YoungJRNY wrote:There's a big difference between this situation and the Pats situation. This call was made with more than 3:00 left on the clock and Harbaugh had no threat of one of the best performing quarterbacks in the past decade and to go 30 yards to win the game on the other side of the ball AND they were also 3 points down at the time, not protecting a lead.
In my opinion, the situation was no different at all. The QB is irrelevant. If Harbaugh's team doesn't convert that 4th down, the game is OVER! They only had one timeout left, so it's not like they had any shot of conserving time. Another point I'll make is that the argument you're making really makes it FAR more logical for Belichick to go for it (because he had one of the best QB ever going against him and it was VERY likely that Manning was scoring from 30 yards out or 80 yards out with more than two minutes left). If you're a football guy, you'd make the argument that Harbaugh should have kicked the ball precisely because he was facing a third string QB who probably wasn't going to move the ball and therefore would have given his team great field position when they stopped the third string QB.
