CINCINNATI -- "Riverboat Ron" wasn't in a gambling mood.
With 2:24 remaining in overtime on Sunday and faced with fourth-and-1 from the Cincinnati 18, Carolina Panthers coach Ron Rivera went for a field goal to knot the score at 37-all.
It was the right call, one most coaches would have made in that situation.
A tie on the road is better than a loss.
But one easily could argue that Rivera should have gone for the victory.
Consider. The Panthers (3-2-1) were 2-for-2 in the game on fourth down and 4-for-4 on the season. They had a hot quarterback in Cam Newton, who had rushed 17 times for 107 yards, five on a fourth-and-2 call that set up the field goal to send the game into overtime.
Then there was last season. Carolina was 10-for-13 on fourth down for a 76.9 success rate that was better than every team in the league that made double-digit attempts.
That Carolina had done little to stop the Cincinnati offense all day also has to be considered. The Bengals had scored a touchdown or field goal on four straight possessions and had punted only once.
Had Mike Nugent not missed a 36-yard field goal on the final play of overtime they would have scored on five straight plays and won.
But this wasn't like last season's Buffalo game that transformed Rivera from one of the league's most conservative coaches on fourth down to one so bold he got the nickname "Riverboat."
Against the Bills in Week 2, the Panthers kicked a field goal with 1:42 remaining to extend the lead to 23-17. Had they made the first down, they would have run out the clock and won.
Instead, they put the Bills in the position of having to score a touchdown to win against a secondary that had been decimated by injuries.
That happened with two seconds left.
Rivera thought about that decision all the way to the airport. He came to the realization that he had to change.
He shouldn't have those thoughts this time. Tying the game was the right move because it gave the Panthers an opportunity to win if the defense could hold.
Even if the Panthers had gotten the first down, there are no guarantees they would have scored a touchdown -- albeit they likely would have kept Cincinnati from having a chance to win.
"A little too much," Rivera said of the distance needed for the first down. "If it had been a little bit inside [of one yard] where I was trying to get it to be, I thought about going for it.
"But it was outside [that], so I figured we would kick it and see what happened."
Not much good happened, other than the Bengals missed the winning touchdown. But whereas last season at Buffalo some players lamented the decision not to go for the first down, none did on Sunday.
"If you ask me, we had first down, second down and third down, and we should have put ourselves in better situations," Newton said. "Moving forward, I don't have any regrets of the game. I was just disappointed we didn't muster 10 yards with the first tries on first through third down."
The biggest of those plays came on second down when Jerricho Cotchery dropped a pass he got two hands on in the end zone.
But going for it on fourth down wouldn't have fixed that.
"Closer to two [yards] than one," tight end Greg Olsen said of the fourth-down play. "It was the right play. There were still two minutes left. It was the right call to tie it up."
