Cardinals kick field goal instead of going for TD, WTF!!!!

[ArcticKnight]

Part of the premise here is that sometimes coaches don't know what the +EV decision is, but another point that was raised is that sometimes they DO know, but don't make the correct call because they don't think the fans, public, etc will understand.

I recall reading or hearing recently that one NFL coach said that even if he thought that using a last second time-out to freeze a kicker would give him a slight advantage, he would not do it. He reasoned that nobody is going to say "he should have freezed the kicker." And he's right, whoever says that stupid coach should have froze the kicker?

However, the coach did say that he would be open to lots of scrutiny if he did freeze the kicker with a last second time-out (and the kick was missed anyway) and then the next kick was good.

Just proves that coaches will give up what they know (or think) to be small edges, to avoid being percieved to have made a mistake.