Living to serve:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432812000459
"Behaviours that have been rewarded intermittently persist for longer during periods of non-reward than behaviours that have been rewarded continuously. This classic phenomenon is known as the partial reinforcement extinction effect. For decades it has been generally understood that this phenomenon is fundamental to the persistence of gambling in the absence of winning."
Or not. I'm being a little tongue in check here. But there may be a sliver of this going on. Lord knows we'd have all been thrilled had Ricardo Lockette at the one yard line simply O'Malley'ed a productive "out" and simply did what the absolute minimum called for: work up an incomplete pass. And I'll bet we have at least one situation this season where he will be praised from the box for doing just that: avoiding an interception.