Tag: clock management

Broncos practicing how to handle late-game scenarios

The Broncos struggled with late-game management last season. That shouldn’t happen under new coach Sean Payton.

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End-of-game scenarios were often a disaster for the Denver Broncos last season. Rookie head coach Nathaniel Hackett mishandled clock management, late-game decisions and personnel more than once last year.

Denver fired Hackett with two games remaining last season and they replaced him with experienced head coach Sean Payton this offseason. If the Broncos have any more late-game blunders this season, it won’t be because of a lack of preparation.

“[We have] a board where there’s 43 things that are unique end of game, end of half, and sometimes middle of the game situations that may come up once every four weeks — maybe once every two years,” Payton said on June 8. “We begin teaching those, and not just to those involved. In a perfect world, the whole bench is going to know what to expect at the end of the game in a certain situation. We spent all of the walkthrough — you guys saw it — on about eight different situations.

“[During] training camp on each day, we will take two [situations] and we will review [them]. They have to know those cold, and they have to know what we’re thinking so that when they come up, we can execute. If you don’t address one because it doesn’t come up until every two years, then you’re going to be faced with it, and no one’s going to know what to do. It’s really just trying to get really specific with the details of certain game situations that actually happen. We have video of it, and we have statistics of it. What’s the strategy when it happens?”

Payton went on to say the team will practice a few of the situations each week during the season, helping keep them fresh in players’ minds.

“We’re not going to cover 42 a week, but we’re going to repeat situations so that when they come up in the game, there’s clear and calm thought and everyone’s on the same page,” Payton said.

That should lead to a big improvement from last year.

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Broncos coach Sean Payton delivers zinger on Nathaniel Hackett’s clock management

“I don’t anticipate the crowd having to count down the 30-second clock,” new Broncos coach Sean Payton said. ZING!

Sean Payton’s a funny guy.

Payton was introduced as the Denver Broncos’ new head coach on Monday and he made several funny remarks, including a zinger directed at the clock management of the club’s former coach.

“There’s certain things you learn from experience,” Payton said Monday when asked about his game management. “I played quarterback, I think that helps, but also, I was around some really good [coaches] … I became more and more comfortable [over time].”

Payton went on to say that he appreciates having assistants in his headset giving input on timeout and game-clock scenarios. He then delivered the zinger.

“I don’t anticipate the crowd having to count down the 30-second clock,” the coach quipped.

Payton, of course, was referencing fans counting down the play clock at Empower Field at Mile High last season after multiple delay-of-game penalties under Hackett.

Hackett’s game management was so poor that the team brought in Jerry Rosburg as a senior assistant in September to help with in-game decisions. Rosburg later took over as interim coach when Hackett was fired in December.

Hackett also gave up offensive play calling about halfway through the season so he could better manage his overall head coach duties. Payton, who has 15 years of experience in the NFL, should have no problem balancing play calling and clock management this season.

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5 things to watch in Chiefs vs. Bengals AFC Championship Game

These five things to watch could come to define the #Chiefs’ effort when they face the #Bengals on Sunday in the AFC Championship Game. | from @TheJohnDillon

With their season on the line and their quarterback’s health in question, the Kansas City Chiefs have nothing to lose when they take on the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday. They can put it all on the line with their chance to clinch their third Super Bowl berth in the past four seasons.

Cincinnati has proven to be a tough out for Kansas City, and as such, it is expected that the Chiefs will need to play a near-perfect game to get a win over the Bengals in the conference championship.

Here are five things to watch as Kansas City competes for the right to call itself the AFC’s top team this weekend:

Cowboys’ McCarthy defends first-half timeout fiasco: ‘I was comfortable’

Mike McCarthy says it was ‘a decision’ to not try to extend a 20-7 lead at the break; it’s the 2nd week in a row he’s had clock issues. | From @ToddBrock24f7

In the end, it made no difference. The Cowboys’ 41-21 trouncing of division rival Philadelphia put Dallas in sole possession of the NFC East lead, although that only means so much at this point in the season. Any number of things might happen between now and the finish line that could sour the optimism currently flooding Cowboys Nation.

