Ok, so I read the paper...
...and found my guess to be totally wrong. :-)
Although the punter still could have punted in that situation, it would probably be academic as the field position would probably mean they were in field goal range. I suspect that passing the ball was probably trying to make something happen in a bad situation.
I suppose if a completion had been made and a first down resulted, we'd be saying how brilliant a decision it was. Of course, most of the time, lineman release early, so it's likely that there would have been a penalty even under such a scenario.
