It’s been a rough year for Rex Ryan and the Buffalo Bills. The team is out of playoff contention and he is likely to be fired. On Saturday, Ryan messed up one of the more basic elements of the game — icing the kicker.
Looks like Rex Ryan got too cute trying to ice the kicker, and he was furious afterwards. #BillsMafia https://t.co/wJdZyLVk0Y
— Sportsnaut (@Sportsnaut) December 24, 2016
This is a bad move from a few different respects.
First of all, you should never try to “ice” the kicker on a 55-yard attempt. In this particular case, Andrew Franks made the kick, so a timeout would have had its desired effect. But on a kick that’s far from a guarantee, icing the kicker is a bad play.
Secondly, by waiting so long, Ryan could have given Franks a free kick, much like Andy Reid did with Ryan Succop in Week 15 (which you can see here).
Had Ryan gotten the late time out, Franks would have gotten a practice kick for free.
The third way it can backfire is exactly what happened. The coach waits too long to call a time out and the kicker makes the kick. It seems as though Ryan was maybe trying to give himself something to argue. With the made kick, he argued that he called time out. With a missed kick, he could have argued that the snap got off in time.
It didn’t work out.