Doug Pederson didn’t have any injury updates for us on a Monday morning. The Birds’ head ball coach says he has not received the medical report from team doctors and therefore doesn’t have anything to share with fans and media.

He was asked, however, about the decision to go for two after the Eagles scored their first touchdown to make it a 17-6 game, a game that ultimately ended as a two-point loss.

Sunday, as a reminder, he said this:

“In that situation, you go for two and then you’re down a touchdown and a field goal wins the game; obviously if things stay status quo. Just gave us the best probability at that point to win.”

And Monday, in a follow up, he explained it this way:

“It’s the probability of giving yourself the best chance to winning the football game. Basically, when you’re down 17 to 8, you know that a touchdown and a field goal wins the game. You take all of those probabilities into account. I think there was just over seven minutes left in the 3rd quarter, in that situation.

It allows me as a play caller and decision-maker to understand exactly what we need moving forward. Whether we’re successful or not on the attempt, we know what has to happen now for the rest of the game.”

Alright, so these quotes are difficult to discuss sometimes because you can have simple philosophical differences. One person might think it makes sense to go for two and then kick a field goal to win a game, while another person might think the best idea is to kick the extra point and field goal and play for overtime. Different strokes for different folks.

Putting that aside, the thing about this game was that there was no ‘status quo.’ Obviously Baltimore was going to score again, and if you had kicked the extra point to make it 17-7, you could have done the following on the Jason Croom touchdown:

  • kick the XP to make it 24-14
  • or, try the two-point conversion to make it 24-15

 

After the Baltimore field goals, the Eagles were down 16, so they needed eight points to make it 30-22, and then eight more points to tie the game. That resulted in them ultimately having to try four two-point conversions on four touchdowns, only two of which they actually converted for four total points. Two Jake Elliott extra points and two conversions would have given them the six they needed to tie the game.

This all comes with the benefit of hindsight, but the bottom line is that you shouldn’t have to find yourself in a situation where you need to convert that many two-point plays in a single game. That’s low-percentage, risky stuff, and even then, Pederson admitted this morning that he ran out of red zone play calls and ended up trying a zone read on the game’s deciding sequence. Perhaps if they didn’t have to attempt four different two-point conversions, they could have held one of those plays for the fourth quarter.