Football is a game of clock management. When a defense is clinging to a slim lead and backed up inside its own ten with less than two minutes on the clock, there will always be people that advocate for letting the opposing offense score. The idea is that you want to give your offense as much time to answer as possible.
On Sunday, it was Tony Romo advocating for that.
The Cincinnati Bengals were clinging to a three-point lead late in regulation of the AFC Championship Game. The Kansas City Chiefs were driving inside the ten with under 40 seconds to play. It seemed like a safe assumption that one of the NFL’s most potent offenses would punch the ball in for a touchdown and take a 28-24 lead.
Romo said the smart thing for Cincinnati to do was lay back on third down and let the Chiefs score to give the offense a chance. But, on third down, the Bengals’ defense stepped up and sacked Patrick Mahomes. That forced the Chiefs to kick a field goal, sending the game to overtime, where the Bengals kicked a field goal of their own to seal the victory and send them to the Super Bowl.
Almost immediately, members of the sports media took to Twitter to blast Tony Romo and the idea that “letting them score” ever makes sense.
Romo was once the golden boy of sports broadcasting. During his first season in the CBS booth, he was praised for his insight and ability to predict what would be called next in any given situation.
This postseason, he has been the subject of a lot of complaints, including The Sports Hub’s Fred Toucher saying he would rather hear crowd noise than Romo calling a game during the playoffs.
Has Tony Romo actually gotten worse or has the honeymoon simply ended? The idea of letting the Chiefs score proved to be wrong in this case, but he is hardly the first analyst to suggest that strategy.
