Vermeil: Why I'm for Changing OT Rules but Not Coaching by Analytics

(EDITOR'S NOTE: To listen to Dick Vermeil, click on the following link: Ep 100: HOFer Dick Vermeil Joins The Show | Spreaker)

Dick Vermeil coached in the NFL when overtimes were decided by sudden death, and analytics were left to grad students at MIT. But times have changed, and Dick Vermeil changed with them.

To a point.

Instead of a Super Bowl-winning head coach, he’s now known as a Hall-of-Fame head coach. He was elected to the Hall’s Class of 2022 and will be inducted this August.

So that’s different.

But this isn’t: Like Hall-of-Fame GM Bill Polian, who appeared on “The Eye Test for Two” podcast earlier this year, Vermeil favors modifying overtime rules to give both teams at least one possession. That didn’t happen in Kansas City’s overtime defeat of Buffalo in last season’s playoffs, and it produced an outcry from Bills’ Mafia … Polian … and now Dick Vermeil … for a rules change.

“I’d like to see the other team get the opportunity to compete,” Vermeil said on a recent “Eye Test for Two” podcast (fullpressradio.com), “and go ahead and score. Just like, yeah, I would’ve liked to see Buffalo get an opportunity (in last season’s overtime playoff loss to Kansas City). That’s how I feel about it. That’s how I’ve always felt about it.

“I’m sure there are a lot of things involved in that kind of process and decision-making that I haven’t thought about. But, from a coaching standpoint, if I were on the sideline … and they scored … and I didn’t get an opportunity to go back and score and tie it up … I’d be very disappointed.”

So Vermeil is in line with those wanting to tweak today’s overtime rules, and mark that down. The subject will be a hot topic of debate at this week’s NFL owners’ meetings.

Now, let’s turn to analytics … except Vermeil would rather not. It’s not that he isn’t a fan of coaching by analytics; it’s that he flat-out opposes it.

“Sometimes,” he said, “it just doesn’t make good sense to me.”

Then again, sometimes, it just doesn’t make good sense to anyone.

Take the Chargers’ season-ending game with Las Vegas, for example. If the Bolts had won, they’d reach the playoffs. If not, they’d be out. So Los Angeles is down by three midway in the third quarter when, on fourth-and-1 at the 18, its head coach – Brandon Staley, come on down -- decides to go for the first down. No big deal, right? Wrong. It wasn’t the Raiders’ 18; it was his own.

He failed, the Raiders kicked a field goal and … poof, just like that … the Chargers miss the playoffs.

In overtime and by a field goal.

“You know,” Vermeil said of analytics, “if it was a real great idea, Don Shula would’ve been doing it years ago. Vince Lombardi would’ve been doing it years ago.

“It’s not sure-thing taking; it’s gambling. These jobs are too insecure. The owners don’t lose their jobs. The analysts don’t lose their jobs when they go for it on the opening drive of a Super Bowl and don’t make it (someone notify Cincinnati). Or you’re inside the 20-yard line three or four times and don’t go for the field goal … and then end up losing by three. Those analytics guys … they don’t get fired. But football coaches do.”

Staley didn’t get fired after finishing a disappointing 9-8, but he could have had he not been in his first year on the job. Where he was hailed as an aggressive play-caller early in the season, converting seven of his first eight fourth downs, he was criticized later for reckless behavior -- with two crushing defeats (an overtime loss to Kansas City and the Raiders’ game) the direct result of risky play calls that backfired.

“Yes, the game is more sophisticated,” said Vermeil, “but it’s true gambling. You’re taking a chance. The analytics don’t measure your opponents week by week, in my opinion. Maybe I don’t know enough about it, but you might have a better chance making a fourth-down conversion against a specific defense than the one you’re playing this Sunday. They may have an unbelievable record on defensive fourth downs. They may have a dominating down-four or just be more successful down in the red zone.

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t gamble from time to time. But the first principle I learned from (former UCLA coach) Tommy Prothro, running his offense, (was when) he says, ‘First off, when we’re a better team, make sure you don’t screw it up. Allow our team to win the football game because we are a better team going in. OK, don’t do that.

“And when we’re moving the ball real well, don’t gamble. Don’t take a chance. (When) we’re going into the red zone, don’t run the reverses and that stuff; do what we’ve done to get down there.’ These kinds of concepts were implanted in my mind as I was introduced into high-pressure play calling. They made sense to me.”

The message must have worked. Vermeil is one of only 27 head coaches in Canton.