Oh my god, I think Gruden is a total moron!!
After the Cowboys came back, he said that "if they would have had that field goal they gave up on a little while back...short field anything can happen..."
I think he honestly thinks that if Phillips could redo it, he should have kicked it. That is just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Lets assume that everything else happened in the game up until that point and the Cowboys could remake that move. (I know bad assumption...but theres no reason to assume things would have been any better for the Cowboys if they kicked and they might have been worse....the neutral assumption is correct for these purposes)
Which of the following is more likely...
Gruden's way.
Kick a short field goal (98%)
+
Get an onside kick (10%)
+
Drive 35 yards into field goal position with 40 seconds and no timeouts (25%)
+
Kick a long field goal (70%)
+
Win in Overtime (50%)
Multiply all of these together and you get 0.86%.
Gruden really legitimately thinks that is more likely than Phillips way.
Convert one 6 yard pass and win the game (about 40%).
I'd point out that even missing the pass, the Cowboys still had almost as good a chance to win the game as they would have if they made the field goal. Driving the ball the whole way for a touchdown isn't that much more difficult than driving it half the way, kicking and winning it in OT.
The scary thing is that all the other reporters and coaches would probably agree with Gruden that Phillips did the wrong thing.
The really grating thing is that they would justify it by saying the "numbers" say you should kick without ever looking or thinking about a single number.
The state of math in this country is horrible but coaches are paid millions of dollars to think about these things. When somebody like Phillips or Belichick actually makes the correct decision they take an absurd amount of slack. When people like Gruden make horribly wrong decisions, nobody ever calls them on it just because all the other coaches make the same horribly wrong decisions.