aussiesaint

Hi Guys,

An Aussie who is a big NO Saints fan here. ( A few of us down under, believe it or not).

No the question isn't on the game itself, I understand the basics of American Football (the plays have me a bit bewildered though ).

My question is on something i saw in the replay i just watched of the Saints v Cowboys game. The Saints were on about 1st and goal with 3 minutes to play and instead of going for a score the QB kneeled down and ate up the clock.
Now i understand why a team would do this, I also understand that the Saints coach was the assistant to the Cowboys coach and looked like he was showing respect, but why wouldn't he want to score another TD to really rub it into the home team?

The Australian way of playing all sports is to go in hard from start to finish, and when your foot is on the opponents throat you grind in the heel. Never ever do you go easy on the opponent. We have no mercy rules in any game we play (except Baseball which is your game after all). In our football if my team (the Saints - nice nicname hey? )is up by 15 goals, you want to win by twenty. We have a new coach for 2007 who is the assistant to the head coach of Sydney who won the championship in 2005 and lost by one point in 2006. Our new coach would never go easy on his old boss no matter how much he respects him.

Was this a one off type thing by the Saints, or does this happen as a matter of course throughout the NFL?

Oh fantastic win BTW. Watched from start to finish and enjoyed every second.

Even know what Who Dat? means now. Might have to start that chant at our games next year.

Cheers guys.

SaintFanInATLHELL

Welcome to the board AussieSaint!

To answer your question, it was a strategy move that routinely happens at the end of games.

The first objective is to win the game. It was no longer in doubt. Second is that the kneeldown is generally a safe play. It would be devestating to lose a running back or offensive lineman due to injury on what would be considered a needless running up of the score.

It just wasn't only a sign of respect. It was get the game over and get out of town.

SFIAH

neugey

It depends on the sport. The rules of football allow for you to basically take a knee and unofficially declare that the game is over. But in tennis, it's understood that you need to finish your opponent off w/ out any mercy in order to finish the match.

Saintsfan4ever

Welcome Aussiesaint,
Just to add to what SHIAH said;
In the NFL there are wins and losses ( W`s and L`s). No polls, no power rankings, no extra credit for higher scores, just W`s and L`s. If you can eat up the clock and secure a W by not allowing the opposing team any possible chance to score, then you take the knee and secure the W.
and believe me, beating Dallas 42-17 in their stadium as a nationally televised event was brutal punishment, one more score couldn`t have made Dallas look any worse.

Tobias-Reiper

"Tennis".
And "finish your opponent off without any mercy" do not belong in the same sentence.

To answer the original question, is strategy. There are 2 mayor differences in the way American football - wait, no, U.S. football - is played and other timed-limited sports are played:

1.- Teams take turns attacking and defending, using completely different units, whereas in a game like Australian rules football everyone plays offense and defense, and the ball can change hands at any time, and anyone can attack or defend at any given moment.

2.- Play stops after a down is played, unlike Australian rules football, in which play is meant to be non-stop - there are play stoppages, but technically a game could be played without stoppages. Obviously, the team on defense cannot attempt to recover the ball between downs, yet the game clock doesn't stop as long as there's no penalty, incomplete pass, plater with the ball goes out of bounds, or a time out is called. For this reason, teams have an allotted time in which they need to run a play or be penalized for delaying the game.

Since the object of the game is to score more points than your opponent in the allotted time, and knowing that once a down is played your opponent has no chance of getting the ball back, teams routinely "take a knee" at the end of games because that eats the clock and gives the other team almost no chance to get the ball back.

The part about "respect" and "disrespect" is a fairly new phenomenon not only in sports, but in American society in general. We live in a society where everyone wants to be "respected".

'Cause the simple man pays the thrills, the bills and the pills that kill

SapperSaint

HA HA HA LMFAO!

AussieSaint good to hear from you glad you joined.

Taking the four knee downs can be taken another way, showing pity for the other team. To me taking the knee was more of a slap to the Cowboys than running it in for another TD. Hey, I liked it either way.

Halo

I'm sorry, I had to chime in, I almost fell out of my chair on this on.

Halo

Aussiesaint,

Welcome aboard! The way we see it, regardless of whether the coaches were friends, or the teams were rival or not etc., it seems the unspoken policy in American Football, in general, is to not kick a dead horse when he's down. I think American football is such a momentum sport that where you find yourself at the top and with your finger on the nuclear button today, tomorrow someone else will have that nuke pointed at you when you are down.

Also, revenge plays a big part in it. When Coach Peyton kicked the onsides kick when they were up, that was a knee to the nuts right there, but that was within the boundries of fair play. When a team is down badly, and you're on their 3 yard line with a minute left, you must kneel on the ball, otherwise you'll be percieved as the bad guy.

In America, people "bandwagon" on the winners. Winners are always seen as good sportsmen. Teams that are "bad boys" can be successful but they hype never lives on and they fall. The Saints did the good "sportsman-like" thing to do, and I hope all that rambling made some sense.

Saintsfan4ever

After you get through reading these essays .... the answer is still the same... it`s about the W with nothing more to prove. We just want the W. We got the W, took a knee went home.NEXT!

Euphoria

I thought it was a rub in the cowboys that the Saints kneeled with 3min. to go. You don't see that now-a-days. Inside the 2 minutes yes but with 3 minutes, no way.