Clock mistakes in Bills-Titans game Saturday - by Jack Reed
All season long I have been harping in my Football Clock Management News about letting the clock run down to :03 before you kick an end-of-half field goal. Today, in the Wild-Card playoff game, Bills coach Wade Phillips broke that rule.
With :20 left in the game, the Bills were down 13-15 to the Titans. The Bills had just completed a pass for a first down and went out of bounds to stop the clock. Also, the Titans called their first timeout after the play. With first and ten at the Titans 23, the Bills kicked a go-ahead field goal. Although the Bills had no timeouts left, they still should have run two dive plays, then a spike-the-ball play. At the very least, that would have forced the Titans to use their two remaining timeouts. The Titans should not have called timeout after the play that gained the first down because the clock was already stopped by the play. If the Titans called timeout after each of the two dive plays, the clock would have been down to about :13. The third-down, spike-the-ball play would have taken it down to about :10. The fourth-down field goal would have taken the time remaining down to about :06 for the ensuing kickoff.
That kickoff-return play was a hand-off followed by a backward pass for the game-winning touchdown. The touchdown was actually scored at :03 so the Titans had to kickoff to the Bills, but the Bills were unable to score before time ran out. The Titans actually made a clock-management mistake on the touchdown kick return. The ball carrier was all alone and protected by three or four blockers as he approached the goal line. He should have stopped at the one-yard line and waited until a bad guy got almost near enough to touch him, then stepped across the goal line. That probably would have wiped out those last three seconds and thereby eliminated the need to defend the Billsí kick return. Half the players in the NFL already slow as they approach the goal line to taunt the other team. They can easily learn to do it to kill clock.
The Bills lateraled multiple times in the final play of the game, as they should, but not enough and not successfully. I call that the keep-hope-alive play and it must be practiced so it goes better than it did with the Bills. There is a whole chapter on the final-play-of-the-game lateral in my book, Football Clock Management. On that kickoff return, which everyone knew would be the final play of the game, the ball carrier must never allow himself to be tackled. Rather he must lateral to a teammate or to the ground. The Bills sort of did that, but the last Bills ball carrier held on too long.
The big question, however, is did the Bills kill as much clock as they should have earlier in the second half or was it unavoidable that they had to kick off to the Titans after their go-ahead field goal? The Bills should have been killing clock when they were ahead. They took the lead 13-12 at 11:08. They got the ball back at 7:29 still ahead. They went three and out giving the ball back at 6:15. Could they have made that possession last another :06, thereby preventing the kickoff to the Titans and losing the game? The first- and second-down plays were runs that should have taken about :45 each for a total of 2 x :45 = 90 seconds. The third-and-eight play was an incomplete pass, stopping the clock. When you are in a slowdown, you should prefer the run to the pass, if both plays are equally effective at gaining the first down. Few teams have a running play that is as effective as a pass for gaining eight yards. But even an incomplete pass should take about six seconds. The fourth-down punt play would have taken about seven seconds for a total of 103 seconds or 1:43.
In fact, the Bills only took 7:29 - 6:15 = 1:14 off the clock. That means they left at least :29 on the clock unnecessarily, probably by calling for the snap too soon. The Titans used :06 of that :29 to beat the Bills. Football is a game of seconds. Every second you leave on the clock unnecessarily may be the one that your opponent uses to beat you.
John T. Reed, author of Football Clock Management
johnreed@johntreed.com
342 Bryan Drive,Alamo, CA 94507