Declining the safety

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/10/19/not-taking-safety-was-smart-move-for-harbaugh/

In our view, the fiery, emotional, and combative Harbaugh (who has developed a habit of getting mad at the officials even when the calls go his way but not quickly or decisively enough for his liking) made a cool, dispassionate, and rational decision in the heat of the moment. If Harbaugh had accepted the penalty, the Seahawks would have been able to attempt an onside free kick from their 20, which if successful would have given them the ball at roughly their own 30. And if a defensive back fell down and if Wilson had connected deep with a wideout who actually was able to catch the ball, the lead could have been quickly sliced to two with the Seahawks trying another onside kick, this time from the 35.

Yeah, a lot of dominoes would have had to fall the right way for Seattle. But the percentages suggest a greater chance of winning via two knees out of victory formation — even with the slim risk that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll would take a page out of the Schiano playbook. (While Carroll has praised Schiano for his approach to victory formation plays, Carroll called off the dogs on the last two snaps.)

Harbaugh made the right decision.

1. Accept the penalty and safety for 2 points. Possible outcome: seattle does an onside kick, gets possession, scores toucdown. They do it again a 2nd time.

2. Refuse penalty, get the ball on downs. Do 2 kneel-downs, game over.

Scenario 1 is hiighly improbable, but is an actual outcome. Just eliminate that possibility, as well as avoid any potential injury on either of the 2 onside kicks.

Sincerely,

Captain Obvious

Originally posted by communist:

Originally posted by Wodwo:
Easy.

49ers win.

Defense rests.

1)Read til the end
2)use brain
3)answer
--->I said we could have used the 2nd-string defense.

Unnecessary and it violates forum rules.

What you risk if you take the safety:
-Injuries on special teams
-Onside punt
-Muffed punt reception if they don't onside kick
-1st and goal if the punt is muffed
-Injuries on Defense if they get the ball back on an onside or muffed punt

What you risk by declining the safety:
-Bad Center-to- QB exchange, which 90% of the time is recovered by the offense

Originally posted by fryet:
I have never seen a bad snap in a victory formation. Also, you would still have the bad snap risk if you did take the 2 points and did victory formation after recovering the onside punt. Harbaugh made the right call, since it cut down the risk of injury to his team.

Have you ever seen 2 onside recoveries and 2 scores in 43 seconds? And yes we would still kneel it if we recovered the onside kick, but at least in a 2 possession game we would have the margin for error to be able to afford a botched snap should that somehow occur.

scenario 1) Accept Safety and if everything goes wrong (2 onside kicks, 2 scores) and we lose in regulation

scenario 2) Decline, botch a snap, worst case scenario we go to overtime

/discussion

Doesn't matter the decision worked.

Dont get so wrapped up in it.

Originally posted by JimA49ers:
Harbaugh made the right decision.

1. Accept the penalty and safety for 2 points. Possible outcome: seattle does an onside kick, gets possession, scores toucdown. They do it again a 2nd time.

2. Refuse penalty, get the ball on downs. Do 2 kneel-downs, game over.

Scenario 1 is hiighly improbable, but is an actual outcome. Just eliminate that possibility, as well as avoid any potential injury on either of the 2 onside kicks.

Sincerely,

Captain Obvious

You can't just COMPLETELY discount the potential of a botched snap on a kneel-down though, that's the whole point. It it were automatic and you could just tell the ref, we want to kneeldown or something and you wouldn't have to snap it, then sure. But that's not how it works and there is always a chance, albeit a small one, of a botched snap. Also, Carroll has supported Schiano's kneeldown philosophies so you never know if he woulda busted that out and then a potential injury could even happen on a kneeldown. I get where you guys are coming from but it's pretty blind of you to not even see where I'm coming from IMO.

Given the rarity of a botched snap and the offense recovering a vast majority of those type of drops I take those odds any day. You never count a team out until the clock runs out.

