You can't compare those two decisions equally. Had Bowles went for 2 he could have won the game with a successful try, on the other hand he would have lost the game on a failed attempt. Putting the game on the line on a single play would be lower odds than giving yourself a chance to win in OT. As Cam Newton once said, hindsight is 50/50. The Bux didn't lose the game on a single play. Had they won the coin toss and scored themselves the results would have been a different story.
D.A. not going for the 4th and 1 at midfield was totally different. Had he gone for it and made it the Saints have a 1st down inside the 50 and control the clock and the game with a 5 point lead. They would have been less than 10 yards away from a reasonable FG attempt. Who knows, they may have gotten a few more 1st downs to make it a much closer FG attempt. A made FG puts the Saints up by 8. You can't lose the game at that point by giving up a TD and a 2 pt conversion. CAR could only tie. However, a TD on that drive puts the game away as there's likely less than 3 minutes left in the game and the Saints would be up by 12 points.
Had the Saints went for it and not made it the worst-case scenario would have they turn the ball over on downs near midfield. They still have a 5 point lead. CAR must score a TD to take the lead. There's about 5 minutes left in the game. Even had CAR scored a TD at that point the Saints would have had more than 2 minutes with a chance to win on a FG.
Not going for it on the 4th and 1 at midfield was a cowardly decision. D.A. either had no faith in his offense picking up the short yardage or he had no faith in his defense being able to stop CAR from driving 50 yards to score a TD. Maybe both. With that mindset what difference does it make it the other team has to drive 80 yards or 50 yards to score? Either way you're coaching with the mindset that you can't stop them. This on a team that had put up less than 200 yards offense to that point.
The running game with Kamara had been producing results the entire game. Someone should have shown D.A. the stats.
Taysom had made both of the short yardage attempts earlier that resulted in first downs. On one he willed his way to a first down. Bully Ball!