Dan Lanning's 4th-down gambles backfire, put Oregon at top of this week's Misery Index
We know that the nerds have taken over sports at the highest levels, wielding their fancy spreadsheets full of probabilities while telling generations of coaches that they were foolish for relying on instincts and experience.
It’s an interesting and never-ending debate, especially in a sport like football where the data and analytics will often steer coaches in directions that run counter to common sense and the way the human mind typically processes risk vs. reward.
The most successful coaches are probably those who blend the two. It’s good to understand the data and use it to inform decisions, but it’s bad to be beholden to numbers. In the end, these are games played by human beings and not computers. You need some human wisdom to understand context.
Football coaches generally have used that data to become more aggressive in their play-calling and decision-making. Dan Lanning, the 37-year old coach at Oregon, uses it as a shield for outright recklessness.
Lanning made three crucial decisions Saturday that might have looked good to the analytics crowd but turned out to play a huge role in No. 8 Oregon’s 36-33 loss at No. 6 Washington.
The first: On the final play of the first half, Lanning went for a fourth-and-goal from the 3-yard line rather than take an easy field goal that would have cut Washington’s lead to 22-21. It didn’t work and was the most egregious of the three since there wasn’t much upside to chasing points that early in the game.
The second: Trailing 29-18, Lanning again went for a fourth-and-3 instead of the automatic field goal, this time from the 8-yard line. It again didn’t work.
The third: After clawing back to lead 33-29, Lanning went for a fourth-and-3 from Washington’s 47 with just a bit more than two minutes left, trying to salt away the game. It didn’t work, and Washington scored the winning touchdown just two plays later from excellent field position.
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You can make a decent pro or con case for each of those three decisions. But when the pattern of outright aggression backfires so spectacularly, you open yourself up for major-second guessing.
It’s also worth mentioning that last season, Lanning took a massive gamble with 1:26 left in a tie game by going for a fourth-and-1 from Oregon’s own 34-yard line. That didn't work either, essentially handing Washington a game-winning field goal.
Maybe we should give Lanning some credit for sticking to his Uber-aggressive philosophy and his probabilities, come hell or high water. On the other hand, if he just takes the safe route on a couple of those decisions, Oregon probably walks away with the most impressive win of the season.
If the Ducks miss the College Football Playoff by that thin margin, there should be a ton of regret about Lanning’s appetite for risk. And it’s why Oregon is No. 1 in the Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst about the state of their favorite program.
Four more in misery
Colorado
The only thing the Buffaloes have done wrong is make a lot of people think they were something more than a middling team whose rebuild would take much longer than one season. And Colorado has some blame in that, as players and even Deion Sanders himself leaned into the “Do you believe now?” rhetoric after a couple surprising wins to open his tenure.
But what makes Colorado a true Misery Index candidate this week amidst what has been an overall success story? It’s a nasty combination of dramatically raised expectations followed by a swift regression to the mean, capped by one of the worst collapses you’ll see all season.
The Buffaloes were up 29-0 at halftime Friday against Stanford. They lost 46-43 in the second overtime, which represented unacceptable complacency, a ghastly performance by their defense (523 yards against the nation’s 84th-ranked offense) and a total loss of discipline (17 penalties for 127 yards).
At 4-3, with four more games against ranked teams, the odds are now against Colorado making a bowl game. In the big picture, that’s fine. The Buffaloes are on a good trajectory, and we won’t really know about Sanders’ coaching chops until next season. But most of the new fans who are only tuning into college football because of Sanders simply don’t understand how difficult it is to go from 1-11 just to respectability in one season. If the hype machine got a little out of control after Colorado beat TCU in the opener, then followed it up with a couple more wins, we are now in a regression to the mean phase that is not going to be particularly pleasant given the sub-standard offensive line and personnel issues on defense. Sanders may be able to accelerate the timetable a little bit because of his recruiting reach, but there’s no magic in what it takes to rebuild from scratch.
Auburn
When you hire Hugh Freeze, you are asking your fan base to put up with a lot. But once you get past the jokes about the scandal that got him fired at Ole Miss, the televangelist vibes, the alarmingly undisciplined use of social media and his off-putting compulsion toward trying to make people like him, the reward is supposed to be a great offense.
That was the deal Auburn made with its fan base when it brought in Freeze over the objections of a loud minority. It is the deal Freeze is not living up to in his first season as Auburn sits at 3-3 following a 48-18 loss at LSU.
To be somewhat fair, Freeze inherited personnel problems from the stunningly overmatched Bryan Harsin, who didn't understand what it took to compete in the SEC and had the results to show it. So nobody expected immediate greatness under Freeze. But bad and fun is a pretty decent alternative, and Freeze hasn’t even delivered that. If you set aside the wins over Massachusetts and Samford, Auburn is averaging a stunning 15.5 points per game. Its quarterback, Payton Thorne, has thrown for 44, 82 and 102 yards in three SEC contests. Given Freeze’s track record of making quarterbacks look good at both Ole Miss and Liberty, it’s bizarre how much Auburn is struggling at that position.
