If you watched the Texas/Arkansas game, you saw clock management handled very poorly by Arkansas. I rarely see anyone who does it well. That's why I always admired the San Francisco 49ers of the Montana/Young days. No one handled clock management better. With about 3 minutes to go in the game, which was obviously in the balance, Houston Nutt had the grand idea of blowing a timeout for no good reason, other than to make sure that the play clock was run down to 1 second. There was way too much time on the clock to worry about it running down. Texas had 2 timeouts anyway. Why worry about running down the clock? Just run your play with about 3 seconds to go and you'll be fine. You never know if you will need that timeout. Well, ask Arkansas if they could have used that timeout now? I think they would have gotten in FG position if they had that extra timeout. Don't know if the kicker would have made it, but at least they would have had the chance. Clock managament, a seriously lost art.
I agree. Bowden did a horrible job the other night against Miami. All they had to do was run the ball and they win. What do they call? Passes. And Mack Brown needs to tell his QB that when you have a lead and the clock is running don't run out of bounds.
Yeah I didn't even mention that about UT. Bonehead play. Should not even come close to happening. A coach who has his head in the game would tell his QB under NO circumstances do you go out of bounds. And even when Benson ran for that first down, he heads to the sidelines out of bounds. After you run for the first down, just go to 1 knee or run back towards the center of the field. It's simple. I have no idea why teams don't get it right. They just don't.
Poor Bobby Bowden, did you see his post game interview? He made it seem so simple why they lost....but I know it's eating him up inside as to what he could have done differently to win that game. That's what you get for sticking by Chris Rix for all these years. You reap what you sow.
Good clock management is something that should be second nature to any coach who is employed on a D1A level. It is amazing that some of these bozos don't have a clue. I could do it right. How do I get a job as assistant coach in charge of clock management?
Hey man I feel exactly the same way. I would be damn good. I thought about this just recently that every team should have a "clock manager" on the sidelines. Concerning the Arkansas blunder, I didn't question this AFTER the fact. I questioned this when it happened. I said to myself, how in the hell you gonna blow a timeout in such a close game. I thought Texas had plenty enough time to come back down, had Arkansas kicked a FG, and gotten a FG to regain the lead. Then you are out of a timeout for no damn good reason. But of course they fumbled, so in essence it was a worse scenario than what I came up with, cuz now Arkansas didn't even have the ball and was faced with stopping the clock.
Another thing I see all the time is a team calling a timeout to avoid a delay of game penalty. Most of the time when this happens the value of keeping the timeout is greater than the value of the lost 5 yards. Miami burnt all 3 timeouts early in the first half last night.
Well if it's 3rd and 1, then yeah you gotta call timeout. So it depends on the circumstance. If it's 3rd and 12 or even 1st and 10, then no.
John Madden never let a QB call a time out even if the play clock was running down. In his book he talks about that a lot and he too thought the timeout was much more important than a penalty.
Good football post, and I agree with you regarding the 'Niners offense, especially during the later Monatana years. One could probably argue that poor clock management played a significant role in the outcome of the UGA-USC game yesterday also. Certainly, SC's offense had made progress in moving the ball in the 4th quarter. The final possession could've been the winner had Sweet Lou held onto a couple of his timeouts.