Two scores and 43 seconds sound like insurmountable odds but you just never know. Last Sunday Dallas almost pulled it off if not for a missed FG.

Yep Harbaugh also told Smith to throw the INT in the endzone so we couldnt score more points to not cover the spread.....thats exactly what he told Alex....Alex listened and threw the pick....now it almost backfired when dude brought it out of the endzone then ran back in, Vernon Davis tackles him foward to push him out of the endzone.....WHOA that was close.......

Originally posted by 49erfaithful49:
scenario 1) Accept Safety and if everything goes wrong (2 onside kicks, 2 scores) and we lose in regulation

scenario 2) Decline, botch a snap, worst case scenario we go to overtime

/discussion

Nice, but add one other item--Accept--Williams and Ginn drop back to return the kick...both are injured and out for the rest of the year...Harbaugh is an idiot!

Harbaugh Made the correct decision. Imagine if we were SEA fans. We would hope for a miracle in some sort of fumble, quick strike TD or FG, onside kick, then a Hail Mary.

Harbaugh stuffed all of the miracle hope by SEA fans by declining the penalty.

Originally posted by lordfangio:
2 reasons why I think this was very foolish:

1. The spread was 7.5 or 8...accepting the safety means we would have covered...now I totally understand Harbaugh never ever ever altering how he PLAYS the end to accomodate the betters, but he didn't have to CHANGE anything, just accept the penalty! Because IMO it actually IS slightly advantageous to the team to cover because you WANT people to bet on you because that means more people hoping you win which means potentially more people cheering making the crowd a bigger factor when the other team's offense is on the field. Sure it's a stretch and again, I wouldn't alter/risk anything to ensure covering, but if it's right there on the table and you don't even have to do anything to get it, take it! (not to mention he went for 2 vs. Carroll at the end in the what's your deal game when up by a million, so why turn down free points here)

2, and more importantly, suppose something bizarre happened on a kneeldown like a fumbled QB/center exchange or Carroll going Schiano on us, etc., why would you want it to be a 1 possession game and leave even a 0.00001% chance of losing when you can completely slam the door shut even more by making it a 2 possession game? It's one thing it it would have made it go from a 4 point game to a 6 point game or an 18 point game to a 20 point game or something, but this would have made it go from a 1 possession game to a 2 possession game which can be significant! (and we would have gotten the ball either way so it's not like there would have been a difference in terms of who would have the ball)

This is probably the dumbest post I've ever seen on the Zone!! I get that you probably lost some money on the game, so why don't you complain about someone who actually did make a bad decision, like Alex's pick in the end zone. How stupid would Jim have looked if we walk out our hands team for the onside punt and say Vernon or Crabtree got nailed and were done for the season. The odds of getting a player hurt onside kick are way higher than screwing up a couple of kneel downs. Has it even happened before? Insane.

Originally posted by kingairta:
Given the rarity of a botched snap and the offense recovering a vast majority of those type of drops I take those odds any day. You never count a team out until the clock runs out.

Two scores and 43 seconds sound like insurmountable odds but you just never know. Last Sunday Dallas almost pulled it off if not for a missed FG.

Exactly, you never know - and it applies both ways. You never know if we could botch a snap because the odds of that are way higher than an onside punt recovery, TD, onside kick recovery, FG in 43 seconds with no timeouts.

Also, just another tiny little factor that perhaps should have been somewhere deep in Harbaugh's brain, I'm sure the defense would have really appreciated that it would have held the Seahawks to something right around zero passing yards in the 2nd half which would have been awfully cool.

Originally posted by dtg_9er:
Nice, but add one other item--Accept--Williams and Ginn drop back to return the kick...both are injured and out for the rest of the year...Harbaugh is an idiot!

Don't you dare deny that if we botched a snap that the entire Zone wouldn't have been calling Harbaugh an idiot for not making it a 2 possession game when we had the chance. How do people not realize that this applies both ways?