Former Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler said someone in the San Francisco 49ers organization will pay the price for a widely denounced decision that led San Francisco to take the ball first in overtime.
For years, overtime in the NFL for the regular season and the playoffs was a sudden-death affair, with the game ending as soon as someone scored. However, as noted by Yahoo Sports, in March 2022 that rule was changed for postseason games to ensure each team gets the ball once. If a game is tied after each team scores, the game then reverts to a sudden-death format.
At the Super Bowl, San Francisco got the ball first and was able to kick a field goal. However, Kansas City then drove down the field to score a touchdown and win the game 25-22.
The New York Post noted that the show “Inside the NFL” captured some live commentary that indicated Chiefs players felt San Francisco had done them a favor.
“They want it. They want the ball,” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “They wanted it, baby.”
“We want them to have the ball. They want it, they can have it,” Travis Kelce said.
“He was shocked,” former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler said, referring to Mahomes, according to the New York Post. “I was shocked. I think everyone was shocked,”
“It’s like, you’re going to give Patrick Mahomes the ball second and give him four downs. Someone’s getting fired,” he said.
San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan said he was fully informed by team staff of what his options might be long before the game, according to USA Today.
“I take into account what they say — what they think is right — and then I go off my gut in the heat of battle,” Shanahan said Tuesday.
“It did seem more like a field-goal game. And our defense had been out there for a real long time right before that. So, I didn’t feel at all to override that at the time,” he said.
He added, “if it was like the Super Bowl the year before, the one that seemed more like a shootout, I think I might’ve felt a little bit differently.”
Chiefs coach Andy Reid was polite when addressing the issue.
“I’m not sure there’s a right answer necessarily. Ours ended up being the right one. That easily could have gone the other way,” he said.
Football analyst Ben Baldwin said there is no magic right answer.
“Given all this — SF’s offense is very good, Chiefs have Mahomes, both defenses might be tired — I’d probably lean towards receiving but don’t feel super strongly about it,” Baldwin wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
“I don’t think there’s an obvious answer, and you definitely don’t need to do the same thing every time. Although if I were forced to make a choice, I would have taken the ball second (this is also easy to say after the fact!),” he wrote.
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