Since when do NFL coaches ice their own kickers? The question has to be asked because, whether Cowboys coach Jason Garrett wants to publicly admit it or not, that's exactly what he did to Dan Bailey on Sunday in Arizona.
"I'm glad they iced the kicker at the end so I didn't have to do it," Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt said after his team's 19-13 overtime victory.
With the score tied at 13, Dallas was driving in the final minute, when Tony Romo hit Dez Bryant for a 15-yard gain to Arizona's 31-yard line. That set up questionable decision No. 1: Rather than use one of their two timeouts, the Cowboys elected to spike the ball with 8 seconds left to set up Bailey's 49-yard field-goal attempt.
"We very well could've taken a timeout there ...," Garrett said. "Tony had them at the line of scrimmage quickly, so we just went ahead and clocked it and used that as a timeout."
And that leads us to questionable decision No. 2: Right before Bailey booted what would have been a game-winner, Garrett snatched victory away by pulling a Mike Shanahan on his own guy. But why?
"Just because we felt like the play clock was running down. Just wanted to make sure he had a real clean opportunity at it," Garrett said. "It was at about 6 (seconds), and we were still getting settled in, so we banged a timeout just to give him an opportunity to get the snap off and kick as clean as possible."
Predictably, you know what happened on Bailey's second attempt.
Any second-guessing Garrett might have been experiencing, he didn't reveal to reporters.
"I think the biggest thing you try to do is you try to evaluate the situation, how you handled it and why you made that decision," Garrett said. "If you get in that situation again, maybe you handle it the exact same way, maybe you do something differently."
The latter probably would work best. Icing your own kicker rarely, if ever, ends well.
