In risk-reward situations, some miscalculate

Mike McCarthy says “you won't get anywhere thinking about the negative all the time,” and he has a point. Coaching scared is no way to lead, just as living scared is no way to exist.

But the thing is, you also won't get anywhere thinking about the negative none of the time, because that's just delusion, and leading that way doesn't work, either. Decisions have consequences, and some of them are bad.

Planning for everything to go right isn't really planning at all.

In the grand scheme of things, McCarthy calling a catastrophically timed fake punt in the Dallas Cowboys' Thanksgiving afternoon loss to Washington was not the most egregious risk-reward miscalculation of 2020. Heaven knows this year has seen plenty of them.

And although other football coaches in the state tried to match him this weekend — Texas' Tom Herman also called a doomed fake punt before passing on a chance to at least guarantee overtime with a field goal, and Texas Tech's Matt Wells somehow gave up a touchdown on an onside kick with his team leading — McCarthy's gaffe was almost perfect in its wrongheadedness.

First of all, it offered precious little to gain. Trailing by four points and facing a fourth-and-10 from their own 24 early in the fourth quarter, the Cowboys still would have been 66 yards from the end zone even if they had converted. In what had been a defensive struggle until then, chances are they would have wound up punting anyway.

Second, the gamble appeared to be based on bad information. When the Cowboys ran their reverse to a wide receiver, they were counting on Washington to

Ron Jenkins / Associated Press Mike McCarthy insists that going for a fake punt Thursday on fourth-and-10 from the Cowboys’ own 24 “was a solid play call.”