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Quick Cast - Did Dan Campbell's fourth down cost them the game? · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

• 0:00
  Chris Landry on your radio. Make sure to find him on Exit Landry Football.
• 0:02
  Check out the website Landry football dot com. Always the great stuff,
• 0:05
  NFL college, inside the lines, outside lines, everything at landryfootball dot com.
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  All right, so, Chris, you're sitting there and you're watching Detroit
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  would look like they're just going to run away with this thing. And then
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  everybody's going to circle the fourth down call by Dan Campbell and there's a lot
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  of criticism to that. Are you in that camp or I'll be honest with
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  you, when I was in real time, I said, this is the
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  call, Like you go ahead and you try to put this thing away or
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  was that ultimately the wrong call? Well, a couple of things, you
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  know, And I've learned this in the league for a long time, and
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  you know, coaching college for a while. As I mentioned, it's different
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  when you get in the NFL. You got to do two things in playoff
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  football. You got to coach your team and you got to coach the game.
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  And I think people missed the coaching the game part. Yeah. I
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  thought Dan did what he felt he needed to do because that's how his team
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  is built. And that's fine. It's what's got him to this point.
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  But I thought after dominating in the first half, and by the way,
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  it could have been worse. It could have been twenty eight, maybe even
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  thirty four or thirty five. I mean it was, but they had an
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  almost flawless first half. You get into the second half. If people say,
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  well, you shouldn't coach different with the lead, oh, you absolutely
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  have to coach different. With the league. You have to. It's a
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  game of football with a clock and you don't sit on the vault. But
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  you have to be smart and you have to be really proven with your decisions.
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  I thought it was a little risky for me about fourteen with a chance
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  to go up seventeen. It's not the three points because look, it could
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  have missed the field goal, just like they missed the fourth down conversion.
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  When you miss a field goal and you missed converting on a fourth down,
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  that's the same thing as a turnover. That's the same thing as a fumble.
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  It's the same thing as an interception. I know field position may factor
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  a little bit into where those things occur, but it's a turnover in any
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  way you look at it. I think if you go up and go up
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  seventeen. Excuse me, you go up another possession, then you're in a
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  position to where you eliminate any form of momentum boost from San Francisco. And
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  that's where I think they were fighting now by going far it no question they
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  convert it. They go down, eat some more clock, even though it's
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  early, get a field goal later, or get a touchdown. It's probably
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  out of reach for San Francisco, and that's what he's trying to do,
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  is going for the knockoff finds. So I get that. I understand it,
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  but I also think you have to look at his team. His team
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  was not able to defend the pass, and I think the only thing was
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  the high pressure in San Francisco not really getting in sync offensively help their cause
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  a little bit, but I think they felt like he couldn't trust his defense
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  enough as well as they had played to that point. He wanted to put
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  them away with his offense, which that was the strength of Descharite team,
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  and they dominated San Francisco offensive front in the first half. So I understand
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  his move. I'm not overly critical of it, but I would have done
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  it differently. I would have kicked the field goal to add another three,
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  and because at that point it's not like San Francisco at that point Dica was
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  making its run kick a field goal. We get the field goal back,
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  you give me. I mean, it's a big momentum shift that I think
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  that he missed. That's what he missed because in his mind, that's what
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  he's doing. It's that's what God is here, That's what we do.
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  By God. I'll put it in the I get all that, nothing wrong
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  with that. But if it doesn't work, then you open yourself up to
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  the fact that was that that's the smartest thing you do. Would you do
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  it again? Dan, Well, he probably do it again at some point.
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  He's got to realize that coaching playoff football games in the NFL is different.
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  And you got to protect that lead, and you got up when you
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  got a team down. Yes, you could put them away with that fourth
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  down call, but you also could put another three on the board and put
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  another nail in the CAF and then make it more difficult for them to punch
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  out. I just think that that's the part that I see more than just
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  the three points, is stop the momentum from you know, or eliminating any
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  possibility of a momentum ship, which was all Detroit in that era. And
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  then look there's other things. You you you got an interception, uh that
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  that just dropped hits the Sace mass and I made a great play. Then
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  you come back and fumble. And when that started to happen, it was
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  it was you felt that on sought at that point. It was like a
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  snowball going downhill and it wasn't gonna be stopped. But it could have been
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  stopped earlier, in my view,