It was bad math. Let's say we punt it to the Cardinals and they do 3 QB kneels and punt the ball back to us. We use both timeouts, Cards run as much clock as possible. Sure, we'd get the ball back at around our 20 yard-line, but with only 30 seconds, 0 timeouts and needing a TD. No chance in accomplishing that against the Cardinals defense.

I cut Payton a little slack because other NFL coaches seem to over-punt too. But then again I cut him less slack because they had a whole two-minute warning break to make a good decision and yet failed to do so.