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For sure.  One or two plays, the game would have been vastly different.  Also, and not sure how you felt about it, it looked like OSU just sorta either ran out of gas in the 4th quarter, or Texas found an extra gear or something.  But indeed, Texas had to play perfect, and OSU only had to be average, and miss a FG to lose. 

I think Texas' whole attitude and confidence switched on that 4th and 9 (I think it was 9).  It was a seriously gutsy call by Sark.  I looked it up, it was 4th and 9 with 2:21 to go in the THIRD quarter.  

Texas' two prior 2nd half drives went:

• 4 plays, 17 yards, 1:55
• 3 plays, 1 yard, 1:17

Meanwhile Ohio State had a decent drive (6 plays, 36 yards, punt) and a scoring drive (7 plays, 43 yards, FG) to extend the lead to 20 at 23-3.  

It feels desperate to go for it on 4th and 9 in your own territory in the third quarter.  Truth be told, it WAS desperate.  Most teams don't go for it there but most teams don't rally from down by 20.  If Texas punts there they just don't have enough time to win without some miracles so I think Sark decided to go for what was realistically a make-or-break moment.  If Texas had failed to convert that, they'd have been cooked.  

Here is the bigger point, I think:  The Broadcast showed Manning's face after the incompletion on 3rd and 9.  He was dejected.  Of course he was.  I think they were out of confidence and just listless.  Sark's decision there changed all of that.  Manning hit the TE for 9 to get the 1st down in Ohio State territory then hit him again for 22 on the next play to get into scoring position.  Texas went on to score and it was 23-10.  They never looked back.  

On the Ohio State side that play had the opposite effect.  After the 3rd and 9 incompletion they were celebrating not only the successful 3rd down stop but basically celebrating the win because they were assuming that Texas would punt and at that point Texas would have been down 20 without the ball going into the 4th quarter.  It would have been basically over.  

I think Ohio State's defense DID run out of gas but I chalk that up to the ToP issue.  Early in the second half Ohio State was winning (ToP and everything else):

• tOSU:  Punt:  6 plays, 36 yards, 3:05
• TX:  Punt:  4 plays, 17 yards, 1:55
• tOSU:  FG:  7 plays, 43 yards, 1:51
• TX:  Punt:  3 plays, 1 yard, 1:17

In those first four possessions of the second half Ohio State outscored Texas 3-0, outgained them 79-18, and won ToP 4:56 to 3:12.  From there:

• tOSU:  Punt:  3 plays, 1 yard, 1:05
• TX: TD:  15 plays, 91 yards, 6:28
• tOSU:  Punt:  3 plays, 6 yards, 1:33
• TX:  TD:  13 plays, 72 yards, 5:32
• tOSU:  Missed FG:  7 plays, 48 yards, 2:28

In those five possessions Texas outscored Ohio State 14-0, outgained them 163-55, and won ToP 12:00 to 5:06 despite only having two possessions to Ohio State's three in that stretch.  When Ohio State's defense went back on the field again to try to defend a now one-score lead they were absolutely gassed.  

My point, Ohio State never really looked as much better than Texas as the 23-3 score indicated but I also don't think they looked as much worse as the 21-0 run at the end indicated. 

Second, I think that Ryan Day made a LOT of decisions that are EASY to question in hindsight but that were probably the mathematically correct decision in real time.  Consider this example:  Suppose you went to Vegas and I told you that the math says that you have to hit on 12 at a Blackjack table so you did, got a 10 and busted out and lost.  That doesn't mean that my advice to hit on 12 was bad.  It wasn't bad advice.  It was the mathematically correct decision but at the end of the day you are playing the probabilities and those are probabilities not certainties so you aren't ALWAYS going to win even if you make the mathematically right call. 

Agree with the first paragraph.  

Second paragraph, I think that's a general and common trap of fandom.  Phillip Fulmer had a great quote that stuck with me years ago, he said "The 'big game' is the one you lose."  In context, the article was talking about how fans tend to think their coach can't win the big game, but it's partly because once you beat a team, well then, that team wasn't so tough after all, but if you lose to them, it was a big game and you couldn't win it.  

I recall some old UGA game vs. Saban's Bama team where Richt (or maybe Kirby) appeared to have them dead to rights if they could just get 5 more yards.  Maybe a pass is called, it's incomplete, and it costs them, and everybody who wants to see the Bama beast slain screams "You idiot!  Why would you throw it there???  Run the damn ball!!"  Well, because they needed 5 yards.  If UGA called a run and Bama stuffed that before 5 yards, people would simply have yelled "You idiot!  Why would you run it there?  Throw the damn ball!!"  I'm sure we've all seen a lot of games like that.

In retrospect, everything that didn't work feels like a stupid call.  In retrospect, everything that works makes you a genius.  




Unless you're Les Miles, in which case a sustained pattern of aggressive playcalling over a decade wins you games at an astonishing rate, but you're still a Gambler and an Idiot 

Yeah every single ball bounced extremely poorly for Texas in the first 2.5 quarters, and then pretty much the opposite was true for the final 1.5 quarters.  It was odd.

