INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Los Angeles Chargers star Joey Bosa feared his helmet had come loose at the worst possible time.
He rushed to the sideline to grab the ball on Sunday afternoon with the Chargers holding a six-point lead midway through the fourth quarter and the Las Vegas Raiders heading into a fourth-and-1 situation on the Chargers’ 43-yard line.
As it turned out, Bosa didn’t have to rush. After a brief conversation with his assistant coaches on his headset, Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce decided to send punter AJ Cole onto the field instead of trying, a confusing decision that Bosa admitted “shocked” him.
“I just knew they were going to go for it on fourth down, so I just hustled to get back,” Bosa said after the Chargers’ 22-10 win. “I was glad they threw the ball away.”
Win probability models suggest Raiders fans at SoFi Stadium were justified in booing Pierce’s decision to punt when they trailed 16-10 with seven minutes left. The Raiders had a 24.8% chance of coming back and winning if they had gambled on it, according to ESPN Analytics. Their odds dropped to 19.1% with the punt.
Pierce’s decision to punt bucked the modern NFL trend of coaches getting aggressive on fourth-and-short. No NFL team since September 2016 has punted from the opposing team’s territory on fourth-and-1 while trailing by one score, according to sports technology company Sportradar.
In his postgame press conference, Pierce defended his decision to punt, even though the Chargers drove 92 yards on eight plays, the decisive play being a 61-yard J.K. Dobbins run that set up a touchdown reception by Ladd McConkey. The goal, Pierce said, was to play a field-position game, show confidence in his defense and still get the ball back within six points.
“We got what we wanted,” Pierce said. “We backed them up. We had three timeouts.
“They broke off a long run and that was the end.”
When asked if he was surprised by Pierce’s decision to punt, Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh insisted he wasn’t. He speculated that a Chargers fourth-down stop earlier in the game could have played a role in Pierce’s thought process, as well as the Chargers’ struggles to move the ball on offense for much of the game.
“Our offense didn’t move the ball,” Harbaugh said. “We had a lot of three-and-outs in this game. But when we didn’t need a three-and-out the most, to take the ball 92 yards and 80 yards, those were game-winning drives.”
