Good game last night. When the Steelers made the go-ahead touchdown, I wondered, in real time, whether the Steelers receiver should have voluntarily gone down at the two-yard line, in order to waste more time.
What followed in my head was a debate in which I took both sides of the argument. But they were behind... They had to get points on the board... What if he had done that and then they had failed to get a touchdown? etc on the one side of the argument, and But they left way too much time on the clock... The Bengals would only need a field goal to win... There were still plenty of time-outs and the two-minute warning, etc, on the other.
I see how it turned out, but I still don't know whether it would have been better to voluntarily go down outside the goal line and try to waste time or make the Bengals burn time-outs. I wonder what analytics would say? All I know is that, as soon as the Steelers receiver crossed the goal line for the TD, my very first thought was that he shouldn't have done that, and that the Steelers were going to lose.