Lanning sometimes is dumber than a box of rocks. Who in their right mind tries an onside kick down by three points, with 2:14 on the clock, and with all three timeouts remaining? Why not kick it deep?
Are you serious? Oregon couldn’t stop Washington. Why give their Heisman Caliber QB the ball when you can get it back without him touching it? And as we saw, UW was hammering Oregon’s D-line. In the first game, Oregon’s D-line played better. This game, UW’s O-line dominated and they converted multiple 1st downs on that last possession. It was smart to take the onside kick imo.
Hard to say it was smart to take the onside kick when the results didn’t pan out. I bet you that the chances of stopping Washington on a three and out were much greater than recovering an onside kick.
But can’t you say they had to try the onside kick, for the exact same reason, because the results didn’t pan out? Oregon wasn’t able to stop Washington. Washington ran the clock out. If they had kicked away… Washington still would have ran the clock out. There’s zero reason to believe that UO could stop UW and get the ball back the way the game was going, and that’s exactly how it played out.
Here’s one for you…if you kickoff and the Huskies get the ball anywhere between the 15 and 25 yard line are they under more or less pressure than if they were starting at midfield? I know what my answer is. If you get the stop there and force Washington to punt, Oregon is already relatively close to FG range with a lot of time left on the clock.
The answer is simple math not emotion. Kick the ball deep. The math would say if you kicked off 20 times the number of times you could stop a drive with no more than 1 first down is greater than the number of onside kicks you could convert out of 20 tries. Three and outs are more common than onside kick conversions. Sure Washington was hard to stop, that is where all the thought goes. Next, you should expect that good teams are also hard to convert onside kicks on as well. I see no reason to expect the math to change playing Washington.