A couple of coaching decisions have me confused

[PhunkE1]

This might have been brought up in another thread, but I wanted to voice my complaints about a couple of bad coaching moves.

1. Chris Perry's fumble towards the end of the 2nd quarter. When they flashed the replay it appeared that Perry's elbow and forearm were down when the ball was stripped out. If anything it was close enough, and critical enough of a play to warrant a challenge. I know we only had 1 TO left, but it gave the Ravens the ball in field goal range.

2. I don't understand why we went for it on 4th and 1 in the 4th Quarter only down by 7 with over 4 minutes left in the game. We were in field goal range. We could have taken the pts and then tried to play some D to get the ball back. Even if Marvin has no confidence in the D to stop anyone the Ravens would have gotten the ball back anyway if we would have converted and scored a TD.

With as bad as we played we were in the game up until that last Balt. drive.

[membengal]

1. ML said in the post-game it was a fumble, so why challenge it.

I guess he knows better. Or not. But, yeah, I would have challenged.

2. As for the other, as woeful as they had moved the ball all day, I thought they needed to go for it. That said, I hated the play call.

[gregstephens]

1. ML said in the post-game it was a fumble, so why challenge it.

I guess he knows better. Or not. But, yeah, I would have challenged.

2. As for the other, as woeful as they had moved the ball all day, I thought they needed to go for it. That said, I hated the play call.

1. Why challenge it? For the same reason he challenged the Utech fumble in the third (?) quarter. Right thing to do.

2. Bingo. Absolutely needed to go for it, but not with the same predictable play that hadn't worked in preseason or all yesterday.

[BengalByTheBay]

1. ML said in the post-game it was a fumble, so why challenge it.

I guess he knows better. Or not. But, yeah, I would have challenged.

2. As for the other, as woeful as they had moved the ball all day, I thought they needed to go for it. That said, I hated the play call.

1. Why challenge it? For the same reason he challenged the Utech fumble in the third (?) quarter. Right thing to do.

2. Bingo. Absolutely needed to go for it, but not with the same predictable play that hadn't worked in preseason or all yesterday.

1. Disagree -- it looked very much like a fumble to me. Certainly, a close judgment call, but I wouldn't have burned the challenge because it probably would not have overturned the call.

2. I wouldn't have gone for it, but I can't complain too much because there were about 100 reasons why scoring again may have seemed unlikely. Having made that decision, however, I would have called a play that gave you more than about 1% change of converting it.

[membengal]

I wasn't saying I wouldn't have challenged it, greg, simply passing along what ML said.

[gregstephens]

I wasn't saying I wouldn't have challenged it, greg, simply passing along what ML said.

No no, I understood what you were saying. I was answering his question. Sorry.