One of the more confusing parts of the Green Bay Packers’ demolition of the New Orleans Saints came at the end of the first half. Kevin Austin Jr. caught a pass from Spencer Rattler, but fumbled the ball out of bounds.
What happened next was just strangle. There were 40 seconds left in the half when the ball rolled out of bounds. Interim head coach Darren Rizzi didn’t take a timeout until there was only 15 seconds left on the clock. Rizzi explained how the clock mismanagement came down to a miscommunication between him and the officials.
“Both covering official ruled the clock stopped. I asked the official if the clock would remain stopped, I got a yes,” Rizzi said. From there, he ” turned back to talk to the offensive coaches, kind of talk about our plan and what we were going do at the end of the half. Then they decided he fumbled the ball forward.”
Someone on the Saints sideline must have pointed out the running clock to Rizzi because the coach said, “it just wasn’t communicated to me that the clock had restarted.”
This explains why Rizzi was so heated on the field. He asked for confirmation and was given wrong information. Rizzi didn’t give what he would have done differently if he did know the clock would start running. He could have called the timeout immediately or the offense could have moved with urgency.
Those 25 seconds that vanished proved to be crucial. Rattler took a bad sack on the next play which forced New Orleans to take their last timeout. If that play happened with about 27 seconds instead of 10 seconds, throwing a short pass to get into field goal range would have been an option. The Saints, instead, had to.
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