Honestly, I don’t think he fears the sack and longer FG attempt. He fears the INT. He just doesn’t have confidence in this year’s passing game. Might be personnel, might be scheme, might be both. But it is clear that this year (and in 2020) we are not taking many reasonable opportunities to swing hard and deliver a knockout punch.
He actually stated that in his press conference Post game. He was asked, what I thought was a really good question; why didn't they take a 'shot' at the end zone when they had the ball with 58 secs left, 2nd and 3, at the 16 with 1 Timeout left. Yes HE did fear being knocked out of FG range!
Below; Fleck's comments are typed in normal text, my comments are in
Bolded Italics. You can watch for yourself as it went from the 2:45-3:33 in his PG presser.
His response was almost 'mocking' the way the question was phrased with emphasis on 'taking a shot' at the end zone.
He said "here's the thing; these aren't just 'shots' at the end zone. The coverage has to present itself
(not sure I understand whatsoever what that even means as you call a play, you don't wait for the coverage to present itself) the 2nd and 3 we should easily be able to go and get 3 yards running the ball
(again, not sure what that has to do with throwing to the end zone as he's not answering the question but maybe he was trying to stop the clock with a first down(?) but it does give you insight into his ultra conservative nature as to why he wouldn't throw it as he explains in the last part) that's what I'm talking about, it has nothing to do with taking a 'shot' at the end zone, you get sacked and your out of field goal range
(WHAT??? You're at the 16, you tried a 53 yarder later at a more critical juncture in the game - does that mean (I know it doesn't but come on!) there might be a sack of 25 yards?) right, like I said before, we're playing for points, we're going to go up at halftime 13-10 and we did, we were up at halftime and that's what we wanted to be able to do and it was like we were gonna pop a run and we weren't going to go 4rth (
mumbling and indistinct) and on 1st down take a shot at the end zone and 2nd and 3 did not seem like the opportunity at that particular time to get ourselves out of field goal range (
REALLY?), but running the football I felt really good about, we just didn't execute the 2 plays.
This explanation to me was eye opening and kind of shocking but tells you that PJ absolutely does not regret one iota what the plays were and how things ended up. Even knowing you lost the game by those very points (we lost by 5 but if we didn't attempt the 2 pointer, we lost by 4, and we lost 4 potential points right there!!). Obviously everything changes if they get a TD, MAYBE, who knows. We'll never know but listening to this explanation was discouraging for me as a fan and I will leave it at that!
I hate to keep discussing all of this but really, I'm upset at what transpired in that game and because his replies tell me that our HC did NOT learn any valuable lesson, and he'd do the same thing the same way all over again.
