The clock is running with under 2 minutes.....

Hats off to the team and coaching staff for pulling together for a much needed win yesterday. A loss would have been difficult to stomach especially without losing in the turnover battle or having massive penalty yards....

I know we've talked about clock management before.....I think we're so used to it being bad that I see people complaining about it even when we seem to do the right thing. And credit where credit is due, I've seen several end of half drives this year that make me think we've learned from some past mistakes.....

But there have now been 2 recent occasions where MT has called an immediate timeout on offense in a 3rd and 'not short' situation when the clock was not an immediate factor (I still hearken back to a game a year or two ago when he ran out to call a timeout with 2:01 when we were on offense). And we also ran a play we didn't have to run before the 2 minute warning from the other team's 40 yard line. To me, the opportunity to effectively run out the half on a score is pure gold. What bothers me the most about the timeout was the next play they unnecessarily went to the endzone. I get it if you see a gap in coverage, etc., -- we fans don't know all the subtle nuances of the game so it's hard to second-guess.....BUT, the 2 likely outcomes when you go the endzone (a TD or an incomplete pass) both stop the clock giving unnecessary time to the opponent. The first time he did it (in a previous game), we failed to convert and ended up punting. i don't remember if the other team scored, but that's almost beside the point.

I'll concede that we may have one of the slowest hurry-ups imaginable and maybe stopping the clock in those situations is done to preserve time we think we'll need later assuming success instead of failure on the next play (which is a nice optimistic viewpoint to have), but I hate when I see a 'pure gold' opportunity squandered for us and given to the opposition.

Also, with 1:54 left in the game on 1st and 10 for us and the Titans out of timeouts, when we ran a play from scrimmage that got Bell shellacked in the backfield (he didn't fumble or get injured thankfully, but again sort of beside the point), I wanted to fly through the screen and explain to anyone who could understand that 3 40 second clocks in a row = 120 seconds = 2 minutes.......YOU DON'T NEED TO RUN ANOTHER PLAY!!!!! I would assume almost everybody in the world knows this fact....but somehow we don't???? (though, to be fair, I've seen other teams do mind-bogglingly stupid things as well when I pay attention, but I don't care about them).

The outcome of our games is typically on a razor's edge win or lose. We can't afford to give the opposition unnecessary opportunities, no matter how small they may be. I hope we continue to learn and get better. It's been nice to see the positives this year when they've been there....just need to eliminate the unnecessary negatives.

 

that poor clock management cost us 7/ 10 points