 1st and goal at the 2yds line. Now you DO take pts off the board and go for a TD with 3 fresh downs. I don't think there's a coach anywhere chicken sh*t enough to decline the penalty and keep the field goal. There's no such rule as 'you don't take points off the board'. There's only 'how much confidence you have in your offense'.

Originally posted by Otter:

Originally posted by Leathaface:

Originally posted by Otter:

Originally posted by qnnhan7:
It's about winning. Think back to the last 6-7 years of this team. Did we have anything to lose by taking the 15 yds, run off more time, maybe win the game with a TD, and still have a chance at a FG after 3 more tries. It's not like we can't kick a FG on at the end of those fresh downs.

A chance for a knockout punch or wait on a decision at the end of the fight.

You don't take points off the board.

Once again, the "you don't take points off the board" idea comes from the situation where it's 4th and 6 and you make a FG but there's an offsides to make it 4th and 1. THAT'S the situation that saying applies to. Not 1st and 10 on the opponents 22, LOL. You don't stop trying to score TDs in the 4th quarter of a 7 point game.

Tell that to BYU - The moment the penalty came down Saturday my mind was transported to a beautiful autumn day on the Palouse in 1974, when Joe Danelo kicked a late field goal to put the Cougars ahead of Stanford 21-20. The Card committed a penalty on the play, so head coach Jim Sweeney opted to take Danelo’s chip-shot trey off the scoreboard and go for the touchdown.
The specifics are blury now, 31 years later, but I think it was a fumble that ended the Cougs’ quest for the additional four points that day. The result was disastrous. The Cougars lost 20-18 – putting an exclamation point on a season in which they could never catch a break, losing five games that they had every right of winning.

Or statistical modeling that shows after 50 minutes of play it gives you a better than 80% chance of winning.



You don't take points off the board, if you are looking at another field goal attempt over 40 yards, if you fail to gain another yard.

What do those stats have to do with how well the opposing offense if playing? Context plays a huge role. Blackjack and Poker has stats on exactly what to do but the people who win money are the ones who include context.

DAL already had come back from a two score deficit AND their offense was starting to generate some momentum along with the fact that Romo was at 300 yards at this time. DAL is also a team that has the potential to have offensive outbursts. You don't want to give them more TOP.

If taken the penalty, we would have been 2 yards outside of the Red Zone. You don't pass that up.

Also, Gore was gaining yards when running be it 2 yards but he was gaining and odds are he would have gained 4-6 yards in three attempts.

Context plays a larger role. You cannot think about fumbles. If a team is thinking about fumbles rather than moving the ball, then they already lost.

It was clearly the wrong decision.

If you ever have a chance to get a 1st down near the red zone, you always take it. It was a joke that he declined the penalty. Romo may be turnover prone, but the guy can move the ball pretty well and I had no doubt he was going to move the ball.

You guys supporting the decision, you really thought our D was going to hold up at the end of the game? What team have you been watching the past couple of years?

Our secondary is our biggest weakness and we make it a tradition to fold against good passing QBs.

Originally posted by SunDevilNiner79:
It was clearly the wrong decision.

If you ever have a chance to get a 1st down near the red zone, you always take it. It was a joke that he declined the penalty. Romo may be turnover prone, but the guy can move the ball pretty well and I had no doubt he was going to move the ball.

You guys supporting the decision, you really thought our D was going to hold up at the end of the game? What team have you been watching the past couple of years?

Our secondary is our biggest weakness and we make it a tradition to fold against good passing QBs.

I just don't understand it. Let me be on the 37 yard line and the Opposing coach comes up to me and says this:

"Hey, I will give you 3 points right now or you can have the ball at the 22 and a first down."

No coach in their right mind would take the points.

each situation is different. with an explosive offense like dallas 10 points isnt enough and jh is a moron for thinking it was. if we were playing the seahawks then its a great move, but we werent.

Originally posted by unst4bl3:

Originally posted by AZ9erfan520:
I don't thing the argument was for us to accept the penalty and try to score a touchdown. I think it was more to accept the penalty and chew up some more clock before sending out Akers to attempt another field goal. If the penalty is accepted we get the ball at the 25, call 3 consecutive running plays, gain on average a total of 6 yards and run almost 2 minutes of clock before attempting a 36 yard field goal. Either way it wasn't a bad decision. Harbaugh had plenty of justification to do what he did and thats fine. It doesn't always work out the way it did. What it comes down to is that if we were a better team we would have won. For having as little time to install our new schemes on o and d and suffering the injuries we did i don't think we did fine. Atleast we are going in the right directions.

Which is really weird because we did the exact thing last week, that he wouldnt do this week. We took the penalty, and ate some clock. I wish we had done that this week. Man when the cowboys had the ball, with 6 mins left, and we had a 10 point lead I was so sure we had the game.

Harbaugh took the penalty last week because of field position. Last week, we were so close to the end zone, Akers FG was a chip shot, an 18 yarder and Harbaugh ran three run plays.

Yesterday, the penalty would have given us the ball at the 22 yard line, making a FG around 37 or 38 yards. A makeable FG, but definitely not a chip shot. Also, we faced a much better defense this week. They had put quite a bit of pressure and I think they had at least 5 sacks. If Alex had gotten sack, it would have made it a much longer FG or even worse, put us out of FG range.

In hindsight, Harbaugh may have accepted the FG and tried his luck, but no guarantees we even get 3 pts.

Bad call, why not take penalty and at worst run more time off the clock and try fg again if you can't score a td? Problem with this team on Offence is that we are not taking chance to put our players in position to make plays, Way to conservative!