The good news is that Auburn seems to be recruiting pretty well, which is no surprise. Freeze understands how to swim in those waters and will raise the talent level in a short period of time. But this is going to be an absolute slog of a season, and the contingent of Auburn fans who never wanted him in the first place are going to be doing the told-you-sos until he bags a big win.
West Virginia
The only thing more painful than losing on a 49-yard Hail Mary is losing on a 49-yard Hail Mary to your former coach who left for a lesser program in a worse conference. Certainly, that’s how West Virginia fans felt about Dana Holgorsen, who spent eight mostly successful years at West Virginia before going to Houston, which at the time was a member of the American Athletic Conference. In reality, it was probably time for Holgorsen to move on because he had plateaued in Morgantown and was trending toward the hot seat in that job.
Still, hard feelings never quite go away for a fan base when a coach leaves voluntarily, and the only solace for the Mountaineers was that Holgorsen’s tenure at Houston had been incredibly underwhelming before they met Thursday night as Big 12 peers. In fact, there was even some talk that Holgorsen might be a mid-season firing victim had he lost to West Virginia and Texas on Oct. 21. And when West Virginia came all the way back from an 11-point deficit to take the lead with 12 seconds remaining, it looked like sweet, sweet revenge. But an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in the aftermath of the touchdown cracked the field position door open just a bit, and Houston won a tip drill at the goal line on the last play. The Mountaineers are still having a nice season at 4-2, but that kind of heartbreak against Holgorsen is worth more than just one loss.
Pittsburgh
It has been a terrible year for the Panthers, but no loss has been more embarrassing than the conversation around a blue vase that was in the lobby of their practice facility this week. The short version is that local media members reported the vase was there because that’s where players were supposed to put their negative thoughts when they entered the building. Naturally, Pitt fans and many fans of other teams made fun of this because it’s incredibly stupid.
But Pat Narduzzi, the Panthers’ coach, said that characterization wasn’t accurate. According to Inside the Panthers, Narduzzi had a winding explanation that goes back to a 1921 novel called “The Go-Getter” about a World War I veteran who comes home, gets a job and is instructed to buy a vase for his boss. The veteran has to endure all kinds of obstacles along the way but finally gets the job done and passes the test, which somehow was supposed to be inspirational for a bad football team that was 1-4 going into this week. Coaches will try anything during tough times, so it was worth a shot. And guess what? Pitt blew out previously unbeaten Louisville, 38-21. But here’s the problem. If the vase is what turned around your season, that's probably not something you should admit. And if it wasn’t the vase but rather a quarterback change to transfer Christian Veilleux, who got his first start Saturday, why did it take so long to figure out?
Miserable but not miserable enough
Georgia
You don’t typically see No. 1 team and two-time defending champion swimming in these miserable waters. But this version of the Bulldogs continues to give fans alarming vibes after a 37-20 win at Vanderbilt that was more competitive than expected. One issue is they’re pretty banged up, testing their depth in ways that weren’t common the last two years. (Star tight end Brock Bowers limping off the field with a likely sprained ankle at Vanderbilt doesn’t help.) Georgia is also a bit ordinary on both lines of scrimmage. Quarterback Carson Beck seems to be improving but is still making some bad mistakes and isn’t as dynamic as his predecessor Stetson Bennett. It feels like a loss is coming sooner rather than later, the only question is who is good enough to deliver it?
Southern California
We covered the Trojans’ predicament in detail a couple weeks ago, even though they hadn’t lost a game yet. Given the chronically poor defense they play under Lincoln Riley and coordinator Alex Grinch, perhaps we anticipated the 48-20 bruising that Notre Dame was going to deliver in South Bend. But what we couldn’t have predicted was reigning Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams playing one of his worst games as a college quarterback with three interceptions and just 199 passing yards. Sooner or later, the weight of how much is required of Williams just to keep this team competitive was going to crush this team. And even though Riley is 17-4 at USC, this feels like the moment where he’ll no longer get the benefit of the doubt.
Iowa
The so-called “Drive to 325” — the number of points required this season for offensive coordinator Brian Ferentz to have his contract extended -- is going to be a longshot for him to achieve. Through seven games, Iowa has scored a paltry 146 points — a performance that includes a 41-point outburst against Western Michigan. So the math isn’t in Ferentz’s favor, but Iowa is 6-1 and has an excellent shot at being 11-1 and back in the Big Ten title game. Do you really think Kirk Ferentz, who controls everything at Iowa, is going to fire his son off that kind of season? Even if he should — Iowa punted or turned it over on 11 of 14 possessions Saturday in a 15-6 win over Wisconsin — it’s not happening. Sorry, Iowa fans. You’re stuck with this arrangement forever.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oregon, Dan Lanning top Misery Index when fourth-down gambles backfire
