Hrafn, if they were practicing a drill for running a play to get closer and even position the ball then get out for the kick that would be fine with me. And in that case they should just say "we normally wouldn't do that at the 17, but we wanted to practice for that in case we had a game situation where we wanted a few more yards" then I would buy it.
/agree

IF this was a designed play then I would go with the coaches contention that the refs screwed us.

but...

I still don't see a ligit reason for designing a play around this scenario. Unless we are just outside FG range and the coaches want to try to pick up an additional 10yrds or so, there is no reason NOT to simply spike the ball on third down. Even is they do need some more yards, a between the tackles run is just about the worst way to go about it.

The other factor to consider is that, designed or not, our 2-minute offese has been abismal the past few years. Why practice such an unlikely scenario when you can't even get the basic 2-minute drill down?