Pittsburgh Steelers HC Mike Tomlin has been heavily criticized for some of his decision-making in Sunday’s 27-13 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, most notably for deciding to punt in the fourth quarter trailing by two touchdowns.

With under 11 minutes to play while faced with a fourth-and-7, Tomlin chose to punt from the Eagles’ 46-yard line.

Pittsburgh never touched the ball again.

When asked about the decision to punt in his weekly press conference, Tomlin shared:

Obviously, from an analytical perspective, the further you get away from the line to gain, the less probable you are of success. Fourth and 7 probably would require max protection, in terms of fourth and five or less generally does not. And again, so we had three timeouts. I was about midway to the fourth. I took a chance and thought that we could maybe stop him and get the ball back and play the field position game. Based on the distance, it was a little bit too uncomfortable for me at that juncture. But make no mistake, there are two sides to that coin in terms of decision-making, but I’m comfortable with the process that we went through at the time in terms of how we played that situation.

This decision was not well-received by “the surrender index,” an analytics platform that breaks down punt probabilities (a resource I would not cite in a research paper, however).

PIT decided to punt to PHI from the PHI 46 on 4th & 7 with 10:40 remaining in the 4th while losing 13 to 27.

With a Surrender Index of 16.53, this punt ranks at the 98th percentile of cowardly punts of the 2024 season, and the 95th percentile of all punts since 1999.

— Surrender Index 90 (@surrender_idx90) December 16, 2024

Tomlin also said that the Steelers would have likely gone for it if they faced fourth-and-5 or less.

What are your thoughts on the Steelers’ decision to punt at that point in the game?