Leading the Titans 14-13 late in Monday’s game, Broncos coach Vic Fangio decided to preserve the team’s timeouts instead of attempting to stop the clock when Tennessee was driving for a go-ahead score.
With 1:33 remaining in the game, Derrick Henry rushed for 13 yards down to Denver’s 16-yard line. The clock ticked all the way down to 0:49 before the Titans ran another play.
After another run, Tennessee called a timeout and then Henry ran out of bounds. After that, the Titans had an incomplete pass. Before those plays clocked the stop, though, the Broncos allowed 44 seconds to burn off the clock.
Fangio was asked to explain his decision after the game.
“It was two-fold,” Fangio said. “One, their field goal kicker obviously had been having his problems so I didn’t want to extend the drive where they could get closer.
“Number two, we would have used a timeout, but we got the running back out of bounds. We would have used a second timeout, but they threw an incompletion which would have given us one when we got the ball back so that was part of the thinking there.”
Titans kicker Stephen Gostkowski missed two field goals, had a field goal blocked and missed an extra point leading up to that drive. When it mattered most, he converted a 25-yard field goal to take the lead.
Fangio seemingly implied that he didn’t stop the clock in part because he didn’t trust Gostkowski to convert a field goal. That turned out to be a costly gamble.
“With this close of a game you can’t expect him to miss them all,” Broncos defensive lineman Jurrell Casey said after the loss. “They drove down there and got in good field position for him and he capitalized when they needed him to make it the most.”
After the Titans converted the late field goal, Denver got the ball back with 17 seconds. Had the Broncos called a timeout after Henry’s 13-yard rush, the team could have gotten the ball back with as much as 61 seconds, possibly enough time to get within field goal range for kicker Brandon McManus.
Instead, Denver’s offense only managed to get to the 43-yard line before running out of time, losing 16-14 at home in Week 1.
Fangio has come under scrutiny for his clock management as the Broncos’ coach, rightfully so. He needs to get better in that area of coaching if Denver is going to turn these heartbreaking defeats into close victories.
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