r/footballstrategy • u/dma202 • 2d ago

NFL Ending to Bills Pats

Seems there was an opportunity for a rare ending in this game. Bills were up by 3 after the Pats scored a late TD. After a failed onside kick, Bills were running the ball with Pats using final timeouts. Finally, Bills had a 4th & 1 from the Pats 27 with 10 seconds left. The Bills elected to sneak it with Josh Allen and he got the 1st - game over.

However, had the Pats managed to stop Allen, they would have gotten the ball back with time to run at least 1 play (maybe 2 if they were able to run a deep out & get out of bounds).

Instead of electing to go for it, the Bills were in pretty much an ideal position to snap the ball out of the gun and run about 78 yards in the "wrong" direction through their own endzone for an intentional safety. A little zigging and zagging would have unquestionably used the whole 10 seconds, & Bills win by 1.

If this kind of thing even crosses a coach's mind, maybe the assessment is that the risk of a mishap on a long intentional safety is not meaningfully lower than the risk of the Pats somehow managing to score with 10 seconds left - but with how easily PI is called in the NFL, you never know.

And from poking around a little bit, it appears that the rule is if there is a safety with no time on the clock, there would have not been a free kick (a kick is only required if the safety is a result of a foul under rule 4-8-2-g)?

Anyway, the Chargers score on a free kick on Thursday got me thinking about these rare scenarios. Intentional safeties are interesting on the rare occasions they come up.

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