Coincidentally or maybe not, Sark also stopped being too cute with the playcalling at about that time, and went a little more smash-mouth.  That slow developing reverse on the 4th down in the 1st half was stupid and embarrassing, and then all of those super-slow and super-predictable WR screens were getting blown up as well.  The crowd began actively booing the playcalling, which I didn't participate in and don't approve of, but it was also hard to blame them.

I know what happened to turn the tide.

My wife and another couple brought beers over to our new neighbors' garage, where they had their Longhorn flag flying and the game on.  I didn't really ask how a Dodge City native became a Texas fan--maybe he's a descendant of the Texas cowboys and the Kansas who-ers from the cattle drives.  Regardless, we got there at 23-3, and were all rooting on the Burnt Orange miracle comeback.  I don't know why.  I guess I'm nostalgic from the 2011 maxi van trip to watch the Collin Klein led purple kitties do what they used to do.  Haven't forgotten how well we were treated.

So, congrats to Texas!  

Condolences to the Buckeyes.  Note that giving you Will Howard and cheering for them is a pretty recent mood.  

I know what happened to turn the tide.

And I know what created the tide in the first place 😬

Saturday morning I tried to calm my nervous wife and told her Texas was going to whip Ohio State good that evening.  Alarmed, she said "Isn't that a jinx?"  I told her she didn't believe in jinxes or incurring the wrath of the ECFGs, so it didn't matter.  She said it didn't matter, I still believed it, so shouldn't I not have said that?  I realized she was right, and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how to placate the bastards.  But they were more interested in teaching me about my hubris, even if not talking about my own team and just trying to get someone else to relax.  They want us nervous.  Bastards. 

I suppose that might be it.

But I think it was mostly when Jeremiah Smith did the horns-down.  The ECFGs didn't take too kindly to that.  He only got one more catch after that and Texas stormed back to win the game.

"Analytics" just isn't a very transparent paradigm, that I know of, in this context.

If you have 4th and 4 from your own 45 yard line, you're down by 4 with 3:52 to play and all three timeouts, there's "analytics" for that.  But what exactly that data entails eludes me.  At minimum, it's a grand average taken across all teams and all games, and it's a sheer, broad percentage.  On the more honed side, maybe it entails data about your team specifically, what kind of plays you're good at, what you're not, what the defense has been good at stopping.....more finely tuned to how likely you are to get 4 yards, in this game right now, or whether you should even try, right now. 

I've never heard much explanation as to what "the analytics" entails, who compiles them, their methodology, margin of error, etc. etc.  If the former, seems you still need a heckuva lot of human judgement or those analytics will run you smooth into a brick wall.  Some really bad, dumb decisions get made because people think "on average" means something it just doesn't to their situation. 

IMHO analytics largely does entail averages, but most people who think they're outliers who the averages don't apply to... Aren't. In fact, the people who actually think they're average are largely the outliers 

But that's kinda my point. Knowing the averages can be REALLY useful information. It helps you to inform decision-making. It can sometimes give you information that flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom often isn't very wise. 

I think it really came into its own with Sabermetrics, popularized by the book and movie, Moneyball. The movie IMHO made the point really well... Baseball was full of old scouts who evaluated players based on eye tests and outdated box score statistics that missed out on the value that actually made a team win more games. Relying on the "analytics" rather than the traditional scouts seemed like crazy... Until it actually worked. 

In football, what IMHO the analytics largely showed was that the sport was overly conservative, in both playcalling and decision-making. 2nd quarter, 4th and 1 from your own 40? Punt, obviously! You can't give the other team that field position! Except that the actual analytics showed that you'd have higher expected points going for it because of the likelihood of converting, even accounting for the fact that it exposed you to the downside risk of giving your opponent better field position if you failed to convert. 

But it's a little bit different of a field when you're in baseball with 162 regular-season games and best-of-5 or best-of-7 series in the playoffs, compared to CFB where it's 12(+1?) regular season games and then a single-elimination playoff. A decision-making philosophy that over the course of the season maximizes your expected win total gives you the opportunity to make playoffs. A decision-making philosophy that increases your risk of losing THIS game may no longer make sense in a single-elimination playoff. 

And that's where people lose the nuance. Going for it on 4th and 1 on your own 40 yard line in a regular season game can be smart, because consistently doing that over the course of the season might lead to an expectation of winning 1+ game more on average. But it can be stupid in a single-elimination playoff because if it increases your chance of losing THIS game by 8%, it means you very well might lose your opportunity to let averages work over time. 

as college football fans I think we over, analyze these things.  the way I look at it two good teams got together and played a helluva game.  One team was better, and won.  Now the season moves on.  

we could “what if” both sides to death. 

what if Cam Coleman and Wingo catch those two early touchdown passes that were either overthrown or dropped? Maybe Texas wins comfortably  

what if Sayin, the most accurate quarterback in the land, last season, hits that wide open McCuin for the walk in TD late in the 3rd?  Could go on and on, but you get the point.

part that always amazes me is the idiots who are criticizing the coach of losing team, in this case Ryan Day. 

Their kicker who was batting 100% from further away, misses the 45 yard that seals the game for Ohio State.

without a single change in coaching decisions, the conversation is different today and the coach is a genius  😂😂

The other thing that boggles my mind is how the bookies in Vegas get this stuff so correct so often.  Be over and under for the game was 47 points and Ohio State was a one and a half point underdog    😳😳