SANTA CLARA — Greg Roman spoke in the 49ers media tent Thursday afternoon. Here is what he said about his play calling against the Rams on Sunday, courtesy of the 49ers.
After the game and Monday and yesterday, head coach Jim Harbaugh talked a lot about the playcalls toward the end. How much second guessing do you do of yourself for those calls, the pitch in particular and just in the way that was handled before the Akers field goal at the end of regulation?
“You go back and you look at every call and you judge your intent relative to who you’re asking to do what. You assess that decision and one thing is, when plays work, you generally say that was a good decision. When they’re not executed or they don’t work for whatever reason, hey maybe we should have done something else. In that case, there was too many moving parts for that situation, certainly when it was called the result was not what we expected. It’s just something you measure, you try to learn from and you move on, if it doesn’t work.”
Looking back on it, the pitch, what are your thoughts on that particular play call and the risk-reward at that point in the game?
“I’m not going to get into the X’s and O’s aspects of it, I’ll just say the result was not the intent of the play call. I always look back and say, did it work or didn’t it work? Why, why not? And then move on from there.”
How do you assess your overall play calling against the Rams?
“If we win the game, I generally think it’s good. If we don’t, it’s got to be better. That’s just how I look at it.”
How have the penalties complicated the play calling?
“It’s not about play calling. It’s about execution, ultimately, on the field. That’s something that we’ve got to get a lasso around real quick. 49er football is smart, tough, opportunistic football and penalties certainly don’t fit into that equation. We just had too many of them, some of them we personally didn’t agree with and are just looking for some explanation on and hopefully we can learn from that and move on.”
I’m sure you want another pitch question. Since you’ve been here, in part because the way that play turned out, I don’t think that any single play call has gotten so much scrutiny, criticism and what not. Do you look at that as just part of the hazards of your job?
“Yeah, I mean any play you call, bad things can happen. And good things can happen, great things can happen. You see the gamut of them as you do what we do. We take a lot of pride in putting our players in a position to succeed and when they don’t work out, for whatever reason, criticism comes with it. We love our fans, want to give them wins and one of the reasons why the NFL is so popular is because everybody’s got an opinion, everybody’s got passion for it and it’s one of the great reasons you’re part of the NFL.”
The next day in Washington, the Redskins used the option quite a bit against the Giants on national television, very effectively. Do you see that being part of the future of the NFL, sort of this ability to do lots of things, including the option?
“I do. Felt that way for a while and I do think it does have a role relative to who you’re playing with. I can remember Pittsburgh ran an option play against the Packers in the Super Bowl a couple years ago. It’s in a lot of peoples play books. Some people feature it more than others, but those kinds of plays put a lot of pressure on a defense. Again, it all comes down to execution.”
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