The same could have been said in microcosm of Monday night’s game- in particular, the closing minutes of the first half. Coach Mike McCarthy’s decision to save the team’s two timeouts as the Eagles stalled deep in their own territory, to not give his own potent offense an opportunity to extend their 20-7 lead heading into the intermission, was a baffling one then and remains a baffling one in the morning light, no matter how favorably the game ended.

Yet the Dallas skipper defended his in-game strategy.

“Yeah, it was clearly a decision,” McCarthy told reporters afterward. “It was to take the lead going in to halftime. I was comfortable based on where the ball was at.”

Where the ball was at was deep in Eagles territory. The clock drained harmlessly from 1:51 to 00:20. Jalen Hurts was even delaying snaps to let more time tick away when Philadelphia (!!) finally asked for a stoppage.

Traditional and proactive usage of the team’s two remaining timeouts would have given the ball back to the Cowboys in decent field position to either drive for the end zone or attempt a field goal to add to the lead.

McCarthy, though, stood pat.

The Monday Night Football announcers, noted time management veterans Peyton and Eli Manning, and even the referee standing next to McCarthy on the Dallas sideline were all left befuddled.

By the time Philadelphia punted and Dallas took over, it was too late for Dak Prescott to do anything but take a knee.

The decision made no more sense to the Tuesday morning sports shows.

When the Cowboys kicked off to Philadelphia to start the game’s second half, it was still very much a contest. An Eagles touchdown on that opening drive would have brought the visitors to within one score. Dallas, thankfully, continued to pour it on, rendering McCarthy’s move moot.

But it marks the second week in a row that Cowboys fans are talking about their head coach’s egregious lack of basic clock management skills.

Team owner Jerry Jones, though, also brushed off criticism.

“Other teams have issues with clock management. That’s part of the game,” Jones said on Dallas radio station 105.3 The Fan. “Let’s cut [McCarthy] some slack. We were critical of [Jason] Garrett when he was here. Don’t you think that goes with the territory? That’s my point. I know firsthand Mike’s capabilities, and I’m not a bit concerned about his ability to manage a tight situation.”

But plenty of others are.

The Eagles could have mounted a comeback on Monday night with one or two well-timed chunk plays. Dallas could have let their foot of the gas or otherwise fallen apart in the second half. Stranger things have happened. And then the weird little what-was-McCarthy-thinking footnote would have suddenly become the biggest story of the night.

And the coach might be a lot less comfortable on the morning after his 19th game on the job.

It has somehow worked out for Dallas two weeks running. At this rate, though, the Cowboys’ abhorrent clock management will- sooner or later- cost them dearly.

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McCarthy: Stadium clock snafu caused last-minute confusion in Cowboys win

The Cowboys coach says the clock he was watching “went off the board,” resulting in 24 wasted seconds and leaving a long field goal try. | From @ToddBrock24f7

Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy has been roaming NFL sidelines for the better part of three decades, but there’s still a first time for everything. And the novel situation that presented itself at the end of Sunday’s Week 2 game in Los Angeles nearly cost Dallas their chance at a walk-off field goal win.

In the midst of what looked like a baffling bit of poor clock management, the Cowboys let 24 seconds tick off the clock without running a play. A timeout was finally called with just a few ticks left, the coaches seemingly content to let kicker Greg Zuerlein take a shot from 56 yards after going just 3-of-5 last week and taking the blame for the team’s season-opening loss.

Zuerlein’s kick won the game, but McCarthy revealed afterward that an issue with SoFi Stadium’s scoreboards led to the last-minute confusion. According to coach, as the offense scrambled to put the right personnel on the field for a third-down play call, the clock he was watching literally vanished from the video screens.

“One of our players came off who shouldn’t have come off, just communication there. Then we were just going to run it down, but the clock I was watching went off the board,” McCarthy explained in his postgame press conference. “And the clock Kellen had, he said he got blocked by a camera guy. So the communication was great from up top; obviously, you want to call that timeout between three and four seconds.”

