quote:
For an SEC championship and a shot at the national championship, get the first down.

Kirby talks about this being a game of inches. That is a time when the inches matter. 1st down. 2nd down. 3rd down. It doesn't matter.

While I agree that inches matter, there is a time and a place for everything. At that point in the game, we were still moving the ball successfully against Bama and Fromm's escape from pressure and his run gave us a 3rd and short, which was a good spot for us to be in.

There was an unblocked defender running full-speed right at Fromm just a couple of yards away from the first down marker, so Fromm had to make the decision to either put his body on the line for another yard or two in a 2nd down situation or take what he could get and then get down to protect himself and try to pick up the extra yards on the next play. He took the safe option, which is also the option that he has likely had pounded into his head over and over for two seasons. The game wasn't on the line on that play and because it was only 2nd down, it was reasonable for him to slide after a decent gain and trust his coaches and team to execute on the next play.

Like I said previously, if the (unblocked) defender doesn't make a play to tip the ball on the next play, it's likely an easy conversion and we continue the drive and no one complains about the slide.

It's easy to scrutinize every decision in every play when the outcome is already known and find faults, but it's still my position that what Fromm did was textbook given the circumstances. The down-to-distance does matter in football strategy and if Fromm goes for the extra few yards and gets laid out and taken off the field, he would be criticized for risking the game trying to be a hero when it wasn't necessary on that play.