Much of the talk coming out of the AFC Championship Game has centered on Broncos coach Sean Payton\u2019s decision to eschew a a second quarter field goal and go for it on fourth down. That field goal would have given the Broncos a 10-0 lead \u2014 points it would have been nice to have in a game the Broncos eventually lost 10-7.<\/p>\n
Patriots coach Mike Vrabel was asked today on The Greg Hill Show about fourth down decisions, and although he didn\u2019t say anything critical about Payton\u2019s decision, he did say that coaches need all have to consider all the factors in deciding whether to kick a field goal or go for it on fourth down, and that one of those factors is how important those points are likely to be at the end of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t mind being aggressive,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cThe biggest thing is trying to predict the flow of the game and what that\u2019s going to look like and how many points you think you\u2019re eventually going to need to win the football game.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Payton, trying to predict the flow of the game might have included considering that he was playing his backup quarterback, and a blizzard was coming in the second half. That\u2019s not a bad time to score whatever points you can, and a 10-point lead at that point in the game would have been huge for the Broncos.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to know how the rest of the game would have gone if the Broncos had taken a 10-point lead in the second quarter, but it\u2019s safe to say Vrabel is glad Payton decided to be aggressive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much of the talk coming out of the AFC Championship Game has centered on Broncos coach Sean Payton\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-433063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}