“I’ve never had a clock go off the board on me like that,” McCarthy said. “The second down, we were trying to chip away and just get a shorter field goal. We were going to attempt a third-down play and then kick it on on fourth; [that] was the timeframe we were in. Seventeen seconds, I think, so we were right on the threshold. You get into these two-minute drills, you have thresholds: one-minute, thirty seconds, 17 seconds.  We were right at the threshold there of our operation.

“Once you get below 17 seconds, that’s a threshold. Just let it run down and take the kick there. But the initial plan at the 30-second mark was to run a third-down play.”

The snafu came as Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott was commandeering the offense on a brilliant final drive, taking them 49 yards on ten plays and draining 3:50 off the clock before the final stoppage. Prescott went 5-for-5 on the series.

“You see the best of Dak Prescott in those situations,” McCarthy told reporters. “We put a lot of time into it. I just really love his demeanor, his poise in the two-minute drills.”

Turns out Prescott’s poise in the final seconds came because he thought everything was going according to the coaching staff’s plan. He had no idea there was ever any confusion about how much time was left.

“I’m looking at the end zone clock, so I saw the time,” Prescott said in his postgame remarks. “I just thought that we’re comfortable and we’re getting into field-goal range and that’s what they wanted to do… In a situation like that, you trust the [special] teams and Greg Zuerlein to put it through.”

Zuerlein did connect on the game-winning kick, so the SoFi Stadium clock issue is one that McCarthy and the Cowboys faithful can, thankfully, shake their heads about with a chuckle now.

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Vic Fangio explains decision to not call timeouts late vs. Titans

Broncos coach Vic Fangio could have saved as much as 44 seconds with a timeout against the Titans on ‘Monday Night Football.’

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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Garrett on Austin’s punt return: ‘There might have been an opportunity’

The Cowboys coach says punt returner Tavon Austin was not ordered to fair catch a late punt versus the Vikings just to preserve the clock.

One of the plays that stands out – and not in a good way – from the Cowboys’ 28-24 loss to the Vikings was Tavon Austin’s fair catch of a Minnesota punt in the final 30 seconds. A seemingly safe decision that, in the moment, saved maximum time and minimized the risk of a turnover or lost yardage on a return, may have been excessively safe. Looking back, it certainly made Dak Prescott’s job harder as he tried in vain to engineer a comeback in the game’s final plays.

In speaking with 105.3 The Fan on Monday morning, head coach Jason Garrett dispelled the notion that Austin had been instructed to fair catch the punt no matter what.

“You lay out the situation: let’s not waste a lot of time,” Garrett said. “If you don’t have a real good opportunity here to go make a return directly north and south, don’t waste a lot of time. In that situation, the way he saw it, he went ahead and made the fair catch and gave us the opportunity around midfield. In hindsight, when you look at it, there might have been an opportunity for him not to do that and hit it north and south and see if we could make some yards on it.”

Looking at replays of the punt from various angles, it certainly seemed as though Austin had a great chance to eat up some valuable yardage with a return.

The nearest Vikings player is more than 15 yards away from Austin. It appeared he could have gone even further than that with the blockers he had in place. It’s not unthinkable that, given Austin’s speed, he could have streaked toward the sideline and gotten the ball inside the red zone and still left plenty of time for Prescott and Co. to run a few high-percentage plays.

“That’s a situation where there’s a lot of different scenarios,” Garrett said. “In that situation, there’s a school of thought that it’s absolutely a fair catch situation, so you don’t bleed the clock and you give your offense a chance at midfield to go score a touchdown. And then if the returner, he has that in his mind, and he has an opportunity to go make a play, we certainly encourage him to do that. In that situation, he fair caught it.”

It’s easy to look at a freeze-frame or even a replay and pin blame on Austin for not being more aggressive. But he is a veteran return man who’s fielding the punt in that situation for a reason. Maybe he saw things differently. Did the Vikings coverage team slow up when Austin signaled for the fair catch? Of course they did. Maybe his lanes weren’t as wide-open as they looked to those sitting at home. Or maybe the idea of preserving the clock was emphasized too strongly on the sideline for Austin to feel like he could freelance.

Either way, the decision to play it overly safe undoubtedly limited the offense’s playbook for the final 24 seconds. It’s a play that could end up haunting the Cowboys as the postseason draws nearer.

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