Football coaches are by nature conservative. Playing it safe means less heat from owners, fans and media if you fail.

Which is why it was a big deal when Kansas City’s Dick Vermeil went for a winning touchdown instead of a tying field goal two weeks ago against Oakland and when Tampa Bay’s Jon Gruden went for a two-point conversion to beat Washington last week instead of kicking an extra point to send the game into overtime.

Funny thing, but the man who made one of the best remembered (and respected) gambles in football history said this week he wouldn’t have done it if the rules had been different.

The decision in 1984 – the days before overtime – was made by Nebraska coach Tom Osborne, who went for a two-point conversion in the Orange Bowl against Miami rather than kicking for a tie. The conversion failed and Miami won the national championship, a title that most people agreed Nebraska would have won had it tied the Hurricanes.

“I always felt that if you were going to win a national championship you needed to win the game,” Osborne, now a congressman from Nebraska, said this week. “I didn’t think about playing for a tie. After the fact, everyone just told me, no problem, if you’d tied you’d have won the title.”

But Osborne also said if there was overtime then, he would have kicked the ball and taken his chances in extra time.

That brings up another idea.

Kansas City Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil watches a replay on the Arrowhead Stadium scoreboard. Vermeil drew accolades for his decision to go for the win instead of the tie on the final play against the Oakland Raiders two weeks ago.

Imagine if the extra-point kick, perhaps the most boring play in sports, was thrown out and teams had to go for two, as they do in college if a game is still tied after two overtimes. It would never happen in the staid NFL, but if it did, you can imagine how much time coaches would spend trying to figure out what works best from the two-yard line.

For now, it remains simply an option, one that Osborne exercised at a huge time in a huge game.

There was less on the line for Vermeil and Gruden in the middle of a 16-game NFL season, although their teams are in playoff contention.

But remember that both were on the one-yard line rather than the two or three, a point noted by Osborne.

And remember that Gruden first tried to kick the extra point and decided to go for two only after the Redskins were offside on the kick, which they blocked. The ball then was moved to the one.

Vermeil and Gruden probably had the odds in their favor. In both games, both sides were moving the ball so well that the winner of the overtime coin toss was a likely winner, and the coin toss is a 50-50 proposition.

Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden celebrates after the Buccaneers' successful last-second, two-point conversion against Washington. The decision to go for two allowed Tampa Bay to win the game in regulation Nov. 13 in Tampa, Fla.

Players are a little less conservative than coaches.

Brett Favre, for example, said he would have pushed for a two-point try if the Packers had scored on a final drive in Cincinnati, where they lost, 21-14, on Oct. 30.

“Hell yeah. It was obvious I was pooped out. I think everyone was pooped out. … I had just had enough,” Favre said. “I was ready to go for two if we had gotten it. I think everyone was.”

And Washington quarterback Mark Brunell, whose team lost in Tampa, thinks Gruden made the right decision.

“They only needed a yard,” Brunell said. “We would probably do the same thing. We were moving the ball. If we had won that toss, there was a good chance we were going to go down and at least get a field goal. I think it was a smart decision. I wish he’d kicked it.”

One of the more amusing aspects of the gambles was the reaction of the conservative coaching fraternity.

“This league is very by-the-book: ‘This is how everything should be,'” Buffalo coach Mike Mularkey said.

“I don’t know why it’s got to be that way. Sometimes you have to take some chances and do some things that are off what everybody is expecting. I’ve been involved with teams that came from behind to score to tie it, never saw the ball and lost the game. I know what they were thinking: ‘Our defense has not held up in the last couple drives, and right there our offense had some serious momentum going.”‘