Eight teams overcame 10-point deficits to win or tie in the first two weeks of the NFL season. Ryan Dunleavy asks why NFL teams can’t hold onto a lead.
Two former NFL head coaches with 360 games between them could not believe their eyes as they bounced from one television screen to another.
On the set of NBC’s “Football Night in America,” long before the Sunday pregame broadcast went on air, Tony Dungy and Jason Garrett hollered out: “What’s going on in Miami?” “Did you see what just happened in Cleveland?” Three hours later, similar scenes played out in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Everywhere the two football analysts looked, big fourth-quarter leads were evaporating. So, why has it become so difficult to close out a win?
“There’s no question that the fact that the league has become more spread out and more passing-oriented makes it more challenging,” Garrett told The Post. “Teams are more comfortable [trailing] in those situations than they were a number of years ago.”
No lead is safe in the NFL these days. Not when fourth-down attempts for the offense jumped 10 percent from 2019 to 2020 and another 16 percent by the halfway point of last season, according to The Associated Press.
Eight teams have overcome a deficit of at least 10 points to win or tie through the first two weeks of this season — second-most to the nine comeback winners in 1987 (just before an in-season players’ strike). Eight games have been decided by a game-winning score in the final two minutes of regulation or in overtime through the first two weeks — tied for the third-most such games (2013 and 1979).
In Week 2 alone, the Jets sandwiched an onside kick in between two touchdowns (including a 66-yarder) in the final 82 seconds to turn a 13-point deficit into a 31-30 win against the Browns. The Dolphins used four fourth-quarter touchdowns (including a 60-yarder and a 48-yarder) and a short-field fourth-down stop to overcome a 21-point deficit in a 42-38 win against the Ravens. The Cardinals scored a defensive touchdown in overtime to complete a rally from 13 points down to win 29-23 against the Raiders.
“I think it’s just the explosiveness of the ability for people to strike quickly, whether that’s offensive big plays, whether it’s special teams big plays or defensively,” Rams head coach Sean McVay said when asked by The Post about his remarkable record converting halftime leads. into victories during this era of collapses. “The reason why we’ve been able to have some decent success is because our players have executed in those most important moments.”
Another theme seen in the eight comebacks? Poor clock management.
“That is a key factor for one of your job responsibilities as a head coach,” McVay said. “In a lot of instances, I’m leaning on people … because you’ve got a lot of different things [on your plate].”
McVay is 44-1 (.978 winning percentage) when leading at halftime, which is tops among all head coaches (minimum 40 games) since 2000, according to Elias Sports Bureau. The Bills’ Sean McDermott (40-4, .909), the Patriots’ Bill Belichick (198-22, .900) and the Seahawks’ Pete Caroll (85-13, .867) are the other active coaches in the top 10 at no. 2, No. 6 and no. 9, respectively.
Garrett was 42-11 (.792) over his final six seasons with the Cowboys, and Dungy had a near-perfect record with the Buccaneers and Colts any time his team built a 14-point lead.
But even McVay almost fell victim to the early-season madness before Jalen Ramsey’s acrobatic end-zone interception kept the Rams from blowing a 21-point fourth-quarter lead to the Falcons. Marcus Mariota couldn’t deliver where other quarterbacks did.
Of the seven quarterbacks responsible for the most fourth-quarterback comebacks of all time, three are active (Tom Brady, Matt Ryan and Matthew Stafford) and two retired (Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger) over the past two offseasons.
“The pool of quarterbacks is much deeper, the skill guys are much better,” defensive-minded Jets head coach Robert Saleh said. “So, it is harder [than ever] in that regard, but it’s no excuse: You still have to get it done. In the fourth quarter, the game plan has already been revealed, they know how they are playing everything. In those fourth quarters when you have a good quarterback who is armed with all of the knowledge that he needs, that’s hard.”
Coaches have more information than ever at their disposal when it comes to how to manage a clock with timeout usage, fourth downs, two-point conversions and other late-game decisions. For example, Giants head coach Brian Daboll meets with his two top analytics advisors every day to run through various situations so that he is comfortable in any outcome because the decision-making process considered every angle, including weather, officiating and how possession was gained.
“There are formulas to win in those games,” Garrett said. “Being aggressive is important for every team, but you also want to be smart. Coach Dungy talks about keeping everything in front of you, rally tackling. As an offense, you have to be willing to run the football and bleed the clock. It might not be as sexy, but it’s pretty effective.”
Garrett spent a huge chunk of every year analyzing late-game situations around the league and practicing them beginning in OTAs in three categories: Play it out, where one side gets the ball; play it all the way out, where possession changes between the two sides until the clock runs out; got-to-have-it plays. A nine-play situational script was part of every Saturday walk-through before a game, and he “never got out of a training camp practice without implementing some sort of situation.”
“The idea is when these situations come up, you yawn at them and say, ‘We’ve been there,'” Garrett said. “Very few people have handled those situations perfectly. Those [blown leads] probably happen earlier in the year as you are building your team. Hopefully, you learn from those experiences and get better throughout the season.”
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