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In the most pivotal moment of Saturday night’s AFC wild-card game, Doug Pederson dug into his bag of tricks and pulled out a gem.
Trailing by two points and facing a fourth-and-1 from the Chargers’ 41 with 1:28 to play, the Jaguars lined up in a heavy formation and appeared to be telegraphing that they would be running a quarterback sneak, a play call that has an absurd success rate. Instead, Pederson got creative — albeit with a lot more risk — and called for an outside run by Travis Etienne with the season on the line.
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The play worked perhaps even better than expected. Etienne beat the defense to the edge and took off down the right sideline, gaining 25 yards to the Chargers’ 16 with 37 seconds left. The run set up a Riley Patterson 36-yard field goal kick, which he made to walk off the Chargers 31-30 and advance Jacksonville to the divisional round of the playoffs.
What a call on 4th and 1! #DUUUVAL #SuperWildCard
📺: #LACvsJAX on NBC
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/LG9lf52l9m pic.twitter.com/59hFX41f1C— NFL (@NFL) January 15, 2023
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“If they’re outside, you go inside. If they’re inside, you go outside,” Pederson said of the play after the game. “And Travis is a heck of a back that can do that, and with his speed and ability, made a great play in that moment.”
The play might have been the one to save Jacksonville’s season, but it easily could have gone the other way and been heavily scrutinized. Dating back to 2013, teams have converted on fourth-and-1 at a 65.4 percent clip. But some play designs work better than others.
According to Football Outsiders, quarterback sneaks on fourth-and-1 are successful 82.8 percent of the time, while off-tackle runs have a 65.7 percent success rate. An outside handoff works just 68.7 percent, and even inside handoffs to a back carry just a 67.3 percent success rate.
MORE: Fourth-down conversion chart, explained
The Jaguars actually lined up for the play twice. They showed a formation that would suggest a sneak. Lawrence was taking the snap under center with backs behind him that would have been used to push him across the line.
But there was something neither Pederson nor Lawrence liked the first time around. Lawrence could be heard calling an audible to kill the play, and Pederson opted to use the team’s first timeout to talk it over.
“I didn’t like the look that we had for the play we had called and so (I) just took the timeout,” Pederson said. “We reloaded, regrouped, put our heads together, came up with that call and just a great effort by Travis to obviously hit it off tackle there and get the first down and more.”
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