NC State flops in 4th quarter and loses to Wake Forest, 34-30

The maddest that I have been this entire season, without question, was when State called timeout with a buck and change left and Wake Forest facing a fourth down in State territory. I like Dave—Dave is a lot of things, does a lot of good things here—but he is a goddamned game theory idiot.

That was an unconscionably stupid timeout call. Let Wake Forest wind that thing down to a minute, and then if they want to gamble at that point, let them. But do not set the frame at “your opponent is going to have 1:45 left to get into game-winning field goal territory.” Never do that. That is the dumbest thing you can do. I feel like this stuff is not especially difficult to understand, that you want to provide a disincentive for your opponent on that whole trying-to-win front.

You hand an underdog facing fourth down time to think about things with almost two minutes left, and you encourage them to do the efficient football thing, which is go for the win. Which Wake Forest did—and Wake Forest won. Why do you want to give them free time to consider good ideas? You do not want to let them think about good ideas. Do not call timeout. Let them roll that down to a minute and think about how they can kick a field goal and dream about overtime.

This stuff’s not particularly difficult, but football coaches work often to their own team’s detriment, and Dave definitely did that today. As a player on the team your aim is to not let any game reach a point of Dave Making Decisions, but sadly it does happen. No question that some better execution on both ends could have made this a better day for everyone involved, but let us not ignore the deeply cynical and gross management that ultimately doomed this team. Football coaches do that, every time. Dave refuses to learn about it.

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