Tennessee Titans: Mike Vrabel explains decision to attempt 4th FG

Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel explained his decision to attempt a fourth field goal with kicker Cairo Santos late in the game.

Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel is no stranger to making bad decisions on fourth down, and he made another egregiously bad call in the Week 5 loss to the Buffalo Bills.

On fourth-and-4 from the Bills’ 36-yard line with under seven minutes left in regulation and the Titans trailing 14-7 to the Bills, Vrabel opted to go to kicker Cairo Santos for his fourth attempt of the day — this time from 53 yards out — after Santos missed his previous three.

Santos’s first miss came from 50 yards out, his second was an absolute shank from 36 yards, and his third from 33 yards was blocked. Of course, Santos would go on to miss his fourth, which gave the ball back to the Bills.

Not only was it a terrible call because Santos was just bad the entire game and had no prayer to make such a long field goal, but there also wasn’t much time left on the clock to settle for three points there.

After the game, Vrabel said he had confidence in his kicker despite Santos’ previous misses, per Justin Beasley of WSMV News 4.

"“I have confidence in him. When we send him out there it’s with the intent to put points on the board.”"

Vrabel went on.

"“You can’t just sit there and decide it’s not going well this is our kicker. This is a guy who’s made some kicks for us.”"

Actually, sometimes you just have to realize your kicker doesn’t have it and abandon him in favor of your offense, especially in that particular situation. That statement holds true here.

For whatever reason, Vrabel has a tough time figuring out when to be aggressive and when to be conservative when it comes to fourth down decisions.

He botched fourth down decisions in both Week 3 and Week 4, and he failed to epic proportions in Week 5 on another. He has got to get this figured out.