King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Run, Dick Vermeil, run! Shocking news: An NFL coach actually takes a risk.

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Nov. 7, 2005 | I loved Dick Vermeil's decision to go for the win rather than the tie Sunday. Down by three, the Kansas City Chiefs coach went for the touchdown from the 1-yard line on the game's last play against the Oakland Raiders rather than kicking a sure-thing field goal and going to overtime.

It worked. Larry Johnson plunged into the end zone and the Chiefs won 27-23. Vermeil is being hailed as a riverboat gambler, and the 69-year-old coach laughed it off after the game, saying, "I just figured I'm too old to wait."

Why Johnson landed in the end zone with three seconds left and the clock kept running down to 0:00 is a different question, one I don't know the answer to.

The flip side of all the Monday-morning back-patting Vermeil's getting is that he would have been fricasseed had the Raiders managed to tackle Johnson short of the goal line. Fool! Throwing away a game by taking a needless chance when all he had to do was have his kicker -- perfect on the year -- boot a chip shot two yards shorter than an extra point.

Want proof? In a second, I'm going to fricassee Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban for taking a stupid chance near the goal line at the end of Miami's loss to the Atlanta Falcons. Saban's players have his back, praising the aggressive play call that resulted in the Falcons' game-clinching interception.

They're wrong.

Because here's the thing: NFL coaches are way too conservative. They almost always take the safe road. They often play it so safe they actually harm their chances of winning. That's because with rare exceptions, they're not coaching to win. They're not even really coaching to avoid losing. They're coaching to avoid blame if they do lose.

I'm not the first to point that out. I'm just saying.

So Saban deserves some respect for calling for quarterback Gus Frerotte to throw a pass on third-and-2 from the Atlanta 8, down 17-10 with just under three minutes remaining, rather than handing off to Ronnie Brown or Ricky Williams. It was aggressive. It was a "blame me if this doesn't work" kind of call.

But the key words in that last paragraph are "quarterback Gus Frerotte." The Dolphins had two elite running backs both having a good day, each averaging more than five yards a carry, and the Falcons have one of the worst rushing defenses in the league.

This very column, in its Friday preview, read, "the assignment for the young, injury-damaged Falcons defense is simple: Make quarterback Gus Frerotte be the guy who beats you." This column shouldn't be taken as gospel, or even taken seriously, but I was hardly the only one saying that either.

Next page: Aggressiveness for its own sake is dumb too. Plus: How Terrell Owens fits into all this