Wright talks candidly about "The Knee"

Four years ago, Texas State was one win away from reaching the Division I-AA (now Football Championship Subdivision) championship game in Chattanooga, Tenn. The Bobcats and Northern Iowa Panthers had battled for 46 minutes, 33 seconds and were tied at 37.

Texas State had the ball at their own 25-yard line with 1:27 remaining in the fourth quarter. The Bobcats were led by senior quarterback Barrick Nealy and head coach David Bailiff.

Up to that point, Nealy had completed 15-of-24 passes for 221 yards and three touchdowns.

Texas State just needed 50 yards or so to get into field goal range for Stan Jones. Yet, the decision came from Bailiff to sit on the ball and run out the clock.

Only one coach disagreed with the decision and went against the grain — Brad Wright. The now Bobcat head coach was running backs and special teams coach at the time, but received no backing from his fellow assistants.

"I was the only one that spoke up and said we had to go for it," Wright said. "It was tough because no one else backed me. I knew why we did it, but we had to at least give our offense a fighting chance to win the game."

Bailiff chose to kneel the ball because he felt Texas State would have a better shot at winning the game in overtime. There was also a deeper reason.

"We ran the two-minute offense against our defense like twice a week for the whole season," Wright said. "Do you know how many times we scored against our defense? None. Never. We weren’t a two-minute offense. Barrick Nealy, for all of his strengths, was not a two-minute offense guy."

Yet, that didn't keep Wright from speaking up and trying to change the direction of the game — and possibly history.

"There were plenty of plays we could have run that don’t involve just handing the ball off to our running backs," Wright said. "We could run a reverse, a simple play that looks different but gets you yardage. A reverse isn’t a trick play to me and if all the sudden it gets seven or eight yards, hey, you’re in much better position.

"If you get stoned, well, then you have to rethink things. I’m not talking about running a triple reverse, double-pass play. You just run something that’s part of your offense that you don’t run all the time and like I said, then you assess after that."

The Bobcats ran out the clock and went to overtime, where they eventually lost 40-37. Bailiff left a season later for Rice University and Wright took over Texas State.

If Wright had been coach in 2005, things might have turned out differently.

"There’s ‘what ifs’ either way," Wright said. "You just have to do what your personality is. I would have gone for it."