Vols legend Peyton Manning made a new NFL head coach look foolish after pointing out embarrassing mistake
Tennessee Vols legend and Pro Football Hall of Famer Peyton Manning was incredibly frustrated at the end of the Monday Night Football matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears. The Bears lost 27-24 in new head coach Ben Johnson’s debut, after a boneheaded late-game decision (by Johnson) kept Chicago from getting the ball […]
Tennessee Vols legend and Pro Football Hall of Famer Peyton Manning was incredibly frustrated at the end of the Monday Night Football matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears.
The Bears lost 27-24 in new head coach Ben Johnson’s debut, after a boneheaded late-game decision (by Johnson) kept Chicago from getting the ball back with enough time to tie or win.
Chicago scored a touchdown with 2:02 to play to the Vikings’ lead to three points. The Bears had just one timeout, so the two minute warning was very important.
Peyton suggested during the ManningCast broadcast of the game that Chicago should kick the ball out of bounds to prevent the Vikings from returning the ball.
Instead, the Bears tried to kick the ball through the end zone. The ball was fielded by Vikings running back Ty Chandler, who then returned the ball — which allowed the clock to fall below two minutes (thus robbing the Bears of the ability to stop the clock, which ended up leaving Chicago with very little time at the end of the game).
“You could kick it out of bounds, it goes on the 40, that’s like an onside kick anyway that you didn’t recover,” said Peyton.
“Kick it out of bounds. Take the penalty, it’s on the 40,” added Peyton. “Now you’ve got the timeout and the two-minute warning. Out of bounds. Not out of the end zone, out of bounds.”
“They would have had a lot of time. The defense did their job and stopped it.”
Peyton Manning’s comments show how awful of a mistake Bears head coach Ben Johnson made
After the game, Johnson told reporters that the goal was to kick the ball out of the end zone.
“We felt like if we had kicked it out of the end zone and gotten the three-and-out that we got, we’d get the ball back with around 56 seconds,” said Johnson.
I can not stress enough how foolish and uninformed that comment makes Johnson sound.
Kicking the ball out of bounds was the obvious play. There is zero part of me that understands why Johnson didn’t have his kicker kick the ball out of bounds. That’s just an incredible lack of football IQ by a man who is a head coach in the NFL. It’s unbelievable how bad of a decision that is.
The field position of the ball meant nothing. Who cares if the Vikings get the ball at the 40 yard line? If they get one first down in that situation, the game is over anyway. So the field position literally meant nothing (it’s not like the Vikings were going to go for it at midfield with the Bears only needing a field goal to tie the game).
It was Johnson’s first game as head coach, so maybe he deserves some slack, but that was an easy situation to handle, and he totally botched it. Peyton, on the other hand, was incredulous at how it all unfolded.
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