drewba":3k3qy9ns said:
My guess is that by kicking with several seconds left, if there was a bad snap, Ryan could eat the ball and call timeout, giving them another chance.
That is a bad way to look at it though,
Take the worst possible outcome (okay, bar the block and return of a TD, but that ends the game either way with a loss in either scenario) a miss or bobbled snap as time runs out. Take best possible outcome, a made FG. The what if of a bobbled snapped recovered is so low that the value of the upside barely factors or compares to taking it down to zero.
We saw how close AZ did get with the scant time they had. Being able to rekick a bobbled snap is already unlikely and wouldn't outweigh the possibility of a hail mary play at the end, like we almost saw.
Taking a kick at 0 elminates as much downside risk as possible while kicking with time only increases upside a fraction of a percent.