When you’re football team is playing catchup, sometimes the correct answer is to just take whatever points you can get and settle for a field goal, rather than no points. But sometimes, depending on where in the game you’re at and what the score is, deciding not to go for it can be a little puzzling.
That’s what happened Saturday in the Ohio State-Michigan game, and college football Twitter had some questions. And a few jokes.
After some incredibly costly mistakes — including Michigan being offsides as Ohio State was about to punt late in the second quarter — the Wolverines were trailing, 28-13, and at 4th-and-goal on the Buckeyes’ five-yard line with only 19 seconds left in the half. Their offense was looking pretty good against the nation’s best defense, putting up 285 first-half yards, 250 of them through the air thanks to quarterback Shea Patterson.
But instead of going for it, Jim Harbaugh sent kicker Quinn Nordin for a fairly meaningless field goal, and Michigan went into halftime down, 28-16.
Again, it’s important to take what you can get against a team like Ohio State, which entered Saturday’s game leading the nation in points against, yards allowed and yards per play. But all that 23-yard field goal did was cut the Wolverines’ deficit from 15 points to 12, which is obviously still a two-possession game.
Regardless of what Michigan and Harbaugh’s reasoning for the field goal was, college football Twitter didn’t really understand the decision. And Michigan fans were far from thrilled.
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