Quote Originally Posted by woodbuck27 View Post
I'm trying to establish that MM reached his check point of 20 running plays.

He reached his check point of 20 points.
No he didn't. If you go back to that quote, he wanted 20 rushes in the second half. And as was made evident by the passing for a FG, he didn't just want to call running plays because that was the entire game plan. He wanted the lead and then he wanted to bury the clock by running it out.

From a first level analysis, that strategy is sound. Most winning teams have big running numbers in the second half while they have the lead and they want the clock to run. Remember the old chestnut about the Cowboys being 76-6 when Tony Dorsett rushes for 100 yards? That was because the Cowboys had second half leads in those games and they ran Dorsett to shorten the game and reduce the chance of turnovers.

But if you look closer, running can cost you and help the opposition if you are not getting first downs while running down the clock. And that describes what was happening to the Packer offense in the second half. It wasn't efficient enough and there was too much time left for 5 runs in 6 plays to bleed the clock far enough. It took an extraordinary set of circumstances, but it did happen, there was just too much time left.