Giants' John Harbaugh explains decision for OT instead of 2-point attempt

New York Giants head coach John Harbaugh chose the extra point over a two-point conversion late in regulation against the Washington Commanders on Sunday, preferring the chance to reach overtime in a road division game that ultimately ended 27-27.

Having been down 14 and just scored midway through the fourth quarter, the Giants faced the standard late-game choice. Harbaugh said the theoretical preference is often to go for two, then attempt a second conversion if needed, to keep a regulation win available. In this case, he elected the other path.

“We definitely, I think generally speaking, theoretically, you go for two. Then you see if you have to go for two twice, you give yourself a chance to win the game in regulation," Harbaugh told reporters on Monday. "But the way the game was going, as we talked about it, I just decided that I wanted to put it into overtime.

"If we got to that point, I wanted to put it into overtime. So, I didn’t want to take the chance on the two-point conversion. I thought overtime would give us the best chance. Plus, it’s a road division game, so the tie isn’t the worst thing for the road team."

The choice fit into a broader focus on end-of-game scenarios that the staff reviews on a regular basis. Harbaugh described a library of league-wide plays -- time-management situations, challenges, and officiating points of emphasis -- that the Giants study, practice, and revisit each week.

“We have a library and a catalog of plays from years and years that we study in the offseason, and we show our players the best ones. We roll them all the time. We have slides that we teach off of and then we practice them and we look at them. I look at them every Thursday night with Ty Siam, our guy, and we go through all the plays around the league,” Harbaugh said.

Harbaugh acknowledged that even careful preparation does not eliminate the unexpected. During Monday's Zoom call, he relayed a comment from his wife, who had been watching around the league, that the NFL currently feels like “crazy town.”

The Giants’ approach remains the same: Keep studying the situations, avoid complacency, and prepare for the variables that still surface in close contests.