Source: Ezra Shaw / Getty
Kyle Shanahan’s decision to take the ball first in overtime of Sunday’s Super Bowl has sparked a fierce debate about whether or not he made the right one.
The 49ers head coach explained postgame that the reason he took the football first was to set his team up to be able get the ball first if the game became sudden death. The problem with that plan is the Chiefs revealed after the game that they were actually planning to go for two to win the game if the Niners had scored a touchdown and made the extra point on their opening drive of overtime.
Many have argued that even not knowing that, the decision to receive was clearly the wrong one because it gave Patrick Mahomes and the Chief offense four downs as they move down the field. Panthers long snapper JJ Jansen disagrees with those people, though, as he told Mac & Bone in his weekly stop earlier this morning.
“It was absolutely the correct decision to take the ball. Coach Frank Reich was one of two guys that actually put together some of the models to figure out an overtime system in which the coin flip didn’t overwhelmingly determine the winner of the game. So this new model that’s been created, again, we’ve never done it before. So you have to go to analytics and modeling, much like kids playing video games, and you play thousands of reps, and you kind of figure out what works. This model was determined to be about a 50-50 decision, actually. It slightly favors take the ball in terms of what is the better decision. The thinking from Shanahan was 100% correct, but the situation, he messed up. The worst decision of the entire game by both teams was choosing to kick a field goal on the first possession of overtime.”
Listen to Jansen’s full explanation on this and much more below and be sure to subscribe the Mac & Bone Show podcast wherever you get your podcast.
