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Coogs Just Ran Out of Time...

By Andrew Silva
September 3, 2006

Anyone who saw the Cougars game against Weatherford Saturday evening could all agree on two things. 1) It was a heartbreaking loss that saw the Cougar men play their toughest until the final seconds ran out 2) we sure could have used some timeouts at the end of the game!

Weatherford had the luxury of simply running out the clock at the end of the game. The Cougar defense came up big holding the Kangaroos and forcing a turnover on downs, but without any way to stop the clock the Coogs were helpless to watch the time run out on them. So how did the Cougars get to the end of the game with no time outs left? They were forced to burn them when the offense was running out of time getting the plays in from the sideline. This mistake will be remedied as the season goes on so I am not too worried about that. What did bother me was the indecisiveness on whether to kick the PAT or go for 2 after the Coogs scored to take a 22-21 lead with 2:52 to play in the third. At this point it should be noted that the Cougars had already burned their first two timeouts so they really needed to try and conserve the last one. But the bigger question is what was the indecisiveness in whether to kick or go for two? It seemed to me an easy choice that you should go for two in this situation. Every coach on every level of football knows that if you are ahead by one you would want to go for two especially in a close game like the one the Coogs were involved in. Here is the reasoning. If you kick and make the PAT, you get one point so your lead is two points. Well a two point lead is no better than a one point lead the reason being a FG will put your opponent ahead either way. However if you go for two and make it, then you are up by three points which is significant because your opponent can’t beat you with a FG. But what if they wouldn’t have made the two point conversion? Well then they would still be winning by one and like I just stated a one or two point lead makes no difference as your opponent takes the lead on a FG either way. So now it is established that the Coogs should have gone for two in the first place. HOWEVER… once the Coogs saw that the clock was running out I think they should have just kicked the PAT. What? I may seem like I am contradicting myself but follow along. The Coogs obviously agreed with me that the right decision was to go for the 2PC. That is why they called a time-out so that they wouldn’t have lost 5 yards on their attempt as obviously scoring from 7 yards out is much harder than 2 yards out. BUT, I think the one, last time-out was more valuable than the than one point. So how about letting the clock run out, taking the penalty, then just booting the PAT because the five yards wouldn’t have made nearly as much of a difference on the kick than on the 2PC attempt.
So here are some scenarios of what could have been just for the sake of argument…
The final score was 28-25. If the Coogs would have:
Made 2PC , final score - 28-27
Made PAT, final score – 28-26. Either way a FG would have won the game. The biggest difference wasn’t the missed 2PC but rather the burned timeout the Cougars could have surely used at the end of the game.

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