At first glance, Norv Turner did the obvious Sunday night with his team was down three on 4th and 2 at the Indy 29-yard line with 1:30 left in the game: He kicked the game-tying field goal. Of course, the Colts did what we KNEW they would do - march down the field and kick the game-winning field goal with no time left on the clock. Given how unsurprising that result was, should Turner have instead gone for the first down?

Let's break the decision tree down. If Turner opts for the field goal, it's a 47 yarder. Let's give Nate Kaeding a 75 percent chance to make that (good conditions, strong leg). So there's a 25 percent chance, the Chargers lose from a miss.

If he makes it, the Colts will either do something with their possession or nothing.

I'd give the Colts at least a 50 percent chance to do what they did with the time and timeouts they had remaining. If they do that, they win.

If they do nothing with the possession, then the game goes to overtime, in which case, the Chargers have a 50 percent chance to win.

So let's break it down. There's a 25-percent chance Kaeding misses. Game over.

Of the remaining 75 percent, there's at least a 50 percent chance Colts do what they did (50 percent of 75 = 37.5).

And of the 37.5 percent that the Colts stall, there's a 50 percent chance they win in overtime anyway - so, that's 50 percent of 37.5 percent = 18.75 percent. (We can knock it down to 15 percent on the possibility of a costly turnover.)

So the chance the Colts win in that situation is 25 plus 37.5 plus 15 = 77.5 percent by Turner opting to kick the field goal. Or put differently, the Chargers had a 22.5 percent chance to win with that choice.

What about going for it on 4th and 2? I'd say the Chargers have a 60 percent chance of making the first down. Once they do, there is zero percent chance of time being left on the clock for the Colts and a 75 percent chance of making the shorter field goal OR scoring a touchdown. Let's say of that 75 (the remaining 25 includes misses, sacks and turnovers), there's a 50/50 chance the Chargers get a TD or a FG.

So let's break that down: 60 x 75 = 45. If they get the TD (22.5, they win in regulation. If they get the FG 22.5, they have a 50 percent chance to win in OT (11.25). So all told, they'd have a 33.75 percent chance of winning by going for it. (Assuming my percentages are correct, and I tried to be conservative in making them up).

Bottom line, this is but another case of a coach opting to do the "safe" thing when actually the safe thing is far more dangerous. The fallacy that Turner fell for is that the initial action (making the game-tying kick) was safer (75 percent) than the initial action of going for it on 4th down (60 percent). But the reward was far greater from making the first down in that situation.