Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald expanded on his decision-making process during a key moment in the team’s loss to the 49ers on Monday.
During an appearance on Seattle Sports, Macdonald was asked about kicking a field goal to go up 13-10 with 3:24 left to play rather than go for it on fourth-and-1 from the 49ers’ 19-yard-line. Macdonald said he thought it was a “tough” decision and acknowledged that the team’s model said that they should go for it before explaining why he went the other way.
“If you go and you get the first down, you’re not guaranteed a touchdown,” Macdonald said, via Michael-Shawn Dugar of TheAthletic.com. “You’re going to knock some time off the clock and, ultimately, you’ll probably end up with a score on that. Then San Fran is going to be in a four-down situation coming down the field, probably with all three of their timeouts, which is a difficult situation on defense. I think the numbers are about 40-50 percent, 60 percent score-rate in that situation. That’s what was going through my mind.”
Macdonald said he thought that the 49ers would have been in “three-down mode” down three, but he may not have been right about that given that they missed one field goal and had another blocked earlier in the game. It wound up being moot because the 49ers quickly moved the ball into the red zone and scored on a third-down pass from Brock Purdy to Jake Tonges.
The Seahawks still had 94 seconds left to try to move back into the lead after Tonges scored and they got to the 9-yard-line before Nick Bosa forced a Sam Darnold fumble that sealed the win for the Niners.
